The Duel and Other Stories
had turned out to be very mediocre, rather coarse though handsome;
everything was broken off with him already and there would never
be anything more. What had happened was over; it had nothing to do
with any one, and if Laevsky found it out he would not believe in
it.
There was only one bathing-house for ladies on the sea-front; men
bathed under the open sky. Going into the bathing-house, Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna found there an elderly lady, Marya Konstantinovna Bityugov,
and her daughter Katya, a schoolgirl of fifteen; both of them were
sitting on a bench undressing. Marya Konstantinovna was a good-natured,
enthusiastic, and genteel person, who talked in a drawling and
pathetic voice. She had been a governess until she was thirty-two,
and then had married Bityugov, a Government official--a bald
little man with his hair combed on to his temples and with a very
meek disposition. She was still in love with him, was jealous,
blushed at the word "love," and told every one she was very happy.
"My dear," she cried enthusiastically, on seeing Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
assuming an expression which all her acquaintances called "almond-oily."
"My dear, how delightful that you have come! We'll bathe together
--that's enchanting!"
Olga quickly flung off her dress and chemise, and began undressing
her mistress.
"It's not quite so hot to-day as yesterday?" said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna,
shrinking at the coarse touch of the naked cook. "Yesterday I almost
died of the heat."
"Oh, yes, my dear; I could hardly breathe myself. Would you believe
it? I bathed yesterday three times! Just imagine, my dear, three
times! Nikodim Alexandritch was quite uneasy."
"Is it possible to be so ugly?" thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, looking
at Olga and the official's wife; she glanced at Katya and thought:
"The little girl's not badly made."
"Your Nikodim Alexandritch is very charming!" she said. "I'm simply
in love with him."
"Ha, ha, ha!" cried Marya Konstantinovna, with a forced laugh;
"that's quite enchanting."
Free from her clothes, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna felt a desire to fly.
And it seemed to her that if she were to wave her hands she would
fly upwards. When she was undressed, she noticed that Olga looked
scornfully at her white body. Olga, a young soldier's wife, was
living with her lawful husband, and so considered herself superior
to her mistress. Marya Konstantinovna and Katya were afraid of her,
and did not respect her. This was disagreeable, and to raise herself
in their opinion, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said:
"At home, in Petersburg, summer villa life is at its height now.
My husband and I have so many friends! We ought to go and see them."
"I believe your husband is an engineer?" said Marya Konstantinovna
timidly.
"I am speaking of Laevsky. He has a great many acquaintances. But
unfortunately his mother is a proud aristocrat, not very
intelligent. . . ."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna threw herself into the water without finishing;
Marya Konstantinovna and Katya made their way in after her.
"There are so many conventional ideas in the world," Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna went on, "and life is not so easy as it seems."
Marya Konstantinovna, who had been a governess in aristocratic
families and who was an authority on social matters, said:
"Oh yes! Would you believe me, my dear, at the Garatynskys' I was
expected to dress for lunch as well as for dinner, so that, like
an actress, I received a special allowance for my wardrobe in
addition to my salary."
She stood between Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Katya as though to screen
her daughter from the water that washed the former.
Through the open doors looking out to the sea they could see some
one swimming a hundred paces from their bathing-place.
"Mother, it's our Kostya," said Katya.
"Ach, ach!" Marya Konstantinovna cackled in her dismay. "Ach,
Kostya!" she shouted, "Come back! Kostya, come back!"
Kostya, a boy of fourteen, to show off his prowess before his mother
and sister, dived and swam farther, but began to be exhausted and
hurried back, and from his strained and serious face it could be
seen that he could not trust his own strength.
"The trouble one has with these boys, my dear!" said Marya
Konstantinovna, growing calmer. "Before you can turn round, he will
break his neck. Ah, my dear, how sweet it is, and yet at the same
time how difficult, to be a mother! One's afraid of everything."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna put on her straw hat and dashed out into the
open sea. She swam some thirty feet and then turned on her back.
She could see the sea to the horizon, the steamers, the people on
the sea-front, the town; and all this, together with the sultry
heat and the soft, transparent waves, excited her and whispered
that she must live, live. . . . A sailing-boat darted by her rapidly
and vigorously, cleaving the waves and the air; the man sitting at
the helm looked at her, and she liked being looked at. . . .
After bathing, the ladies dressed and went away together.
"I have fever every alternate day, and yet I don't get thin," said
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, licking her lips, which were salt from the
bathe, and responding with a smile to the bows of her acquaintances.
"I've always been plump, and now I believe I'm plumper than ever."
"That, my dear, is constitutional. If, like me, one has no
constitutional tendency to stoutness, no diet is of any use. . . .
But you've wetted your hat, my dear."
"It doesn't matter; it will dry."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna saw again the men in white who were walking
on the sea-front and talking French; and again she felt a sudden
thrill of joy, and had a vague memory of some big hall in which she
had once danced, or of which, perhaps, she had once dreamed. And
something at the bottom of her soul dimly and obscurely whispered
to her that she was a pretty, common, miserable, worthless
woman. . . .
