Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

“No longer think that you love me,” Nadia continued, thinking of Gorni. “I cannot believe it. You are clever and serious and wise; you are a very talented man, and may have a brilliant future before you. I am a stupid, frivolous girl and you know yourself that I should only hinder you in your life. You were attracted to me, it is true; you thought you had found your ideal in me, but that was a mistake. Already you are asking yourself: why did I ever meet that girl? Only your kindness prevents you from acknowledging this.”

Nadia began to feel very sorry for herself, she burst into tears and continued:

“If it were not so hard to leave mamma and my brother, I should take the veil and go away to the ends of the earth. Then you would be free to love some one else.”

Nadia’s tears now prevented her from seeing what she was writing; little rainbows were trembling across the table, the floor, and the ceiling, and it seemed to her as though she were looking through a prism. To go on writing was impossible, so she threw herself back in her chair and began thinking of Gorni.

Goodness, how attractive, how fascinating men were! Nadia remembered the beautiful expression that came over Gorni’s face when he was talking of music. How humble, how engaging, how gentle he then looked, and what efforts he made not to let his voice betray the passion he felt! Emotion must be concealed in society where haughtiness and chilly indifference are the marks of good breeding and a good education, so he would try to hide his feelings, but in vain. Every one knew that he loved music madly. Endless arguments about music and the bold criticisms of Philistines kept his nerves constantly on edge, so that he appeared to be timid and silent. He played the piano beautifully, and if he had not been an officer he would certainly have become a musician.

The tears dried on Nadia’s cheeks. She remembered that Gorni had proposed to her at a symphony concert and had later repeated his proposal down-stairs by the coat rack, where they were standing in a strong draught.

“I am very glad that you have at last come to know Gruzdieff,” she went on. “He is a very clever man and you are sure to be friends. He came to see us yesterday evening and stayed until two. We were all in raptures over him, and I was sorry that you had not come, too. He talked wonderfully.”

Nadia laid her arms on the table and rested her head upon them, and her hair fell over the letter. She remembered that Gruzdieff was in love with her, too, and that he had as much right to her letter as Gorni had. On second thoughts, would it not be better to send it to him? A causeless happiness stirred in her breast; at first it was tiny, and rolled gently about there like a small rubber ball; then it grew larger and fuller, and at last gushed up like a fountain. Nadia forgot Gorni and Gruzdieff, and her thoughts grew confused, but her rapture rose and rose, until it flowed from her breast into her hands and feet, and a fresh, gentle breeze seemed to be fanning her head and stirring her hair. Her shoulders shook with soft laughter; the table shook, the lamp-chimney trembled, and tears gushed from her eyes over the letter. She was powerless to control her laughter, so she hastened to think of something funny to prove that her mirth was not groundless.

“Oh, what a ridiculous poodle!” she cried, feeling a little faint from laughing. “What a ridiculous poodle!”

She remembered that Gruzdieff had romped with their poodle Maxim yesterday after tea, and had told her a story of a very intelligent poodle, who chased a jackdaw around a garden. The jackdaw had turned round while the poodle was chasing him, and said:

“You scoundrel, you!”

Not knowing that it was a trained bird, the poodle had been dreadfully dismayed; he had slunk away in perplexity and had afterward begun to howl.

“Yes, I think I shall have to love Gruzdieff,” Nadia decided, and she tore up the letter.

So she began to muse on the student, and on his love and hers, but her thoughts were soon rambling, and she found herself thinking of many things: of her mother, of the street, of the pencil, and of the piano.... She thought of all this with pleasure, and everything seemed to her to be beautiful and good, but her happiness told her that this was not all, there was a great deal more to come in a little while, which would be much better even than this. Spring would soon be here, and then summer would come, and she would go with her mother to Gorbiki, and there Gorni would come on his holidays, and would take her walking in the garden and make love to her.

Gruzdieff would come, too; he would play croquet and bowls with her, and tell her funny and thrilling stories. She longed for the garden, the darkness, the clear sky, and the stars. Once more her shoulders shook with laughter; the room seemed to her to be filled with the scent of lavender, and a twig tapped against the window-pane.

She went across to the bed, sat down, and, not knowing what to do because of the great happiness that filled her heart, she fixed her eyes on the little icon that hung at the head of her bed, and murmured:

“Oh! Lord! Lord! Lord!”

