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Three Years
Anton Chekhov
I
IT was dark, and already lights had begun to gleam here and there in the houses, and a pale
moon was rising behind the barracks at the end of the street. Laptev was sitting on a bench
by the gate waiting for the end of the evening service at the Church of St. Peter and St.
Paul. He was reckoning that Yulia Sergeyevna would pass by on her way from the service,
and then he would speak to her, and perhaps spend the whole evening with her.
He had been sitting there for an hour and a half already, and all that time his imagination
had been busy picturing his Moscow rooms, his Moscow friends, his man Pyotr, and his
writing-table. He gazed half wonderingly at the dark, motionless trees, and it seemed
strange to him that he was living now, not in his summer villa at Sokolniki, but in a
provincial town in a house by which a great herd of cattle was driven every morning and
evening, accompanied by terrible clouds of dust and the blowing of a horn. He thought of
long conversations in which he had taken part quite lately in Moscow -- conversations in
which it had been maintained that one could live without love, that passionate love was an
obsession, that finally there is no such love, but only a physical attraction between the sexes
-- and so on, in the same style; he remembered them and thought mournfully that if he were
asked now what love was, he could not have found an answer.
The service was over, the people began to appear. Laptev strained his eyes gazing at the
dark figures. The bishop had been driven by in his carriage, the bells had stopped ringing,
and the red and green lights in the belfry were one after another extinguished -- there had
been an illumination, as it was dedication day -- but the people were still coming out,
lingering, talking, and standing under the windows. But at last Laptev heard a familiar
voice, his heart began beating violently, and he was overcome with despair on seeing that
Yulia Sergeyevna was not alone, but walking with two ladies.
"It's awful, awful!" he whispered, feeling jealous. "It's awful!"
At the corner of the lane, she stopped to say good-bye to the ladies, and while doing so
glanced at Laptev.
"I was coming to see you," he said. "I'm coming for a chat with your father. Is he at home?"
"Most likely," she answered. "It's early for him to have gone to the club."
There were gardens all along the lane, and a row of lime-trees growing by the fence cast a
broad patch of shadow in the moonlight, so that the gate and the fences were completely
plunged in darkness on one side, from which came the sounds of women whispering,
smothered laughter, and someone playing softly on a balalaika. There was a fragrance of
lime-flowers and of hay. This fragrance and the murmur of the unseen whispers worked
upon Laptev. He was all at once overwhelmed with a passionate longing to throw his arms
round his companion, to shower kisses on her face, her hands, her shoulders, to burst into
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sobs, to fall at her feet and to tell her how long he had been waiting for her. A faint scarcely
perceptible scent of incense hung about her; and that scent reminded him of the time when
he, too, believed in God and used to go to evening service, and when he used to dream so
much of pure romantic love. And it seemed to him that, because this girl did not love him,
all possibility of the happiness he had dreamed of then was lost to him forever.
She began speaking sympathetically of the illness of his sister, Nina Fyodorovna. Two
months before his sister had undergone an operation for cancer, and now every one was
expecting a return of the disease.
"I went to see her this morning," said Yulia Sergeyevna, "and it seemed to me that during
the last week she has, not exactly grown thin, but has, as it were, faded."
"Yes, yes," Laptev agreed. "There's no return of the symptoms, but every day I notice she
grows weaker and weaker, and is wasting before my eyes. I don't understand what's the
matter with her."
"Oh dear! And how strong she used to be, plump and rosy!" said Yulia Sergeyevna after a
moment's silence. "Every one here used to call her the Moscow lady. How she used to
laugh! On holidays she used to dress up like a peasant girl, and it suited her so well."
Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home; he was a stout, red-faced man, wearing a long coat
that reached below his knees, and looking as though he had short legs. He was pacing up
and down his study, with his hands in his pockets, and humming to himself in an undertone,
"Ru-ru-ru-ru." His grey whiskers looked unkempt, and his hair was unbrushed, as though he
had just got out of bed. And his study with pillows on the sofa, with stacks of papers in the
corners, and with a dirty invalid poodle lying under the table, produced the same impression
of unkemptness and untidiness as himself.
"M. Laptev wants to see you," his daughter said to him, going into his study.