Marya Konstantinovna stopped at her gate and asked her to come in
and sit down for a little while.
"Come in, my dear," she said in an imploring voice, and at the same
time she looked at Nadyezhda Fyodorovna with anxiety and hope;
perhaps she would refuse and not come in!
"With pleasure," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, accepting. "You know
how I love being with you!"
And she went into the house. Marya Konstantinovna sat her down and
gave her coffee, regaled her with milk rolls, then showed her
photographs of her former pupils, the Garatynskys, who were by now
married. She showed her, too, the examination reports of Kostya and
Katya. The reports were very good, but to make them seem even better,
she complained, with a sigh, how difficult the lessons at school
were now. . . . She made much of her visitor, and was sorry for
her, though at the same time she was harassed by the thought that
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna might have a corrupting influence on the morals
of Kostya and Katya, and was glad that her Nikodim Alexandritch was
not at home. Seeing that in her opinion all men are fond of "women
like that," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna might have a bad effect on Nikodim
Alexandritch too.
As she talked to her visitor, Marya Konstantinovna kept remembering
that they were to have a picnic that evening, and that Von Koren
had particularly begged her to say nothing about it to the "Japanese
monkeys"--that is, Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna; but she
dropped a word about it unawares, crimsoned, and said in confusion:
"I hope you will come too!"
VI
It was agreed to drive about five miles out of town on the road to
the south, to stop near a _duhan_ at the junction of two streams
--the Black River and the Yellow River--and to cook fish soup.
They started out soon after five. Foremost of the party in a
char-à-banc drove Samoylenko and Laevsky; they were followed by
Marya Konstantinovna, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, Katya and Kostya, in a
coach with three horses, carrying with them the crockery and a
basket with provisions. In the next carriage came the police captain,
Kirilin, and the young Atchmianov, the son of the shopkeeper to
whom Nadyezhda Fyodorovna owed three hundred roubles; opposite them,
huddled up on the little seat with his feet tucked under him, sat
Nikodim Alexandritch, a neat little man with hair combed on to his
temples. Last of all came Von Koren and the deacon; at the deacon's
feet stood a basket of fish.
"R-r-right!" Samoylenko shouted at the top of his voice when he met
a cart or a mountaineer riding on a donkey.
"In two years' time, when I shall have the means and the people
ready, I shall set off on an expedition," Von Koren was telling the
deacon. "I shall go by the sea-coast from Vladivostok to the Behring
Straits, and then from the Straits to the mouth of the Yenisei. We
shall make the map, study the fauna and the flora, and make detailed
geological, anthropological, and ethnographical researches. It
depends upon you to go with me or not."
"It's impossible," said the deacon.
"Why?"
"I'm a man with ties and a family."
"Your wife will let you go; we will provide for her. Better still
if you were to persuade her for the public benefit to go into a
nunnery; that would make it possible for you to become a monk, too,
and join the expedition as a priest. I can arrange it for you."
The deacon was silent.
"Do you know your theology well?" asked the zoologist.
"No, rather badly."
"H'm! . . . I can't give you any advice on that score, because I
don't know much about theology myself. You give me a list of books
you need, and I will send them to you from Petersburg in the winter.
It will be necessary for you to read the notes of religious travellers,
too; among them are some good ethnologists and Oriental scholars.
When you are familiar with their methods, it will be easier for you
to set to work. And you needn't waste your time till you get the
books; come to me, and we will study the compass and go through a
course of meteorology. All that's indispensable."
"To be sure . . ." muttered the deacon, and he laughed. "I was
trying to get a place in Central Russia, and my uncle, the head
priest, promised to help me. If I go with you I shall have troubled
them for nothing."
"I don't understand your hesitation. If you go on being an ordinary
deacon, who is only obliged to hold a service on holidays, and on
the other days can rest from work, you will be exactly the same as
you are now in ten years' time, and will have gained nothing but a
beard and moustache; while on returning from this expedition in ten
years' time you will be a different man, you will be enriched by
the consciousness that something has been done by you."
From the ladies' carriage came shrieks of terror and delight. The
carriages were driving along a road hollowed in a literally overhanging
precipitous cliff, and it seemed to every one that they were galloping
along a shelf on a steep wall, and that in a moment the carriages
would drop into the abyss. On the right stretched the sea; on the
left was a rough brown wall with black blotches and red veins and
with climbing roots; while on the summit stood shaggy fir-trees
bent over, as though looking down in terror and curiosity. A minute
later there were shrieks and laughter again: they had to drive under
a huge overhanging rock.
"I don't know why the devil I'm coming with you," said Laevsky.
"How stupid and vulgar it is! I want to go to the North, to run
away, to escape; but here I am, for some reason, going to this
stupid picnic."
"But look, what a view!" said Samoylenko as the horses turned to
the left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into sight and
the stream itself gleamed in the sunlight, yellow, turbid, frantic.
"I see nothing fine in that, Sasha," answered Laevsky. "To be in
continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination. In