VOLODIA

One Sunday evening in spring Volodia, a plain, shy, sickly lad of seventeen, was sitting, a prey to melancholy, in a summer-house on the country place of the Shumikins. His gloomy reflections flowed in three different channels. In the first place, to-morrow, Monday, he would have to take an examination in mathematics. He knew that if he did not pass he would be expelled from school, as he had already been two years in the sixth grade. In the second place, his pride suffered constant agony during his visits to the Shumikins, who were rich people with aristocratic pretensions. He imagined that Madame Shumikin and her nieces looked down upon his mother and himself as poor relations and dependents, and that they made fun of his mother and did not respect her. He had once overheard Madame Shumikin saying on the terrace to her cousin Anna Feodorovna that she was still pretending to be young, and that she never paid her debts and had a great hankering after other people’s shoes and cigarettes. Every day Volodia would implore his mother not to go to the Shumikins’ again. He painted for her the humiliating rôle which she played among these people, he entreated her and spoke rudely to her, but the spoiled, frivolous woman, who had wasted two fortunes in her day, her own and her husband’s, yearned for high life and refused to understand him, so that twice every week Volodia was obliged to accompany her to the hated house.

In the third place, the lad could not free himself for a moment from a certain strange, unpleasant feeling that was entirely new to him. He imagined himself to be in love with Anna Feodorovna, the cousin and guest of Madame Shumikin. Anna Feodorovna was a talkative, lively, laughing little lady of thirty; healthy, rosy, and strong, with plump shoulders, a plump chin, and an eternal smile on her thin lips. She was neither pretty nor young. Volodia knew this perfectly well, and for that very reason he was unable to refrain from thinking of her, from watching her as she bent her plump shoulders over her croquet mallet, or, as she, after much laughter and running up and down-stairs, sank all out of breath into a chair, and with half-closed eyes pretended that she felt a tightness and strangling across the chest. She was married, and her husband was a staid architect who came down into the country once a week, had a long sleep, and then returned to the city. This feeling on Volodia’s part began with an unreasoning hatred of the architect, and a sensation of joy whenever he returned to the city.

And now, as he sat in the summer-house thinking about to-morrow’s examination and his mother, whom every one laughed at, he felt a great longing to see Nyuta, as the Shumikins called Anna Feodorovna, and to hear her laughter and the rustling of her dress. This longing did not resemble the pure, poetic love of which he had read in novels, and of which he dreamed every night as he went to bed. It was a strange and incomprehensible thing, and he was ashamed and afraid of it as of something wicked and wrong which he hardly dared to acknowledge even to himself.

“This is not love,” he thought. “One does not fall in love with a woman of thirty. It is simply a little intrigue; yes, it is a little intrigue.”

Thinking about intrigues, he remembered his invincible shyness, his lack of a moustache, his freckles, his little eyes, and pictured himself standing beside Nyuta. The contrast was impossible. So he hastened to imagine himself handsome and bold and witty, dressed in the latest fashion....

In the very heat of his imaginings, as he sat huddled in a dark corner of the summer-house with his eyes fixed on the ground, he heard light footsteps approaching. Some one was hurrying down the garden path. The footsteps ceased and a figure clad in white gleamed in the doorway.

“Is any one there?” asked a woman’s voice.

Volodia recognised the voice and raised his head in alarm.

“Who is there?” asked Nyuta, stepping into the summer-house. “Ah, is it you, Volodia? What are you doing in there? Brooding? How can you always be brooding and brooding? It’s enough to drive you crazy!”

Volodia rose and looked at Nyuta in confusion. She was on her way back from the bath-house; a Turkish towel hung across her shoulders, and a few damp locks of hair had escaped from under her white silk kerchief and were clinging to her forehead. She exhaled the cool, damp odour of the river, and the scent of almond soap. The upper button of her blouse was undone, so that her neck and throat were visible to the lad.

“Why don’t you say something?” asked Nyuta, looking Volodia up and down. “It is rude not to answer when a lady speaks to you. What a stick-in-the-mud you are, Volodia, always sitting and thinking like some stodgy old philosopher, and never opening your mouth! You have no vim in you, no fire! You are horrid, really! A boy of your age ought to live, and frisk, and chatter, and fall in love, and make love to the ladies.”

Volodia stared at the towel which she was holding in her plump, white hand and pondered.

