The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
said that there was no need to keep ... too many labourers ... if we
could hire them by the day when we wanted them. You know ... you know
the labourers have been doing nothing for a whole week.... I ... I ...
only said that, and he shouted and ... said ... a lot of horrible
insulting things to me. What for?"
"There, there," said Kovrin, smoothing her hair. "You've quarrelled with
each other, you've cried, and that's enough. You must not be angry for
long--that's wrong ... all the more as he loves you beyond everything."
"He has ... has spoiled my whole life," Tanya went on, sobbing. "I hear
nothing but abuse and ... insults. He thinks I am of no use in the
house. Well! He is right. I shall go away to-morrow; I shall become a
telegraph clerk.... I don't care...."
"Come, come, come.... You mustn't cry, Tanya. You mustn't, dear.... You
are both hot-tempered and irritable, and you are both to blame. Come
along; I will reconcile you."
Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on crying,
twitching her shoulders and wringing her hands, as though some terrible
misfortune had really befallen her. He felt all the sorrier for her
because her grief was not a serious one, yet she suffered extremely.
What trivialities were enough to make this little creature miserable for
a whole day, perhaps for her whole life! Comforting Tanya, Kovrin
thought that, apart from this girl and her father, he might hunt the
world over and would not find people who would love him as one of
themselves, as one of their kindred. If it had not been for those two he
might very likely, having lost his father and mother in early childhood,
never to the day of his death have known what was meant by genuine
affection and that naïve, uncritical love which is only lavished on very
close blood relations; and he felt that the nerves of this weeping,
shaking girl responded to his half-sick, overstrained nerves like iron
to a magnet. He never could have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked
woman, but pale, weak, unhappy Tanya attracted him.
And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her hand and
wiping away her tears.... At last she left off crying. She went on for a
long time complaining of her father and her hard, insufferable life in
that house, entreating Kovrin to put himself in her place; then she
began, little by little, smiling, and sighing that God had given her
such a bad temper. At last, laughing aloud, she called herself a fool,
and ran out of the room.
When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonitch and
Tanya were walking side by side along an avenue as though nothing had
happened, and both were eating rye bread with salt on it, as both were
hungry.
V
Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin
went into the park. Sitting on a garden seat, thinking, he heard the
rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh--visitors were arriving. When
the shades of evening began falling on the garden, the sounds of the
violin and singing voices reached him indistinctly, and that reminded
him of the black monk. Where, in what land or in what planet, was that
optical absurdity moving now?
Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his imagination the
dark apparition he had seen in the rye-field, when, from behind a
pine-tree exactly opposite, there came out noiselessly, without the
slightest rustle, a man of medium height with uncovered grey head, all
in black, and barefooted like a beggar, and his black eyebrows stood out
conspicuously on his pale, death-like face. Nodding his head graciously,
this beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly to the seat and sat down, and
Kovrin recognised him as the black monk.
For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the
monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness, as though
he were thinking something to himself.
"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here and sitting
still? That does not fit in with the legend."
"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not
immediately turning his face towards him. "The legend, the mirage, and I
are all the products of your excited imagination. I am a phantom."
"Then you don't exist?" said Kovrin.
"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile. "I exist
in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist
in nature."
"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as though you
really had lived more than a thousand years," said Kovrin. "I did not
know that my imagination was capable of creating such phenomena. But why
do you look at me with such enthusiasm? Do you like me?"
"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen of God.
You do the service of eternal truth. Your thoughts, your designs, the
marvellous studies you are engaged in, and all your life, bear the
Divine, the heavenly stamp, seeing that they are consecrated to the
rational and the beautiful--that is, to what is eternal."
"You said 'eternal truth.' ... But is eternal truth of use to man and
within his reach, if there is no eternal life?"
"There is eternal life," said the monk.
"Do you believe in the immortality of man?"
"Yes, of course. A grand, brilliant future is in store for you men. And
the more there are like you on earth, the sooner will this future be
realised. Without you who serve the higher principle and live in full
understanding and freedom, mankind would be of little account;
developing in a natural way, it would have to wait a long time for the
end of its earthly history. You will lead it some thousands of years
earlier into the kingdom of eternal truth--and therein lies your supreme
service. You are the incarnation of the blessing of God, which rests
upon men."
"And what is the object of eternal life?" asked Kovrin.
