The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
He heard a whispering in the entry; some one was softly snoring. And
suddenly from outside came harsh, abrupt, metallic sounds, such as
Korolyov had never heard before, and which he did not understand now;
they roused strange, unpleasant echoes in his soul.
"I believe nothing would induce me to remain here to live ..." he
thought, and went back to the music-books again.
"Doctor, please come to supper!" the governess called him in a low
voice.
He went into supper. The table was large and laid with a vast number of
dishes and wines, but there were only two to supper: himself and
Christina Dmitryevna. She drank Madeira, ate rapidly, and talked,
looking at him through her pince-nez:
"Our workpeople are very contented. We have performances at the factory
every winter; the workpeople act themselves. They have lectures with a
magic lantern, a splendid tea-room, and everything they want. They are
very much attached to us, and when they heard that Lizanka was worse
they had a service sung for her. Though they have no education, they
have their feelings, too."
"It looks as though you have no man in the house at all," said Korolyov.
"Not one. Pyotr Nikanoritch died a year and a half ago, and left us
alone. And so there are the three of us. In the summer we live here, and
in winter we live in Moscow, in Polianka. I have been living with them
for eleven years--as one of the family."
At supper they served sterlet, chicken rissoles, and stewed fruit; the
wines were expensive French wines.
"Please don't stand on ceremony, doctor," said Christina Dmitryevna,
eating and wiping her mouth with her fist, and it was evident she found
her life here exceedingly pleasant. "Please have some more."
After supper the doctor was shown to his room, where a bed had been made
up for him, but he did not feel sleepy. The room was stuffy and it smelt
of paint; he put on his coat and went out.
It was cool in the open air; there was already a glimmer of dawn, and
all the five blocks of buildings, with their tall chimneys, barracks,
and warehouses, were distinctly outlined against the damp air. As it was
a holiday, they were not working, and the windows were dark, and in only
one of the buildings was there a furnace burning; two windows were
crimson, and fire mixed with smoke came from time to time from the
chimney. Far away beyond the yard the frogs were croaking and the
nightingales singing.
Looking at the factory buildings and the barracks, where the workpeople
were asleep, he thought again what he always thought when he saw a
factory. They may have performances for the workpeople, magic lanterns,
factory doctors, and improvements of all sorts, but, all the same, the
workpeople he had met that day on his way from the station did not look
in any way different from those he had known long ago in his childhood,
before there were factory performances and improvements. As a doctor
accustomed to judging correctly of chronic complaints, the radical cause
of which was incomprehensible and incurable, he looked upon factories as
something baffling, the cause of which also was obscure and not
removable, and all the improvements in the life of the factory hands he
looked upon not as superfluous, but as comparable with the treatment of
incurable illnesses.
"There is something baffling in it, of course ..." he thought, looking
at the crimson windows. "Fifteen hundred or two thousand workpeople are
working without rest in unhealthy surroundings, making bad cotton goods,
living on the verge of starvation, and only waking from this nightmare
at rare intervals in the tavern; a hundred people act as overseers, and
the whole life of that hundred is spent in imposing fines, in abuse, in
injustice, and only two or three so-called owners enjoy the profits,
though they don't work at all, and despise the wretched cotton. But what
are the profits, and how do they enjoy them? Madame Lyalikov and her
daughter are unhappy--it makes one wretched to look at them; the only
one who enjoys her life is Christina Dmitryevna, a stupid, middle-aged
maiden lady in pince-nez. And so it appears that all these five blocks
of buildings are at work, and inferior cotton is sold in the Eastern
markets, simply that Christina Dmitryevna may eat sterlet and drink
Madeira."
Suddenly there came a strange noise, the same sound Korolyov had heard
before supper. Some one was striking on a sheet of metal near one of the
buildings; he struck a note, and then at once checked the vibrations, so
that short, abrupt, discordant sounds were produced, rather like "Dair
... dair ... dair...." Then there was half a minute of stillness, and
from another building there came sounds equally abrupt and unpleasant,
lower bass notes: "Drin ... drin ... drin ..." Eleven times. Evidently
it was the watchman striking the hour. Near the third building he heard:
"Zhuk ... zhuk ... zhuk...." And so near all the buildings, and then
behind the barracks and beyond the gates. And in the stillness of the
night it seemed as though these sounds were uttered by a monster with
crimson eyes--the devil himself, who controlled the owners and the
work-people alike, and was deceiving both.
Korolyov went out of the yard into the open country.
"Who goes there?" some one called to him at the gates in an abrupt
voice.
"It's just like being in prison," he thought, and made no answer.
Here the nightingales and the frogs could be heard more distinctly, and
one could feel it was a night in May. From the station came the noise of
a train; somewhere in the distance drowsy cocks were crowing; but, all
the same, the night was still, the world was sleeping tranquilly. In a
field not far from the factory there could be seen the framework of a
house and heaps of building material.
Korolyov sat down on the planks and went on thinking.