“He won’t answer!” cried Nyuta in surprise. “This is too strange, really! Listen to me, be a man! At least smile! Bah! What a horrid dry-as-dust you are!” she laughed. “Volodia, do you know what makes you such a boor? It’s because you never make love. Why don’t you do it? There are no girls here, I know, but what is to prevent you from making love to a woman? Why don’t you make love to me, for instance?”

Volodia listened to her and rubbed his forehead in intense, painful irresolution.

“It is only proud people who never speak and like to be alone,” Nyuta continued, pulling his hand down from his forehead. “You are proud, Volodia. Why do you squint at me like that? Look me in the eye, if you please. Now then, stick-in-the-mud!”

Volodia made up his mind to speak. In an effort to smile he stuck out his lower lip, blinked his eyes, and his hand again went to his head.

“I—I love you!” he exclaimed.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in astonishment and burst out laughing.

“What is this I hear?” she chanted as singers do in an opera when they hear a terrible piece of news. “What? What did you say? Say it again! Say it again!”

“I—I love you!” Volodia repeated.

And involuntarily, without premeditation and not realising what he was doing, he took a step toward Nyuta and seized her arm above the wrist. Tears started into his eyes, and the whole world seemed to turn into a huge Turkish towel smelling of the river.

“Bravo, bravo!” he heard a laughing voice cry approvingly. “Why don’t you say something? I want to hear you speak! Now, then!”

Seeing that he was permitted to hold her arm, Volodia looked into Nyuta’s laughing face and awkwardly, uneasily, put both arms around her waist, bringing his wrists together behind her back. As he held her thus, she put her hands behind her head showing the dimples in her elbows, and, arranging her hair under her kerchief, she said in a quiet voice:

“I want you to become bright and agreeable and charming, Volodia, and this you can only accomplish through the influence of women. Why, what a horrid cross face you have! You ought to laugh and talk. Honestly, Volodia, don’t be a stick! You are young yet; you will have plenty of time for philosophising later on. And now, let me go. I’m in a hurry to get back. Let me go, I tell you!”

She freed herself without effort, and went out of the summer-house singing a snatch of song. Volodia was left alone. He smoothed his hair, smiled, and walked three times round the summer-house. Then he sat down and smiled again. He felt an unbearable sense of mortification, and even marvelled that human shame could reach such a point of keenness and intensity. The feeling made him smile again and wring his hands and whisper a few incoherent phrases.

He felt humiliated because he had just been treated like a little boy, and because he was so shy, but chiefly because he had dared to put his arms around the waist of a respectable married woman, when neither his age nor, as he thought, his social position, nor his appearance warranted such an act.

He jumped up and, without so much as a glance behind him, hurried away into the depths of the garden, as far away from the house as he could go.

“Oh, if we could only get away from here at once!” he thought, seizing his head in his hands. “Oh, quickly, quickly!”

The train on which Volodia and his mother were to go back to town left at eight-forty. There still remained three hours before train time, and he would have liked to have gone to the station at once without waiting for his mother.

At eight o’clock he turned toward the house. His whole figure expressed determination and seemed to be proclaiming: “Come what may, I am prepared for anything!” He had made up his mind to go in boldly, to look every one straight in the face, and to speak loudly no matter what happened.

He crossed the terrace, passed through the drawing-room and the living-room, and stopped in the hall to catch his breath. He could hear the family at tea in the adjoining dining-room; Madame Shumikin, his mother, and Nyuta were discussing something with laughter.

Volodia listened.

“I assure you I could scarcely believe my eyes!” Nyuta cried. “I hardly recognised him when he began to make love to me, and actually—will you believe it?—put his arms around my waist! He has quite a way with him! When he told me that he loved me, he had the look of a wild animal, like a Circassian.”

“You don’t say so!” cried his mother, rocking with long shrieks of laughter. “You don’t say so! How like his father he is!”

Volodia jumped back, and rushed out into the fresh air.

“How can they all talk about it?” he groaned, throwing up his arms and staring with horror at the sky. “Aloud, and in cold blood, too! And mother laughed! Mother! Oh, God, why did you give me such a mother? Oh, why?”

But enter the house he must, happen what might. He walked three times round the garden, and then, feeling more composed, he went in.

“Why didn’t you come in to tea on time?” asked Madame Shumikin sternly.

