The Duel and Other Stories
The princess's heart was beating dreadfully; there was a thudding
in her ears, and she still felt as though the doctor were beating
her on the head with his hat. The doctor talked quickly, excitedly,
and uncouthly, stammering and gesticulating unnecessarily. All she
grasped was that she was spoken to by a coarse, ill-bred, spiteful,
and ungrateful man; but what he wanted of her and what he was talking
about, she could not understand.
"Go away!" she said in a tearful voice, putting up her hands to
protect her head from the doctor's hat; "go away!"
"And how you treat your servants!" the doctor went on, indignantly.
"You treat them as the lowest scoundrels, and don't look upon them
as human beings. For example, allow me to ask, why did you dismiss
me? For ten years I worked for your father and afterwards for you,
honestly, without vacations or holidays. I gained the love of all
for more than seventy miles round, and suddenly one fine day I am
informed that I am no longer wanted. What for? I've no idea to this
day. I, a doctor of medicine, a gentleman by birth, a student of
the Moscow University, father of a family--am such a petty,
insignificant insect that you can kick me out without explaining
the reason! Why stand on ceremony with me! I heard afterwards that
my wife went without my knowledge three times to intercede with you
for me--you wouldn't receive her. I am told she cried in your
hall. And I shall never forgive her for it, never!"
The doctor paused and clenched his teeth, making an intense effort
to think of something more to say, very unpleasant and vindictive.
He thought of something, and his cold, frowning face suddenly
brightened.
"Take your attitude to this monastery!" he said with avidity. "You've
never spared any one, and the holier the place, the more chance of
its suffering from your loving-kindness and angelic sweetness. Why
do you come here? What do you want with the monks here, allow me
to ask you? What is Hecuba to you or you to Hecuba? It's another
farce, another amusement for you, another sacrilege against human
dignity, and nothing more. Why, you don't believe in the monks'
God; you've a God of your own in your heart, whom you've evolved
for yourself at spiritualist séances. You look with condescension
upon the ritual of the Church; you don't go to mass or vespers; you
sleep till midday. . . . Why do you come here? . . . You come with
a God of your own into a monastery you have nothing to do with, and
you imagine that the monks look upon it as a very great honour. To
be sure they do! You'd better ask, by the way, what your visits
cost the monastery. You were graciously pleased to arrive here this
evening, and a messenger from your estate arrived on horseback the
day before yesterday to warn them of your coming. They were the
whole day yesterday getting the rooms ready and expecting you. This
morning your advance-guard arrived--an insolent maid, who keeps
running across the courtyard, rustling her skirts, pestering them
with questions, giving orders. . . . I can't endure it! The monks
have been on the lookout all day, for if you were not met with due
ceremony, there would be trouble! You'd complain to the bishop!
'The monks don't like me, your holiness; I don't know what I've
done to displease them. It's true I'm a great sinner, but I'm so
unhappy!' Already one monastery has been in hot water over you. The
Father Superior is a busy, learned man; he hasn't a free moment,
and you keep sending for him to come to your rooms. Not a trace of
respect for age or for rank! If at least you were a bountiful giver
to the monastery, one wouldn't resent it so much, but all this time
the monks have not received a hundred roubles from you!"
Whenever people worried the princess, misunderstood her, or mortified
her, and when she did not know what to say or do, she usually began
to cry. And on this occasion, too, she ended by hiding her face in
her hands and crying aloud in a thin treble like a child. The doctor
suddenly stopped and looked at her. His face darkened and grew
stern.
"Forgive me, Princess," he said in a hollow voice. "I've given way
to a malicious feeling and forgotten myself. It was not right."
And coughing in an embarrassed way, he walked away quickly, without
remembering to put his hat on.
Stars were already twinkling in the sky. The moon must have been
rising on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear,
soft, and transparent. Bats were flitting noiselessly along the
white monastery wall.
The clock slowly struck three quarters, probably a quarter to nine.
The princess got up and walked slowly to the gate. She felt wounded
and was crying, and she felt that the trees and the stars and even
the bats were pitying her, and that the clock struck musically only
to express its sympathy with her. She cried and thought how nice
it would be to go into a monastery for the rest of her life. On
still summer evenings she would walk alone through the avenues,
insulted, injured, misunderstood by people, and only God and the
starry heavens would see the martyr's tears. The evening service
was still going on in the church. The princess stopped and listened
to the singing; how beautiful the singing sounded in the still
darkness! How sweet to weep and suffer to the sound of that singing!
Going into her rooms, she looked at her tear-stained face in the
glass and powdered it, then she sat down to supper. The monks knew
that she liked pickled sturgeon, little mushrooms, Malaga and plain
honey-cakes that left a taste of cypress in the mouth, and every
time she came they gave her all these dishes. As she ate the mushrooms
and drank the Malaga, the princess dreamed of how she would be
finally ruined and deserted--how all her stewards, bailiffs,
clerks, and maid-servants for whom she had done so much, would be
false to her, and begin to say rude things; how people all the world
over would set upon her, speak ill of her, jeer at her. She would
renounce her title, would renounce society and luxury, and would
go into a convent without one word of reproach to any one; she would
pray for her enemies--and then they would all understand her and
come to beg her forgiveness, but by that time it would be too
late. . . .