"Ru-ru-ru-ru," he hummed louder than ever, and turning into the drawing-room, gave his
hand to Laptev, and asked: "What good news have you to tell me?"
It was dark in the drawing-room. Laptev, still standing with his hat in his hand, began
apologising for disturbing him; he asked what was to be done to make his sister sleep at
night, and why she was growing so thin; and he was embarrassed by the thought that he had
asked those very questions at his visit that morning.
"Tell me," he said, "wouldn't it be as well to send for some specialist on internal diseases
from Moscow? What do you think of it?"
The doctor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and made a vague gesture with his hands.
It was evident that he was offended. He was a very huffy man, prone to take offence, and
always ready to suspect that people did not believe in him, that he was not recognised or
properly respected, that his patients exploited him, and that his colleagues showed him ill-
will. He was always jeering at himself, saying that fools like him were only made for the
public to ride rough-shod over them.
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Yulia Sergeyevna lighted the lamp. She was tired out with the service, and that was evident
from her pale, exhausted face, and her weary step. She wanted to rest. She sat down on the
sofa, put her hands on her lap, and sank into thought. Laptev knew that he was ugly, and
now he felt as though he were conscious of his ugliness all over his body. He was short,
thin, with ruddy cheeks, and his hair had grown so thin that his head felt cold. In his
expression there was none of that refined simplicity which makes even rough, ugly faces
attractive; in the society of women, he was awkward, over-talkative, affected. And now he
almost despised himself for it. He must talk that Yulia Sergeyevna might not be bored in his
company. But what about? About his sister's illness again?
And he began to talk about medicine, saying what is usually said. He approved of hygiene,
and said that he had long ago wanted to found a night-refuge in Moscow -- in fact, he had
already calculated the cost of it. According to his plan the workmen who came in the
evening to the night-refuge were to receive a supper of hot cabbage soup with bread, a
warm, dry bed with a rug, and a place for drying their clothes and their boots.
Yulia Sergeyevna was usually silent in his presence, and in a strange way, perhaps by the
instinct of a lover, he divined her thoughts and intentions. And now, from the fact that after
the evening service she had not gone to her room to change her dress and drink tea, he
deduced that she was going to pay some visit elsewhere.
"But I'm in no hurry with the night-refuge," he went on, speaking with vexation and
irritability, and addressing the doctor, who looked at him, as it were, blankly and in
perplexity, evidently unable to understand what induced him to raise the question of
medicine and hygiene. "And most likely it will be a long time, too, before I make use of our
estimate. I fear our night-shelter will fall into the hands of our pious humbugs and
philanthropic ladies, who always ruin any undertaking."
Yulia Sergeyevna got up and held out her hand to Laptev.
"Excuse me," she said, "it's time for me to go. Please give my love to your sister."
"Ru-ru-ru-ru," hummed the doctor. "Ru-ru-ru-ru."
Yulia Sergeyevna went out, and after staying a little longer, Laptev said good-bye to the
doctor and went home. When a man is dissatisfied and feels unhappy, how trivial seem to
him the shapes of the lime-trees, the shadows, the clouds, all the beauties of nature, so
complacent, so indifferent! By now the moon was high up in the sky, and the clouds were
scudding quickly below. "But how naïve and provincial the moon is, how threadbare and
paltry the clouds!" thought Laptev. He felt ashamed of the way he had talked just now about
medicine, and the night-refuge. He felt with horror that next day he would not have will
enough to resist trying to see her and talk to her again, and would again be convinced that
he was nothing to her. And the day after -- it would be the same. With what object? And
how and when would it all end?
At home he went in to see his sister. Nina Fyodorovna still looked strong and gave the
impression of being a well-built, vigorous woman, but her striking pallor made her look
like a corpse, especially when, as now, she was lying on her back with her eyes closed; her
eldest daughter Sasha, a girl of ten years old, was sitting beside her reading aloud from her
reading-book.
"Alyosha has come," the invalid said softly to herself.
There had long been established between Sasha and her uncle a tacit compact, to take turns
in sitting with the patient. On this occasion Sasha closed her reading-book, and without
uttering a word, went softly out of the room. Laptev took an historical novel from the chest
of drawers, and looking for the right page, sat down and began reading it aloud.