“Excuse me, it—it is time for me to go—” Volodia stammered, without raising his eyes. “Mother, it is eight o’clock!”

“Go along by yourself, dear,” answered his mother languidly. “I am spending the night here with Lily. Good-by, my boy, come, let me kiss you.”

She kissed her son and said in French:

“He reminds one a little of Lermontov, doesn’t he?”

Volodia managed to take leave of the company somehow without looking any one in the face, and ten minutes later he was striding along the road to the station, glad to be off at last. He now no longer felt frightened or ashamed, and could breathe deeply and freely once more.

Half a mile from the station he sat down on a stone by the wayside and began looking at the sun, which was now half hidden behind the horizon. A few small lights were already gleaming here and there near the station, and a dim green ray shone out, but the train had not yet appeared. It was pleasant to sit there quietly, watching the night slowly creeping across the fields. The dim summer-house, Nyuta’s light footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, her laughter, and her waist—all these things rose up before Volodia’s fancy with startling vividness, and now no longer seemed terrible and significant to him as they had a few hours before.

“What nonsense! She did not pull her hand away; she laughed when I put my arm around her waist,” he thought. “Therefore she must have enjoyed it. If she had not liked it she would have been angry——”

Volodia was vexed now at not having been bolder. He regretted that he was stupidly running away, and was convinced that, were the same circumstances to occur again, he would be more manly and look at the thing more simply——

But it would not be hard to bring those circumstances about. The Shumikins always strolled about the garden for a long time after supper. If Volodia were to go walking with Nyuta in the dark—there would be the chance to re-enact the same scene!

“I’ll go back and leave on an early train to-morrow morning,” he decided. “I’ll tell them I missed this train.”

So he went back. Madame Shumikin, his mother, Nyuta, and one of the nieces were sitting on the terrace playing cards. When Volodia told them his story about having missed the train they were uneasy lest he should be late for his examination, and advised him to get up early next morning. Volodia sat down at a little distance from the card-players, and during the whole game kept his eyes fixed on Nyuta. He had already determined on a plan. He would go up to Nyuta in the dark, take her hand, and kiss her. It would not be necessary for either to speak; they would understand one another without words.

But the ladies did not go walking after supper; they continued their game instead. They played until one o’clock, and then all separated for the night.

“How stupid this is!” thought Volodia, with annoyance. “But never mind, I’ll wait until to-morrow. To-morrow in the summer-house—never mind!”

He made no effort to go to sleep, but sat on the edge of his bed with his arms around his knees and thought. The idea of the examination was odious to him. He had already made up his mind that he was going to be expelled, and that there was nothing terrible about that. On the contrary, it was a good thing, a very good thing. To-morrow he would be as free as a bird. He would leave off his schoolboy’s uniform for civilian clothes, smoke in public, and come over here to make love to Nyuta whenever he liked. He would be a young man. As for what people called his career and his future, that was perfectly clear. Volodia would not enter the government service, but would become a telegraph operator or have a drug store, and become a pharmaceutist. Were there not plenty of careers open to a young man? An hour passed, two hours passed, and he was still sitting on the edge of his bed and thinking——

At three o’clock, when it was already light, his door was cautiously pushed open and his mother came into the room.

“Aren’t you asleep yet?” she asked with a yawn. “Go to sleep, go to sleep. I’ve just come in for a moment to get a bottle of medicine.”

“For whom?”

“Poor Lily is ill again. Go to sleep, child, you have an examination to-morrow.”

She took a little bottle out of the closet, held it to the window, read the label, and went out.

“Oh, Maria, that isn’t it!” he heard a woman’s voice exclaim. “That is Eau de Cologne, and Lily wants morphine. Is your son awake? Do ask him to find it!”

The voice was Nyuta’s. Volodia’s heart stopped beating. He hastily put on his trousers and coat and went to the door.

“Do you understand? I want morphine!” explained Nyuta in a whisper. “It is probably written in Latin. Wake Volodia, he will be able to find it!”

Volodia’s mother opened the door, and he caught sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same blouse she had worn when she came from the bath-house. Her hair was hanging loose, and her face looked sleepy and dusky in the dim light.

“There, Volodia is awake!” she exclaimed. “Volodia, do get me the morphine out of the closet, there’s a good boy. What a nuisance Lily is! She always has something the matter with her.”

The mother murmured something, yawned, and went away.

