Chapter III

On the evening of the following day Startseff drove to the Turkins’ to make his proposal. But he proved to have come at an unfortunate time, as Katherine was in her room having her hair dressed by a coiffeur before going to a dance at the club.

Once more Startseff was obliged to sit in the dining-room for an age drinking tea. Seeing that his guest was pensive and bored, Turkin took a scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, and read aloud a droll letter from his German manager telling how “all the disavowals on the estate had been spoiled and all the modesty had been shaken down.”

“They will probably give her a good dowry,” thought Startseff, listening vacantly to what was being read.

After his sleepless night he felt almost stunned, as if he had drunk some sweet but poisonous sleeping potion. His mind was hazy but warm and cheerful, though at the same time a cold, hard fragment of his brain kept reasoning with him and saying:

“Stop before it is too late! Is she the woman for you? She is wilful and spoiled; she sleeps until two every day, and you are a government doctor and a poor deacon’s son.”

“Well, what does that matter?” he thought. “What if I am?”

“And what is more,” that cold fragment continued. “If you marry her her family will make you give up your government position, and live in town.”

“And what of that?” he thought. “I’ll live in town then! She will have a dowry. We will keep house.”

At last Katherine appeared, looking pretty and immaculate in her low-necked ball dress, and the moment Startseff saw her he fell into such transports that he could not utter a word and could only stare at her and laugh.

She began to say good-bye, and as there was nothing to keep him here now that she was going, he, too, rose, saying that it was time for him to be off to attend to his patients in Dialij.

“If you must go now,” said Turkin, “you can take Kitty to the club; it is on your way.”

A light drizzle was falling and it was very dark, so that only by the help of Panteleimon’s cough could they tell where the carriage was. The hood of the victoria was raised.

“Roll away!” cried Turkin, seating his daughter in the carriage. “Rolling stones gather no moss! God speed you, if you please!”

They drove away.

“I went to the cemetery last night,” Startseff began. “How heartless and unkind of you——”

“You went to the cemetery?”

“Yes, I did, and waited there for you until nearly two o’clock. I was very unhappy.”

“Then be unhappy if you can’t understand a joke!”

Delighted to have caught her lover so cleverly, and to see him so much in love, Katherine burst out laughing, and then suddenly screamed as the carriage tipped and turned sharply in at the club gates. Startseff put his arm around her waist, and in her fright the girl pressed closer to him. At that he could contain himself no longer, and passionately kissed her on the lips and on the chin, holding her tighter than ever.

“That will do!” she said drily.

And a moment later she was no longer in the carriage, and the policeman standing near the lighted entrance to the club was shouting to Panteleimon in a harsh voice:

“Move on, you old crow! What are you standing there for?”

Startseff drove home, but only to return at once arrayed in a borrowed dress suit and a stiff collar that was always trying to climb up off the collar-band. At midnight he was sitting in the reception-room of the club, saying passionately to Katherine:

“Oh, how ignorant people are who have never loved! No one, I think, has ever truly described love, and it would scarcely be possible to depict this tender, blissful, agonising feeling. He who has once felt it would never be able to put it into words. Do I need introductions and descriptions? Do I need oratory to tell me what it is? My love is unspeakable—I beg you, I implore you to be my wife!” cried Startseff at last.

“Dimitri Ionitch,” said Katherine, assuming a very serious, thoughtful expression. “Dimitri Ionitch, I am very grateful to you for the honour you do me. I esteem you, but—” here she rose and stood before him. “But, forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let us be serious. You know, Dimitri Ionitch, that I love art more than anything else in the world. I am passionately fond of, I adore, music, and if I could I would consecrate my whole life to it. I want to be a musician. I long for fame and success and freedom and you ask me to go on living in this town, and to continue this empty, useless existence which has become unbearable to me! You want me to marry? Ah no, that cannot be! One should strive for a higher and brighter ideal, and family life would tie me down for ever. Dimitri Ionitch—” (she smiled a little as she said these words, remembering Alexei Theofilaktitch) “Dimitri Ionitch, you are kind and noble and clever, you are the nicest man I know” (her eyes filled with tears). “I sympathise with you with all my heart, but—but you must understand——”

She turned away and left the room, unable to restrain her tears.

Startseff’s heart ceased beating madly. His first action on reaching the street was to tear off his stiff collar and draw a long, deep breath. He felt a little humiliated, and his pride was stung, for he had not expected a refusal, and could not believe that all his hopes and pangs and dreams had come to such a silly ending; he might as well have been the hero of a playlet at a performance of amateur theatricals! He regretted his lost love and emotion, regretted it so keenly that he could have sobbed aloud or given Panteleimon’s broad back a good, sound blow with his umbrella.

For three days after that evening his business went to ruin, and he could neither eat nor sleep, but when he heard a rumour that Katherine had gone to Moscow to enter the conservatory he grew calmer, and once more gathered up the lost threads of his life.

Later, when he remembered how he had wandered about the cemetery and rushed all over town looking for a dress suit, he would yawn lazily and say:

“What a business that was!”