Nina Fyodorovna was born in Moscow of a merchant family. She and her two brothers had
spent their childhood and early youth, living at home in Pyatnitsky Street. Their childhood
was long and wearisome; her father treated her sternly, and had even on two or three
occasions flogged her, and her mother had had a long illness and died. The servants were
coarse, dirty, and hypocritical; the house was frequented by priests and monks, also
hypocritical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered her father, whom they did not like.
The boys had the good-fortune to go to school, while Nina was left practically uneducated.
All her life she wrote an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but historical novels.
Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at Himki, she made
the acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner called Panaurov, had fallen in love
with him, and married him secretly against her father's will. Panaurov, a handsome, rather
impudent fellow, who whistled and lighted his cigarette from the holy lamp, struck the
father as an absolutely worthless person. And when the son-in-law began in his letters
demanding a dowry, the old man wrote to his daughter that he would send her furs, silver,
and various articles that had been left at her mother's death, as well as thirty thousand
roubles, but without his paternal blessing. Later he sent another twenty thousand. This
money, as well as the dowry, was spent; the estate had been sold and Panaurov moved with
his family to the town and got a job in a provincial government office. In the town he
formed another tie, and had a second family, and this was the subject of much talk, as his
illicit family was not a secret.
Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the historical novel, she was
thinking how much she had gone through in her life, how much she had suffered, and that if
any one were to describe her life it would make a very pathetic story. As the tumour was in
her breast, she was persuaded that love and her domestic grief were the cause of her illness,
and that jealousy and tears had brought her to her hopeless state.
At last Alexey Fyodorovitch closed the book and said:
"That's the end, and thank God for it. To-morrow we'll begin a new one."
Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been given to laughter, but of late Laptev had
begun to notice that at moments her mind seemed weakened by illness, and she would
laugh at the smallest trifle, and even without any cause at all.
"Yulia came before dinner while you were out," she said. "So far as I can see, she hasn't
much faith in her papa. 'Let papa go on treating you,' she said, 'but write in secret to the holy
elder to pray for you, too.' There is a holy man somewhere here. Yulia forgot her parasol
here; you must take it to her to-morrow," she went on after a brief pause. "No, when the end
comes, neither doctors nor holy men are any help."
"Nina, why can't you sleep at night?" Laptev asked, to change the subject.
"Oh, well, I don't go to sleep -- that's all. I lie and think."
"What do you think about, dear?"
"About the children, about you . . . about my life. I've gone through a great deal, Alyosha,
you know. When one begins to remember and remember. . . . My God!" She laughed. "It's
no joke to have borne five children as I have, to have buried three. . . Sometimes I was
expecting to be confined while my Grigory Nikolaitch would be sitting at that very time
with another woman. There would be no one to send for the doctor or the midwife. I would
go into the passage or the kitchen for the servant, and there Jews, tradesmen, moneylenders,
would be waiting for him to come home. My head used to go round. . . . He did not love
me, though he never said so openly. Now I've grown calmer -- it doesn't weigh on my heart;
but in old days, when I was younger, it hurt me -- ach! how it hurt me, darling! Once --
while we were still in the country -- I found him in the garden with a lady, and I walked
away. . . I walked on aimlessly, and I don't know how, but I found myself in the church
porch. I fell on my knees: 'Queen of Heaven!' I said. And it was night, the moon was
shining. . . ."
She was exhausted, she began gasping for breath. Then, after resting a little, she took her
brother's hand and went on in a weak, toneless voice:
"How kind you are, Alyosha! . . . And how clever! . . . What a good man you've grown up
into!"
At midnight Laptev said good-night to her, and as he went away he took with him the
parasol that Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten. In spite of the late hour, the servants, male and
female, were drinking tea in the dining-room. How disorderly! The children were not in
bed, but were there in the dining-room, too. They were all talking softly in undertones, and
had not noticed that the lamp was smoking and would soon go out. All these people, big
and little, were disturbed by a whole succession of bad omens and were in an oppressed
mood. The glass in the hall had been broken, the samovar had been buzzing every day, and,
as though on purpose, was even buzzing now. They were describing how a mouse had
jumped out of Nina Fyodorovna's boot when she was dressing. And the children were quite
aware of the terrible significance of these omens. The elder girl, Sasha, a thin little brunette,
was sitting motionless at the table, and her face looked scared and woebegone, while the
younger, Lida, a chubby fair child of seven, stood beside her sister looking from under her
brows at the light.