“Come, find it!” cried Nyuta. “What are you standing there for?”

Volodia went to the closet, knelt down, and began searching among the bottles of medicine and pill-boxes there. His hands were trembling and cold chills were running down his chest and back. He aimlessly seized bottles of ether, carbolic acid, and various boxes of herbs in his shaking hands, spilling and scattering the contents. The smell overpowered him and made his head swim.

“Mother has gone—” he thought. “That’s good—good.”

“Hurry!” cried Nyuta.

“Just a moment—there, this must be it!” said Volodia having deciphered the letters “morph—” on one of the labels. “Here it is!”

Nyuta was standing in the doorway with one foot in the hall and one in Volodia’s room. She was twisting up her hair—which was no easy matter, for it was long and thick—and was looking vacantly at Volodia. In the dim radiance shed by the white, early morning sky, with her full blouse and her flowing hair, she looked to him superb and entrancing. Fascinated, trembling from head to foot, and remembering with delight how he had embraced her in the summer-house, he handed her the bottle and said:

“You are——”

“What?” she asked smiling.

He said nothing; he looked at her, and then, as he had done in the summer-house, he seized her hand.

“I love you—” he whispered.

Volodia felt as if the room and Nyuta, and the dawn, and he himself had suddenly rushed together into a keen, unknown feeling of happiness for which he was ready to give his whole life and lose his soul for ever, but half a minute later it all suddenly vanished.

“Well, I must go—” said Nyuta, looking contemptuously at Volodia. “What a pitiful, plain boy you are—Bah, you ugly duckling!”

How hideous her long hair, her full blouse, her footsteps and her voice now seemed to him!

“Ugly duckling!” he thought. “Yes, I am indeed ugly—everything is ugly.”

The sun rose; the birds broke into song; the sound of the gardener’s footsteps and the creaking of his wheelbarrow rose from the garden. The cows lowed and the notes of a shepherd’s pipe trembled in the air. The sunlight and all these manifold sounds proclaimed that somewhere in the world there could be found a life that was pure, and gracious, and poetic. Where was it? Neither Volodia’s mother, nor any one of the people who surrounded the boy had ever spoken of it to him.

When the man servant came to call him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep.

“Oh, to thunder with it all!” he thought.

He got up at eleven. As he brushed his hair before the mirror he looked at his plain face, so pale after his sleepless night, and thought:

“She is quite right. I really am an ugly duckling.”

When his mother saw him and seemed horrified at his not having gone to take his examination, Volodia said:

“I overslept, mamma, but don’t worry; I can give them a certificate from the doctor.”

Madame Shumikin and Nyuta woke at one o’clock. Volodia heard the former throw open her window with a bang, and heard Nyuta’s ringing laugh answer her rough voice. He saw the dining-room door flung open and the nieces and dependents, among whom was his mother, troop in to lunch. He saw Nyuta’s freshly washed face, and beside it the black eyebrows and beard of the architect, who had just come.

Nyuta was in Little Russian costume, and this was not becoming to her and made her look clumsy. The architect made some vulgar, insipid jests, and Volodia thought that there were a terrible lot of onions in the stew that day. He also thought that Nyuta was laughing loudly and looking in his direction on purpose to let him understand that the memory of last night did not worry her in the least, and that she scarcely noticed the presence at table of the ugly duckling.

At four o’clock Volodia and his mother drove to the station. The lad’s sordid memories, his sleepless night, and the pangs of his conscience aroused in him a feeling of painful and gloomy anger. He looked at his mother’s thin profile, at her little nose, and at the rain-coat that had been a gift to her from Nyuta, and muttered:

“Why do you powder your face? It does not become you at all! You try to look pretty, but you don’t pay your debts, and you smoke cigarettes that aren’t yours! It’s disgusting! I don’t like you, no, I don’t, I don’t!”

So he insulted her, but she only rolled her eyes in terror and, throwing up her hands, said in a horrified whisper:

“What are you saying? Heavens, the coachman will hear you! Do hush, he can hear everything!”

“I don’t like you! I don’t like you!” he went on, struggling for breath. “You are without morals or heart. Don’t dare to wear that rain-coat again, do you hear me? If you do, I’ll tear it to shreds!”

“Control yourself, child!” wept his mother. “The coachman will hear you!”

