The Duel and Other Stories
"It was a mistake! Leave me alone!" Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said
sharply, on that beautiful, marvellous evening, looking at him with
terror and asking herself with bewilderment, could there really
have been a moment when that man attracted her and had been near
to her?
"So that's it!" said Kirilin; he thought in silence for a few minutes
and said: "Well, I'll wait till you are in a better humour, and
meanwhile I venture to assure you I am a gentleman, and I don't
allow any one to doubt it. Adieu!"
He touched his cap again and walked off, making his way between the
bushes. After a short interval Atchmianov approached hesitatingly.
"What a fine evening!" he said with a slight Armenian accent.
He was nice-looking, fashionably dressed, and behaved unaffectedly
like a well-bred youth, but Nadyezhda Fyodorovna did not like him
because she owed his father three hundred roubles; it was displeasing
to her, too, that a shopkeeper had been asked to the picnic, and
she was vexed at his coming up to her that evening when her heart
felt so pure.
"The picnic is a success altogether," he said, after a pause.
"Yes," she agreed, and as though suddenly remembering her debt, she
said carelessly: "Oh, tell them in your shop that Ivan Andreitch
will come round in a day or two and will pay three hundred roubles
. . . . I don't remember exactly what it is."
"I would give another three hundred if you would not mention that
debt every day. Why be prosaic?"
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna laughed; the amusing idea occurred to her that
if she had been willing and sufficiently immoral she might in one
minute be free from her debt. If she, for instance, were to turn
the head of this handsome young fool! How amusing, absurd, wild it
would be really! And she suddenly felt a longing to make him love
her, to plunder him, throw him over, and then to see what would
come of it.
"Allow me to give you one piece of advice," Atchmianov said timidly.
"I beg you to beware of Kirilin. He says horrible things about you
everywhere."
"It doesn't interest me to know what every fool says of me," Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna said coldly, and the amusing thought of playing with
handsome young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm.
"We must go down," she said; "they're calling us."
The fish soup was ready by now. They were ladling it out by platefuls,
and eating it with the religious solemnity with which this is only
done at a picnic; and every one thought the fish soup very good,
and thought that at home they had never eaten anything so nice. As
is always the case at picnics, in the mass of dinner napkins,
parcels, useless greasy papers fluttering in the wind, no one knew
where was his glass or where his bread. They poured the wine on the
carpet and on their own knees, spilt the salt, while it was dark
all round them and the fire burnt more dimly, and every one was too
lazy to get up and put wood on. They all drank wine, and even gave
Kostya and Katya half a glass each. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna drank one
glass and then another, got a little drunk and forgot about Kirilin.
"A splendid picnic, an enchanting evening," said Laevsky, growing
lively with the wine. "But I should prefer a fine winter to all
this. 'His beaver collar is silver with hoar-frost.'"
"Every one to his taste," observed Von Koren.
Laevsky felt uncomfortable; the heat of the campfire was beating
upon his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and face:
this hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling in which
there probably lay hid a well-grounded reason, humiliated him and
enervated him, and unable to stand up against it, he said in a
propitiatory tone:
"I am passionately fond of nature, and I regret that I'm not a
naturalist. I envy you."
"Well, I don't envy you, and don't regret it," said Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna. "I don't understand how any one can seriously interest
himself in beetles and ladybirds while the people are suffering."
Laevsky shared her opinion. He was absolutely ignorant of natural
science, and so could never reconcile himself to the authoritative
tone and the learned and profound air of the people who devoted
themselves to the whiskers of ants and the claws of beetles, and
he always felt vexed that these people, relying on these whiskers,
claws, and something they called protoplasm (he always imagined it
in the form of an oyster), should undertake to decide questions
involving the origin and life of man. But in Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's
words he heard a note of falsity, and simply to contradict her he
said: "The point is not the ladybirds, but the deductions made from
them."
VIII
It was late, eleven o'clock, when they began to get into the carriages
to go home. They took their seats, and the only ones missing were
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Atchmianov, who were running after one
another, laughing, the other side of the stream.
"Make haste, my friends," shouted Samoylenko.
"You oughtn't to give ladies wine," said Von Koren in a low voice.
Laevsky, exhausted by the picnic, by the hatred of Von Koren, and
by his own thoughts, went to meet Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and when,
gay and happy, feeling light as a feather, breathless and laughing,
she took him by both hands and laid her head on his breast, he
stepped back and said dryly:
"You are behaving like a . . . cocotte."
It sounded horribly coarse, so that he felt sorry for her at once.
On his angry, exhausted face she read hatred, pity and vexation
with himself, and her heart sank at once. She realised instantly
that she had gone too far, had been too free and easy in her
behaviour, and overcome with misery, feeling herself heavy, stout,
coarse, and drunk, she got into the first empty carriage together
with Atchmianov. Laevsky got in with Kirilin, the zoologist with
Samoylenko, the deacon with the ladies, and the party set off.