Laptev went downstairs to his own rooms in the lower storey, where under the low ceilings
it was always close and smelt of geraniums. In his sitting-room, Panaurov, Nina
Fyodorovna's husband, was sitting reading the newspaper. Laptev nodded to him and sat
down opposite. Both sat still and said nothing. They used to spend whole evenings like this
without speaking, and neither of them was in the least put out by this silence.
The little girls came down from upstairs to say good-night. Deliberately and in silence,
Panaurov made the sign of the cross over them several times, and gave them his hand to
kiss. They dropped curtsies, and then went up to Laptev, who had to make the sign of the
cross and give them his hand to kiss also. This ceremony with the hand-kissing and
curtsying was repeated every evening.
When the children had gone out Panaurov laid aside the newspaper and said:
"It's not very lively in our God-fearing town! I must confess, my dear fellow," he added
with a sigh, "I'm very glad that at last you've found some distraction."
"What do you mean?" asked Laptev.
"I saw you coming out of Dr. Byelavin's Just now. I expect you don't go there for the sake
of the papa."
"Of course not," said Laptev, and he blushed.
"Well, of course not. And by the way, you wouldn't find such another old brute as that papa
if you hunted by daylight with a candle. You can't imagine what a foul, stupid, clumsy beast
he is! You cultured people in the capitals are still interested in the provinces only on the
lyrical side, only from the paysage and Poor Anton point of view, but I can assure you, my
boy, there's nothing logical about it; there's nothing but barbarism, meanness, and nastiness
-- that's all. Take the local devotees of science -- the local intellectuals, so to speak. Can you
imagine there are here in this town twenty-eight doctors? They've all made their fortunes,
and they are living in houses of their own, and meanwhile the population is in just as
helpless a condition as ever. Here, Nina had to have an operation, quite an ordinary one
really, yet we were obliged to get a surgeon from Moscow; not one doctor here would
undertake it. It's beyond all conception. They know nothing, they understand nothing. They
take no interest in anything. Ask them, for instance, what cancer is -- what it is, what it
comes from."
And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was a specialist on all scientific
subjects, and explained from a scientific point of view everything that was discussed. But
he explained it all in his own way. He had a theory of his own about the circulation of the
blood, about chemistry, about astronomy. He talked slowly, softly, convincingly.
"It's beyond all conception," he pronounced in an imploring voice, screwing up his eyes,
sighing languidly, and smiling as graciously as a king, and it was evident that he was very
well satisfied with himself, and never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty.
"I am rather hungry," said Laptev. "I should like something savoury."
"Well, that can easily be managed."
Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting upstairs in the dining-room
having supper. Laptev had a glass of vodka, and then began drinking wine. Panaurov drank
nothing. He never drank, and never gambled, yet in spite of that he had squandered all his
own and his wife's property, and had accumulated debts. To squander so much in such a
short time, one must have, not passions, but a special talent. Panaurov liked dainty fare,
liked a handsome dinner service, liked music after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen, to
whom he would carelessly fling tips of ten, even twenty-five roubles. He always took part
in all lotteries and subscriptions, sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaintance on their
birthdays, bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties, walking-sticks, scents, cigarette-
holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots, Japanese bric-à-brac, antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and
a bedstead made of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing-gown was a genuine
Bokhara, and everything was to correspond; and on all this there went every day, as he
himself expressed, "a deluge" of money.
At supper he kept sighing and shaking his head.
"Yes, everything on this earth has an end," he said softly, screwing up his dark eyes. "You
will fall in love and suffer. You will fall out of love; you'll be deceived, for there is no
woman who will not deceive; you will suffer, will be brought to despair, and will be
faithless too. But the time will come when all this will be a memory, and when you will
reason about it coldly and look upon it as utterly trivial. . . ."