“Where is my father’s fortune? Where is your own? You have squandered them both. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I am ashamed of my mother. I blush whenever the boys at school ask me about you.”

The village was two stations from town. During the whole journey Volodia stood on the platform of the car, trembling from head to foot, not wanting to go inside because his mother, whom he hated, was sitting there. He hated himself, and the conductor, and the smoke of the engine, and the cold to which he ascribed the shivering fit that had seized him. The heavier his heart grew, the more convinced he became that somewhere in the world there must be people who lived a pure, noble, warm-hearted, gracious life, full of love, and tenderness, and merriment, and freedom. He felt this and suffered so keenly from the thought that one of the passengers looked intently at him, and said:

“You must have a toothache!”

Volodia and his mother lived with a widow who rented a large apartment and let rooms to lodgers. His mother had two rooms, one with windows where her own bed stood, and another adjoining it, which was small and dark, where Volodia lived. A sofa, on which he slept, was the only furniture of this little room; all the available space was taken up by trunks full of dresses, and by hat-boxes and piles of rubbish which his mother had seen fit to collect. Volodia studied his lessons in his mother’s room, or in the “parlour,” as the large room was called, where the lodgers assembled before dinner and in the evening.

On reaching home, Volodia threw himself down on his sofa and covered himself with a blanket, hoping to cure his shivering fit. The hat-boxes, the trunks, and the rubbish, all proclaimed to him that he had no room of his own, no corner in which he could take refuge from his mother, her guests, and the voices that now assailed his ears from the parlour. His school satchel and the books that lay scattered about the floor reminded him of the examination he had missed. Quite unexpectedly there rose before his eyes a vision of Mentone, where he had lived with his father when he was seven years old. He recalled Biarritz, and two little English girls with whom he had played on the beach. He vainly tried to remember the colour of the sky, and the ocean, and the height of the waves, and how he had then felt; the little English girls flashed across his vision with all the vividness of life, but the rest of the picture was confused and gradually faded away.

“It is too cold here,” Volodia thought. He got up, put on his overcoat, and went into the parlour.

The inmates of the house were assembled there at tea. His mother, an old maid music teacher with horn spectacles, and Monsieur Augustin, a fat Frenchman, who worked in a perfume factory, were sitting near the samovar.

“I haven’t had dinner to-day,” his mother was saying. “I must send the maid for some bread.”

“Duniash!” shouted the Frenchman.

It appeared that the maid had been sent on an errand by her mistress.

“Oh, no matter!” said the Frenchman, smiling broadly. “I go for the bread myself! Oh, no matter!”

He laid down his strong, reeking cigar in a conspicuous place, put on his hat, and went out.

When he had gone, Volodia’s mother began telling the music teacher of her visit to Madame Shumikin’s, and of the enthusiastic reception she had had there.

“Lily Shumikin is a relative of mine, you know,” she said. “Her husband, General Shumikin, was a cousin of my husband’s. She was the Baroness Kolb before her marriage.”

“Mother, that isn’t true!” cried Volodia exasperated. “Why do you lie so?”

Now he knew that his mother was not lying, and that in her account of General Shumikin and Baroness Kolb there was not a word of untruth, but he felt none the less as if she were lying. The tone of her voice, the expression of her face, her glance—all were false.

“It’s a lie!” Volodia repeated, bringing his fist down on the table with such a bang that the cups and saucers rattled and mamma spilled her tea. “What makes you talk about generals and baronesses? It’s all a lie!”

The music teacher was embarrassed and coughed behind her handkerchief, as if she had swallowed a crumb. Mamma burst into tears.

“How can I get away from here?” thought Volodia.

He was ashamed to go to the house of any of his school friends. Once more he unexpectedly remembered the two little English girls. He walked across the parlour and into Monsieur Augustin’s room. There the air smelled strongly of volatile oils and glycerine soap. Quantities of little bottles full of liquids of various colours cluttered the table, the window-sills, and even the chairs. Volodia took up a paper and read the heading: “Le Figaro.” The paper exhaled a strong and pleasant fragrance. He picked up a revolver that lay on the table.

“There, there, don’t mind what he says!” the music teacher was consoling his mother in the next room. “He is still young, and young men always do foolish things. We must make up our minds to that.”

“No, Miss Eugenia, he has been spoiled,” moaned his mother. “There is no one who has any authority over him, and I am too weak to do anything. Oh, I am very unhappy.”