After supper she knelt down in the corner before the ikon and read
two chapters of the Gospel. Then her maid made her bed and she got
into it. Stretching herself under the white quilt, she heaved a
sweet, deep sigh, as one sighs after crying, closed her eyes, and
began to fall asleep.
In the morning she waked up and glanced at her watch. It was half-past
nine. On the carpet near the bed was a bright, narrow streak of
sunlight from a ray which came in at the window and dimly lighted
up the room. Flies were buzzing behind the black curtain at the
window. "It's early," thought the princess, and she closed her eyes.
Stretching and lying snug in her bed, she recalled her meeting
yesterday with the doctor and all the thoughts with which she had
gone to sleep the night before: she remembered she was unhappy.
Then she thought of her husband living in Petersburg, her stewards,
doctors, neighbours, the officials of her acquaintance . . . a long
procession of familiar masculine faces passed before her imagination.
She smiled and thought, if only these people could see into her
heart and understand her, they would all be at her feet.
At a quarter past eleven she called her maid.
"Help me to dress, Dasha," she said languidly. "But go first and
tell them to get out the horses. I must set off for Klavdia
Nikolaevna's."
Going out to get into the carriage, she blinked at the glaring
daylight and laughed with pleasure: it was a wonderfully fine day!
As she scanned from her half-closed eyes the monks who had gathered
round the steps to see her off, she nodded graciously and said:
"Good-bye, my friends! Till the day after tomorrow."
It was an agreeable surprise to her that the doctor was with the
monks by the steps. His face was pale and severe.
"Princess," he said with a guilty smile, taking off his hat, "I've
been waiting here a long time to see you. Forgive me, for God's
sake. . . . I was carried away yesterday by an evil, vindictive
feeling and I talked . . . nonsense. In short, I beg your pardon."
The princess smiled graciously, and held out her hand for him to
kiss. He kissed it, turning red.
Trying to look like a bird, the princess fluttered into the carriage
and nodded in all directions. There was a gay, warm, serene feeling
in her heart, and she felt herself that her smile was particularly
soft and friendly. As the carriage rolled towards the gates, and
afterwards along the dusty road past huts and gardens, past long
trains of waggons and strings of pilgrims on their way to the
monastery, she still screwed up her eyes and smiled softly. She was
thinking there was no higher bliss than to bring warmth, light, and
joy wherever one went, to forgive injuries, to smile graciously on
one's enemies. The peasants she passed bowed to her, the carriage
rustled softly, clouds of dust rose from under the wheels and floated
over the golden rye, and it seemed to the princess that her body
was swaying not on carriage cushions but on clouds, and that she
herself was like a light, transparent little cloud. . . .
"How happy I am!" she murmured, shutting her eyes. "How happy I
am!"
THE CHEMIST'S WIFE
THE little town of B----, consisting of two or three crooked streets,
was sound asleep. There was a complete stillness in the motionless
air. Nothing could be heard but far away, outside the town no doubt,
the barking of a dog in a thin, hoarse tenor. It was close upon
daybreak.
Everything had long been asleep. The only person not asleep was the
young wife of Tchernomordik, a qualified dispenser who kept a
chemist's shop at B----. She had gone to bed and got up again three
times, but could not sleep, she did not know why. She sat at the
open window in her nightdress and looked into the street. She felt
bored, depressed, vexed . . . so vexed that she felt quite inclined
to cry--again she did not know why. There seemed to be a lump in
her chest that kept rising into her throat. . . . A few paces behind
her Tchernomordik lay curled up close to the wall, snoring sweetly.
A greedy flea was stabbing the bridge of his nose, but he did not
feel it, and was positively smiling, for he was dreaming that every
one in the town had a cough, and was buying from him the King of
Denmark's cough-drops. He could not have been wakened now by pinpricks
or by cannon or by caresses.
The chemist's shop was almost at the extreme end of the town, so
that the chemist's wife could see far into the fields. She could
see the eastern horizon growing pale by degrees, then turning crimson
as though from a great fire. A big broad-faced moon peeped out
unexpectedly from behind bushes in the distance. It was red (as a
rule when the moon emerges from behind bushes it appears to be
blushing).
Suddenly in the stillness of the night there came the sounds of
footsteps and a jingle of spurs. She could hear voices.
"That must be the officers going home to the camp from the Police
Captain's," thought the chemist's wife.
Soon afterwards two figures wearing officers' white tunics came
into sight: one big and tall, the other thinner and shorter. . . .
They slouched along by the fence, dragging one leg after the other
and talking loudly together. As they passed the chemist's shop,
they walked more slowly than ever, and glanced up at the windows.
"It smells like a chemist's," said the thin one. "And so it is! Ah,
I remember. . . . I came here last week to buy some castor-oil.
There's a chemist here with a sour face and the jawbone of an ass!