"You see what the Japanese monkeys are like," Von Koren began,
rolling himself up in his cloak and shutting his eyes. "You heard
she doesn't care to take an interest in beetles and ladybirds because
the people are suffering. That's how all the Japanese monkeys look
upon people like us. They're a slavish, cunning race, terrified by
the whip and the fist for ten generations; they tremble and burn
incense only before violence; but let the monkey into a free state
where there's no one to take it by the collar, and it relaxes at
once and shows itself in its true colours. Look how bold they are
in picture galleries, in museums, in theatres, or when they talk
of science: they puff themselves out and get excited, they are
abusive and critical . . . they are bound to criticise--it's the
sign of the slave. You listen: men of the liberal professions are
more often sworn at than pickpockets--that's because three-quarters
of society are made up of slaves, of just such monkeys. It never
happens that a slave holds out his hand to you and sincerely says
'Thank you' to you for your work."
"I don't know what you want," said Samoylenko, yawning; "the poor
thing, in the simplicity of her heart, wanted to talk to you of
scientific subjects, and you draw a conclusion from that. You're
cross with him for something or other, and with her, too, to keep
him company. She's a splendid woman."
"Ah, nonsense! An ordinary kept woman, depraved and vulgar. Listen,
Alexandr Daviditch; when you meet a simple peasant woman, who isn't
living with her husband, who does nothing but giggle, you tell her
to go and work. Why are you timid in this case and afraid to tell
the truth? Simply because Nadyezhda Fyodorovna is kept, not by a
sailor, but by an official."
"What am I to do with her?" said Samoylenko, getting angry. "Beat
her or what?
"Not flatter vice. We curse vice only behind its back, and that's
like making a long nose at it round a corner. I am a zoologist or
a sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society
believes in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which
threatens it and the next generation from the existence of ladies
like Nadyezhda Ivanovna."
"Fyodorovna," Samoylenko corrected. "But what ought society to do?"
"Society? That's its affair. To my thinking the surest and most
direct method is--compulsion. _Manu militari_ she ought to be
returned to her husband; and if her husband won't take her in, then
she ought to be sent to penal servitude or some house of correction."
"Ouf!" sighed Samoylenko. He paused and asked quietly: "You said
the other day that people like Laevsky ought to be destroyed. . . .
Tell me, if you . . . if the State or society commissioned you
to destroy him, could you . . . bring yourself to it?"
"My hand would not tremble."
IX
When they got home, Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went into their
dark, stuffy, dull rooms. Both were silent. Laevsky lighted a candle,
while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sat down, and without taking off her
cloak and hat, lifted her melancholy, guilty eyes to him.
He knew that she expected an explanation from him, but an explanation
would be wearisome, useless and exhausting, and his heart was heavy
because he had lost control over himself and been rude to her. He
chanced to feel in his pocket the letter which he had been intending
every day to read to her, and thought if he were to show her that
letter now, it would turn her thoughts in another direction.
"It is time to define our relations," he thought. "I will give it
her; what is to be will be."
He took out the letter and gave it her.
"Read it. It concerns you."
Saying this, he went into his own room and lay down on the sofa in
the dark without a pillow. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna read the letter,
and it seemed to her as though the ceiling were falling and the
walls were closing in on her. It seemed suddenly dark and shut in
and terrible. She crossed herself quickly three times and said:
"Give him peace, O Lord . . . give him peace. . . ."
And she began crying.
"Vanya," she called. "Ivan Andreitch!"
There was no answer. Thinking that Laevsky had come in and was
standing behind her chair, she sobbed like a child, and said:
"Why did you not tell me before that he was dead? I wouldn't have
gone to the picnic; I shouldn't have laughed so horribly. . . . The
men said horrid things to me. What a sin, what a sin! Save me,
Vanya, save me. . . . I have been mad. . . . I am lost. . . ."
Laevsky heard her sobs. He felt stifled and his heart was beating
violently. In his misery he got up, stood in the middle of the room,
groped his way in the dark to an easy-chair by the table, and sat
down.
"This is a prison . . ." he thought. "I must get away . . . I can't
bear it."
It was too late to go and play cards; there were no restaurants in
the town. He lay down again and covered his ears that he might not
hear her sobbing, and he suddenly remembered that he could go to
Samoylenko. To avoid going near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he got out
of the window into the garden, climbed over the garden fence and
went along the street. It was dark. A steamer, judging by its lights,
a big passenger one, had just come in. He heard the clank of the
anchor chain. A red light was moving rapidly from the shore in the
direction of the steamer: it was the Customs boat going out to it.
"The passengers are asleep in their cabins . . ." thought Laevsky,
and he envied the peace of mind of other people.
The windows in Samoylenko's house were open. Laevsky looked in at
one of them, then in at another; it was dark and still in the rooms.
"Alexandr Daviditch, are you asleep?" he called. "Alexandr Daviditch!"
He heard a cough and an uneasy shout:
"Who's there? What the devil?"
"It is I, Alexandr Daviditch; excuse me."
A little later the door opened; there was a glow of soft light from