Volodia put the barrel of the revolver into his mouth, felt something which he thought was the trigger, and pulled—Then he found another little hook and pulled again. He took the revolver out of his mouth and examined the lock. He had never held a firearm in his hands in his life.

“I suppose this thing ought to be raised,” he thought. “Yes, I think that is right.”

Monsieur Augustin entered the parlour laughing and began to recount some adventure he had had on the way. Volodia once more put the barrel into his mouth, seized it between his teeth, and pulled a little hook he felt with his fingers. A shot rang out—something hit him with tremendous force in the back of the neck, and he fell forward upon the table with his face among the bottles and glasses. He saw his father wearing a high hat with a wide silk band, because he was wearing mourning for some lady in Mentone, and felt himself suddenly seized in his arms and fall with him into a very deep, black abyss.

Then everything grew confused and faded away.

A NAUGHTY BOY

Ivan Lapkin, a youth of pleasing exterior, and Anna Zamblitskaya, a girl with a tip-tilted nose, descended the steep river bank and took their seats on a bench at its foot. The bench stood at the water’s edge in a thicket of young willows. It was a lovely spot. Sitting there, one was hidden from all the world and observed only by fish and the daddy-longlegs that skimmed like lightning across the surface of the water. The young people were armed with fishing-rods, nets, cans containing worms, and other fishing appurtenances. They sat down on the bench and immediately began to fish.

“I am glad that we are alone at last,” began Lapkin glancing behind him. “I have a great deal to say to you, Miss Anna, a very great deal. When first I saw you—you’ve got a bite!—I realized at last the reason for my existence. I knew that you were the idol at whose feet I was to lay the whole of an honourable and industrious life—that’s a big one biting! On seeing you I fell in love for the first time in my life. I fell madly in love!—Don’t pull yet, let it bite a little longer!—Tell me, dearest, I beg you, if I may aspire, not to a return of my affection—no, I am not worthy of that, I dare not even dream of it—but tell me if I may aspire to—pull!” With a shriek, Anna jerked the arm that held the fishing-rod into the air; a little silvery-green fish dangled glistening in the sunlight.

“Goodness gracious, it’s a perch! Oh, oh, be quick, it’s coming off!”

The perch fell off the hook, flopped across the grass toward its native element, and splashed into the water.

Somehow, while pursuing it, Lapkin accidentally seized Anna’s hand instead of the fish and accidentally pressed it to his lips. Anna pulled it away, but it was too late, their lips accidentally met in a kiss. It all happened accidentally. A second kiss succeeded the first, and then followed vows and the plighting of troth. Happy moments! But perfect bliss does not exist on earth, it often bears a poison in itself, or else is poisoned by some outside circumstances. So it was in this case. When the young people had exchanged kisses they heard a sudden burst of laughter. They looked at the river in stupefaction; before them, up to his waist in water, stood a naked boy: it was Kolia, Anna’s schoolboy brother! He stood there smiling maliciously with his eyes fixed on the young people.

“Aha! You’re kissing one another, are you? All right, I’ll tell mamma!”

“I hope that, as an honourable boy—” faltered Lapkin, blushing. “To spy on us is mean, but to sneak is low, base, vile. I am sure that, as a good and honourable boy, you——”

“Give me a rouble and I won’t say anything!” answered the honourable boy. “If you don’t, I’ll tell on you——”

Lapkin took a rouble from his pocket and gave it to Kolia. The boy seized it in his wet hand, whistled, and swam away. The young couple exchanged no more kisses on that occasion.

Next day Lapkin brought Kolia a box of paints from town and a ball; his sister gave him all her old pill-boxes. They next had to present him with a set of studs with little dogs’ heads on them. The bad boy obviously relished the game and began spying on them so as to get more presents. Wherever Lapkin and Anna went, there he went too. He never left them to themselves for a moment.

“The little wretch!” muttered Lapkin grinding his teeth. “So young and yet so great a rascal! What will become of us?”

All through the month of June Kolia tormented the unhappy lovers. He threatened them with betrayal, he spied on them, and then demanded presents; he could not get enough, and at last began talking of a watch. The watch was given him.

Once during dinner, while the waffles were on the table, he burst out laughing, winked, and said to Lapkin:

“Shall I tell them, eh?”