"As of all life--enjoyment. True enjoyment lies in knowledge, and
eternal life provides innumerable and inexhaustible sources of
knowledge, and in that sense it has been said: 'In My Father's house
there are many mansions.'"
"If only you knew how pleasant it is to hear you!" said Kovrin, rubbing
his hands with satisfaction.
"I am very glad."
"But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the question of
your reality. You are a phantom, an hallucination. So I am mentally
deranged, not normal?"
"What if you are? Why trouble yourself? You are ill because you have
overworked and exhausted yourself, and that means that you have
sacrificed your health to the idea, and the time is near at hand when
you will give up life itself to it. What could be better? That is the
goal towards which all divinely endowed, noble natures strive."
"If I know I am mentally affected, can I trust myself?"
"And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not
see phantoms, too? The learned say now that genius is allied to madness.
My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd.
Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous exhaustion and
degeneracy, et cetera, can only seriously agitate those who place the
object of life in the present--that is, the common herd."
"The Romans used to say: _Mens sana in corpore sano._"
"Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true. Exaltation,
enthusiasm, ecstasy--all that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for
the idea, from the common folk--is repellent to the animal side of
man--that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy
and normal, go to the common herd."
"Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind," said Kovrin.
"It is as though you had seen and overheard my secret thoughts. But
don't let us talk about me. What do you mean by 'eternal truth'?"
The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish
his face. His features grew blurred and misty. Then the monk's head and
arms disappeared; his body seemed merged into the seat and the evening
twilight, and he vanished altogether.
"The hallucination is over," said Kovrin; and he laughed. "It's a pity."
He went back to the house, light-hearted and happy. The little the monk
had said to him had flattered, not his vanity, but his whole soul, his
whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve eternal truth, to stand
in the ranks of those who could make mankind worthy of the kingdom of
God some thousands of years sooner--that is, to free men from some
thousands of years of unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to
sacrifice to the idea everything--youth, strength, health; to be ready
to die for the common weal--what an exalted, what a happy lot! He
recalled his past--pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered what he had
learned himself and what he had taught to others, and decided that there
was no exaggeration in the monk's words.
Tanya came to meet him in the park: she was by now wearing a different
dress.
"Are you here?" she said. "And we have been looking and looking for
you.... But what is the matter with you?" she asked in wonder, glancing
at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes full of tears. "How strange you
are, Andryusha!"
"I am pleased, Tanya," said Kovrin, laying his hand on her shoulders. "I
am more than pleased: I am happy. Tanya, darling Tanya, you are an
extraordinary, nice creature. Dear Tanya, I am so glad, I am so glad!"
He kissed both her hands ardently, and went on:
"I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly moment. But
I can't tell you all about it or you would call me mad and not believe
me. Let us talk of you. Dear, delightful Tanya! I love you, and am used
to loving you. To have you near me, to meet you a dozen times a day, has
become a necessity of my existence; I don't know how I shall get on
without you when I go back home."
"Oh," laughed Tanya, "you will forget about us in two days. We are
humble people and you are a great man."
"No; let us talk in earnest!" he said. "I shall take you with me, Tanya.
Yes? Will you come with me? Will you be mine?"
"Come," said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh would not
come, and patches of colour came into her face.
She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to the
house, but further into the park.
"I was not thinking of it ... I was not thinking of it," she said,
wringing her hands in despair.
And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same radiant,
enthusiastic face:
"I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love only you,
Tanya, can give me. I am happy! I am happy!"
She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed ten
years older all at once, while he thought her beautiful and expressed
his rapture aloud:
"How lovely she is!"
VI
Learning from Kovrin that not only a romance had been got up, but that
there would even be a wedding, Yegor Semyonitch spent a long time in
pacing from one corner of the room to the other, trying to conceal his
agitation. His hands began trembling, his neck swelled and turned
purple, he ordered his racing droshky and drove off somewhere. Tanya,
seeing how he lashed the horse, and seeing how he pulled his cap over
his ears, understood what he was feeling, shut herself up in her room,
and cried the whole day.
In the hot-houses the peaches and plums were already ripe; the packing
and sending off of these tender and fragile goods to Moscow took a great
deal of care, work, and trouble. Owing to the fact that the summer was
very hot and dry, it was necessary to water every tree, and a great deal
of time and labour was spent on doing it. Numbers of caterpillars made
their appearance, which, to Kovrin's disgust, the labourers and even
Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya squashed with their fingers. In spite of all