The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
the cheeks of this hard, arrogant, dull-witted, prosperous woman.
Lying on her bed she breathed into her pillow and dreamed of how nice it
would be to go and buy the most expensive brooch and fling it into the
face of this bullying woman. If only it were God's will that Fedosya
Vassilyevna should come to ruin and wander about begging, and should
taste all the horrors of poverty and dependence, and that Mashenka, whom
she had insulted, might give her alms! Oh, if only she could come in for
a big fortune, could buy a carriage, and could drive noisily past the
windows so as to be envied by that woman!
But all these were only dreams, in reality there was only one thing left
to do--to get away as quickly as possible, not to stay another hour in
this place. It was true it was terrible to lose her place, to go back to
her parents, who had nothing; but what could she do? Mashenka could not
bear the sight of the lady of the house nor of her little room; she felt
stifled and wretched here. She was so disgusted with Fedosya
Vassilyevna, who was so obsessed by her illnesses and her supposed
aristocratic rank, that everything in the world seemed to have become
coarse and unattractive because this woman was living in it. Mashenka
jumped up from the bed and began packing.
"May I come in?" asked Nikolay Sergeitch at the door; he had come up
noiselessly to the door, and spoke in a soft, subdued voice. "May I?"
"Come in."
He came in and stood still near the door. His eyes looked dim and his
red little nose was shiny. After dinner he used to drink beer, and the
fact was perceptible in his walk, in his feeble, flabby hands.
"What's this?" he asked, pointing to the basket.
"I am packing. Forgive me, Nikolay Sergeitch, but I cannot remain in
your house. I feel deeply insulted by this search!"
"I understand.... Only you are wrong to go. Why should you? They've
searched your things, but you ... what does it matter to you? You will
be none the worse for it."
Mashenka was silent and went on packing. Nikolay Sergeitch pinched his
moustache, as though wondering what he should say next, and went on in
an ingratiating voice:
"I understand, of course, but you must make allowances. You know my wife
is nervous, headstrong; you mustn't judge her too harshly."
Mashenka did not speak.
"If you are so offended," Nikolay Sergeitch went on, "well, if you like,
I'm ready to apologise. I ask your pardon."
Mashenka made no answer, but only bent lower over her box. This
exhausted, irresolute man was of absolutely no significance in the
household. He stood in the pitiful position of a dependent and
hanger-on, even with the servants, and his apology meant nothing either.
"H'm!... You say nothing! That's not enough for you. In that case, I
will apologise for my wife. In my wife's name.... She behaved
tactlessly, I admit it as a gentleman...."
Nikolay Sergeitch walked about the room, heaved a sigh, and went on:
"Then you want me to have it rankling here, under my heart.... You want
my conscience to torment me...."
"I know it's not your fault, Nikolay Sergeitch," said Mashenka, looking
him full in the face with her big tear-stained eyes. "Why should you
worry yourself?"
"Of course, no.... But still, don't you ... go away. I entreat you."
Mashenka shook her head. Nikolay Sergeitch stopped at the window and
drummed on the pane with his finger-tips.
"Such misunderstandings are simply torture to me," he said. "Why, do you
want me to go down on my knees to you, or what? Your pride is wounded,
and here you've been crying and packing up to go; but I have pride, too,
and you do not spare it! Or do you want me to tell you what I would not
tell as Confession? Do you? Listen; you want me to tell you what I won't
tell the priest on my deathbed?"
Mashenka made no answer.
"I took my wife's brooch," Nikolay Sergeitch said quickly. "Is that
enough now? Are you satisfied? Yes, I ... took it.... But, of course, I
count on your discretion.... For God's sake, not a word, not half a hint
to any one!"
Mashenka, amazed and frightened, went on packing; she snatched her
things, crumpled them up, and thrust them anyhow into the box and the
basket. Now, after this candid avowal on the part of Nikolay Sergeitch,
she could not remain another minute, and could not understand how she
could have gone on living in the house before.
"And it's nothing to wonder at," Nikolay Sergeitch went on after a
pause. "It's an everyday story! I need money, and she ... won't give it
to me. It was my father's money that bought this house and everything,
you know! It's all mine, and the brooch belonged to my mother, and ...
it's all mine! And she took it, took possession of everything.... I
can't go to law with her, you'll admit.... I beg you most earnestly,
overlook it ... stay on. _Tout comprendre, tout pardonner._ Will you
stay?"
"No!" said Mashenka resolutely, beginning to tremble. "Let me alone, I
entreat you!"
"Well, God bless you!" sighed Nikolay Sergeitch, sitting down on the
stool near the box. "I must own I like people who still can feel
resentment, contempt, and so on. I could sit here forever and look at
your indignant face.... So you won't stay, then? I understand.... It's
bound to be so ... Yes, of course.... It's all right for you, but for
me--wo-o-o-o!... I can't stir a step out of this cellar. I'd go off to
one of our estates, but in every one of them there are some of my wife's
rascals ... stewards, experts, damn them all! They mortgage and
remortgage.... You mustn't catch fish, must keep off the grass, mustn't
break the trees."