Lapkin blushed furiously and put his napkin into his mouth instead of a waffle. Anna jumped up from the table and ran into another room.

The young people remained in this situation until the end of August when the day at last came on which Lapkin proposed for Anna’s hand. Oh, what a joyful day it was! No sooner had he spoken with his sweetheart’s parents and obtained their consent to his suit, than Lapkin rushed into the garden in search of Kolia. He nearly wept with exultation on finding him, and caught the wicked boy by the ear. Anna came running up, too, looking for Kolia, and seized him by the other ear. The pleasure depicted on the faces of the lovers when Kolia wept and begged for mercy was well worth seeing.

“Dear, good, sweet angels, I won’t do it again! Ouch, ouch! Forgive me!” Kolia implored them.

They confessed afterward that during all their courtship they had never once experienced such bliss, such thrilling rapture, as they did during those few moments when they were pulling the ears of that wicked boy.

BLISS

It was midnight. Suddenly Mitia Kuldaroff burst into his parents’ house, dishevelled and excited, and went flying through all the rooms. His father and mother had already gone to rest; his sister was in bed finishing the last pages of a novel, and his schoolboy brothers were fast asleep.

“What brings you here?” cried his astonished parents. “What is the matter?”

“Oh, don’t ask me! I never expected anything like this! No, no, I never expected it! It is—it is absolutely incredible!”

Mitia burst out laughing and dropped into a chair, unable to stand on his feet from happiness.

“It is incredible! You can’t imagine what it is! Look here!”

His sister jumped out of bed, threw a blanket over her shoulders, and went to her brother. The schoolboys woke up——

“What’s the matter with you? You look like a ghost.”

“It’s because I’m so happy, mother. I am known all over Russia now. Until to-day, you were the only people who knew that such a person as Dimitri Kuldaroff existed, but now all Russia knows it! Oh, mother! Oh, heavens!”

Mitia jumped up, ran through all the rooms, and dropped back into a chair.

“But what has happened? Talk sense!”

“You live like wild animals, you don’t read the news, the press is nothing to you, and yet there are so many wonderful things in the papers! Everything that happens becomes known at once, nothing remains hidden! Oh, how happy I am! Oh, heavens! The newspapers only write about famous people, and now there is something in them about me!”

“What do you mean? Where is it?”

Papa turned pale. Mamma glanced at the icon and crossed herself. The schoolboys jumped out of bed and ran to their brother in their short nightshirts.

“Yes, sir! There is something about me in the paper! The whole of Russia knows it now. Oh, mother, keep this number as a souvenir; we can read it from time to time. Look!”

Mitia pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and handed it to his father, pointing to an item marked with a blue pencil.

“Read that!”

His father put on his glasses.

“Come on, read it!”

Mamma glanced at the icon once more, and crossed herself. Papa cleared his throat, and began:

“At 11 P. M., on December 27, a young man by the name of Dimitri Kuldaroff——”

“See? See? Go on!”

“A young man by the name of Dimitri Kuldaroff, coming out of a tavern on Little Armourer Street, and being in an intoxicated condition——”

“That’s it, I was with Simion Petrovitch! Every detail is correct. Go on! Listen!”

“—being in an intoxicated condition, slipped and fell under the feet of a horse belonging to the cabman Ivan Drotoff, a peasant from the village of Durinka in the province of Yuknofski. The frightened horse jumped across Kuldaroff’s prostrate body, pulling the sleigh after him. In the sleigh sat Stepan Lukoff, a merchant of the Second Moscow Guild of Merchants. The horse galloped down the street, but was finally stopped by some house porters. For a few moments Kuldaroff was stunned. He was conveyed to the police station and examined by a doctor. The blow which he had sustained on the back of the neck——”

“That was from the shaft, papa. Go on! Read the rest!”

“—the blow which he had sustained on the back of the neck was pronounced to be slight. The victim was given medical assistance.”

“They put cold-water bandages round my neck. Do you believe me now? What do you think? Isn’t it great? It has gone all over Russia by now! Give me the paper!”

Mitia seized the paper, folded it, and put it into his pocket, exclaiming:

“I must run to the Makaroffs, and show it to them! And the Ivanoffs must see it, too, and Natalia, and Anasim—I must run there at once! Good-bye!”

Mitia crammed on his cap and ran blissfully and triumphantly out into the street.

TWO BEAUTIFUL GIRLS