"The only person who feels happy here is the governess, and the factory
hands are working for her gratification. But that's only apparent: she
is only the figurehead. The real person, for whom everything is being
done, is the devil."
And he thought about the devil, in whom he did not believe, and he
looked round at the two windows where the fires were gleaming. It seemed
to him that out of those crimson eyes the devil himself was looking at
him--that unknown force that had created the mutual relation of the
strong and the weak, that coarse blunder which one could never correct.
The strong must hinder the weak from living--such was the law of
Nature; but only in a newspaper article or in a school book was that
intelligible and easily accepted. In the hotchpotch which was everyday
life, in the tangle of trivialities out of which human relations were
woven, it was no longer a law, but a logical absurdity, when the strong
and the weak were both equally victims of their mutual relations,
unwillingly submitting to some directing force, unknown, standing
outside life, apart from man.
So thought Korolyov, sitting on the planks, and little by little he was
possessed by a feeling that this unknown and mysterious force was really
close by and looking at him. Meanwhile the east was growing paler, time
passed rapidly; when there was not a soul anywhere near, as though
everything were dead, the five buildings and their chimneys against the
grey background of the dawn had a peculiar look--not the same as by day;
one forgot altogether that inside there were steam motors, electricity,
telephones, and kept thinking of lake-dwellings, of the Stone Age,
feeling the presence of a crude, unconscious force....
And again there came the sound: "Dair ... dair ... dair ... dair ..."
twelve times. Then there was stillness, stillness for half a minute, and
at the other end of the yard there rang out.
"Drin ... drin ... drin...."
"Horribly disagreeable," thought Korolyov.
"Zhuk ... zhuk ..." there resounded from a third place, abruptly,
sharply, as though with annoyance--"Zhuk ... zhuk...."
And it took four minutes to strike twelve. Then there was a hush; and
again it seemed as though everything were dead.
Korolyov sat a little longer, then went to the house, but sat up for a
good while longer. In the adjoining rooms there was whispering, there
was a sound of shuffling slippers and bare feet.
"Is she having another attack?" thought Korolyov.
He went out to have a look at the patient. By now it was quite light in
the rooms, and a faint glimmer of sunlight, piercing through the morning
mist, quivered on the floor and on the wall of the drawing-room. The
door of Liza's room was open, and she was sitting in a low chair beside
her bed, with her hair down, wearing a dressing-gown and wrapped in a
shawl. The blinds were down on the windows.
"How do you feel?" asked Korolyov.
"Well, thank you."
He touched her pulse, then straightened her hair, that had fallen over
her forehead.
"You are not asleep," he said. "It's beautiful weather outside. It's
spring. The nightingales are singing, and you sit in the dark and think
of something."
She listened and looked into his face; her eyes were sorrowful and
intelligent, and it was evident she wanted to say something to him.
"Does this happen to you often?" he said.
She moved her lips, and answered:
"Often, I feel wretched almost every night."
At that moment the watchman in the yard began striking two o'clock. They
heard: "Dair ... dair ..." and she shuddered.
"Do those knockings worry you?" he asked.
"I don't know. Everything here worries me," she answered, and pondered.
"Everything worries me. I hear sympathy in your voice; it seemed to me
as soon as I saw you that I could tell you all about it."
"Tell me, I beg you."
"I want to tell you of my opinion. It seems to me that I have no
illness, but that I am weary and frightened, because it is bound to be
so and cannot be otherwise. Even the healthiest person can't help being
uneasy if, for instance, a robber is moving about under his window. I am
constantly being doctored," she went on, looking at her knees, and she
gave a shy smile. "I am very grateful, of course, and I do not deny that
the treatment is a benefit; but I should like to talk, not with a
doctor, but with some intimate friend who would understand me and would
convince me that I was right or wrong."
"Have you no friends?" asked Korolyov.
"I am lonely. I have a mother; I love her, but, all the same, I am
lonely. That's how it happens to be.... Lonely people read a great deal,
but say little and hear little. Life for them is mysterious; they are
mystics and often see the devil where he is not. Lermontov's Tamara was
lonely and she saw the devil."
"Do you read a great deal?"
"Yes. You see, my whole time is free from morning till night. I read by
day, and by night my head is empty; instead of thoughts there are
shadows in it."
"Do you see anything at night?" asked Korolyov.
"No, but I feel...."
She smiled again, raised her eyes to the doctor, and looked at him so
sorrowfully, so intelligently; and it seemed to him that she trusted
him, and that she wanted to speak frankly to him, and that she thought
the same as he did. But she was silent, perhaps waiting for him to
speak.
And he knew what to say to her. It was clear to him that she needed as
quickly as possible to give up the five buildings and the million if she
had it--to leave that devil that looked out at night; it was clear to
him, too, that she thought so herself, and was only waiting for some one
she trusted to confirm her.
But he did not know how to say it. How? One is shy of asking men under
sentence what they have been sentenced for; and in the same way it is
awkward to ask very rich people what they want so much money for, why
they make such a poor use of their wealth, why they don't give it up,