"Nikolay Sergeitch!" his wife's voice called from the drawing-room.
"Agnia, call your master!"
"Then you won't stay?" asked Nikolay Sergeitch, getting up quickly and
going towards the door. "You might as well stay, really. In the evenings
I could come and have a talk with you. Eh? Stay! If you go, there won't
be a human face left in the house. It's awful!"
Nikolay Sergeitch's pale, exhausted face besought her, but Mashenka
shook her head, and with a wave of his hand he went out.
Half an hour later she was on her way.
IONITCH
I
WHEN visitors to the provincial town S---- complained of the dreariness
and monotony of life, the inhabitants of the town, as though defending
themselves, declared that it was very nice in S----, that there was a
library, a theatre, a club; that they had balls; and, finally, that
there were clever, agreeable, and interesting families with whom one
could make acquaintance. And they used to point to the family of the
Turkins as the most highly cultivated and talented.
This family lived in their own house in the principal street, near the
Governor's. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin himself--a stout, handsome, dark man
with whiskers--used to get up amateur performances for benevolent
objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general and cough very
amusingly. He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was
fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from
which it was impossible to tell whether he were joking or in earnest.
His wife, Vera Iosifovna--a thin, nice-looking lady who wore a
pince-nez--used to write novels and stories, and was very fond of
reading them aloud to her visitors. The daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, a
young girl, used to play on the piano. In short, every member of the
family had a special talent. The Turkins welcomed visitors, and
good-humouredly displayed their talents with genuine simplicity. Their
stone house was roomy and cool in summer; half of the windows looked
into a shady old garden, where nightingales used to sing in the spring.
When there were visitors in the house, there was a clatter of knives in
the kitchen and a smell of fried onions in the yard--and that was always
a sure sign of a plentiful and savoury supper to follow.
And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district
doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh, six miles from S----, he, too,
was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the
acquaintance of the Turkins. In the winter he was introduced to Ivan
Petrovitch in the street; they talked about the weather, about the
theatre, about the cholera; an invitation followed. On a holiday in the
spring--it was Ascension Day--after seeing his patients, Startsev set
off for town in search of a little recreation and to make some
purchases. He walked in a leisurely way (he had not yet set up his
carriage), humming all the time:
"'Before I'd drunk the tears from life's goblet....'"
In town he dined, went for a walk in the gardens, then Ivan
Petrovitch's invitation came into his mind, as it were of itself,
and he decided to call on the Turkins and see what sort of people
they were.
"How do you do, if you please?" said Ivan Petrovitch, meeting him
on the steps. "Delighted, delighted to see such an agreeable visitor.
Come along; I will introduce you to my better half. I tell him,
Verotchka," he went on, as he presented the doctor to his wife--"I
tell him that he has no human right to sit at home in a hospital;
he ought to devote his leisure to society. Oughtn't he, darling?"
"Sit here," said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside
her. "You can dance attendance on me. My husband is jealous--he
is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will
notice nothing."
"Ah, you spoilt chicken!" Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and
he kissed her on the forehead. "You have come just in the nick of
time," he said, addressing the doctor again. "My better half has
written a 'hugeous' novel, and she is going to read it aloud to-day."
"Petit Jean," said Vera Iosifovna to her husband, "dites que l'on
nous donne du thé."
Startsev was introduced to Ekaterina Ivanovna, a girl of eighteen,
very much like her mother, thin and pretty. Her expression was still
childish and her figure was soft and slim; and her developed girlish
bosom, healthy and beautiful, was suggestive of spring, real spring.
Then they drank tea with jam, honey, and sweetmeats, and with very
nice cakes, which melted in the mouth. As the evening came on, other
visitors gradually arrived, and Ivan Petrovitch fixed his laughing
eyes on each of them and said:
"How do you do, if you please?"
Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces,
and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. It began like this: "The frost
was intense...." The windows were wide open; from the kitchen
came the clatter of knives and the smell of fried onions.... It
was comfortable in the soft deep arm-chair; the lights had such a
friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawing-room, and at the
moment on a summer evening when sounds of voices and laughter floated
in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult
to grasp that the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was
lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the snowy
plain. Vera Iosifovna read how a beautiful young countess founded
a school, a hospital, a library, in her village, and fell in love
with a wandering artist; she read of what never happens in real
life, and yet it was pleasant to listen--it was comfortable, and
such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind, one had
no desire to get up.
"Not badsome ..." Ivan Petrovitch said softly.
And one of the visitors hearing, with his thoughts far away, said
hardly audibly:
"Yes ... truly...."
One hour passed, another. In the town gardens close by a band was
playing and a chorus was singing. When Vera Iosifovna shut her
manuscript book, the company was silent for five minutes, listening
to "Lutchina" being sung by the chorus, and the song gave what was
not in the novel and is in real life.