Laptev, tired, a little drunk, looked at his handsome head, his clipped black beard, and
seemed to understand why women so loved this pampered, conceited, and physically
handsome creature.
After supper Panaurov did not stay in the house, but went off to his other lodgings. Laptev
went out to see him on his way. Panaurov was the only man in the town who wore a top-
hat, and his elegant, dandified figure, his top-hat and tan gloves, beside the grey fences, the
pitiful little houses, with their three windows and the thickets of nettles, always made a
strange and mournful impression.
After saying good-bye to him Laptev returned home without hurrying. The moon was
shining brightly; one could distinguish every straw on the ground, and Laptev felt as though
the moonlight were caressing his bare head, as though some one were passing a feather over
his hair.
"I love!" he pronounced aloud, and he had a sudden longing to run to overtake Panaurov, to
embrace him, to forgive him, to make him a present of a lot of money, and then to run off
into the open country, into a wood, to run on and on without looking back.
At home he saw lying on the chair the parasol Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten; he snatched
it up and kissed it greedily. The parasol was a silk one, no longer new, tied round with old
elastic. The handle was a cheap one, of white bone. Laptev opened it over him, and he felt
as though there were the fragrance of happiness about him.
He settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and still keeping hold of the parasol,
began writing to Moscow to one of his friends:
"DEAR PRECIOUS KOSTYA,
"Here is news for you: I'm in love again! I say again, because six years ago I fell in love
with a Moscow actress, though I didn't even succeed in making her acquaintance, and for
the last year and a half I have been living with a certain person you know -- a woman
neither young nor good-looking. Ah, my dear boy, how unlucky I am in love. I've never had
any success with women, and if I say again it's simply because it's rather sad and mortifying
to acknowledge even to myself that my youth has passed entirely without love, and that I'm
in love in a real sense now for the first time in my life, at thirty-four. Let it stand that I love
again.
"If only you knew what a girl she was! She couldn't be called a beauty -- she has a broad
face, she is very thin, but what a wonderful expression of goodness she has when she
smiles! When she speaks, her voice is as clear as a bell. She never carries on a conversation
with me -- I don't know her; but when I'm beside her I feel she's a striking, exceptional
creature, full of intelligence and lofty aspirations. She is religious, and you cannot imagine
how deeply this touches me and exalts her in my eyes. On that point I am ready to argue
with you endlessly. You may be right, to your thinking; but, still, I love to see her praying in
church. She is a provincial, but she was educated in Moscow. She loves our Moscow; she
dresses in the Moscow style, and I love her for that -- love her, love her. . . . I see you
frowning and getting up to read me a long lecture on what love is, and what sort of woman
one can love, and what sort one cannot, and so on, and so on. But, dear Kostya, before I was
in love I, too, knew quite well what love was.
"My sister thanks you for your message. She often recalls how she used to take Kostya
Kotchevoy to the preparatory class, and never speaks of you except as poor Kostya, as she
still thinks of you as the little orphan boy she remembers. And so, poor orphan, I'm in love.
While it's a secret, don't say anything to a 'certain person.' I think it will all come right of
itself, or, as the footman says in Tolstoy, will 'come round.' "
When he had finished his letter Laptev went to bed. He was so tired that he couldn't keep
his eyes open, but for some reason he could not get to sleep; the noise in the street seemed
to prevent him. The cattle were driven by to the blowing of a horn, and soon afterwards the
bells began ringing for early mass. At one minute a cart drove by creaking; at the next, he
heard the voice of some woman going to market. And the sparrows twittered the whole
time.
II
The next morning was a cheerful one; it was a holiday. At ten o'clock Nina Fyodorovna,
wearing a brown dress and with her hair neatly arranged, was led into the drawing-room,
supported on each side. There she walked about a little and stood by the open window, and
her smile was broad and naïve, and, looking at her, one recalled a local artist, a great
drunkard, who wanted her to sit to him for a picture of the Russian carnival. And all of
them -- the children, the servants, her brother, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and she herself -- were
suddenly convinced, that she was certainly going to get well. With shrieks of laughter the
children ran after their uncle, chasing him and catching him, and filling the house with
noise.
People called to ask how she was, brought her holy bread, told her that in almost all the
churches they were offering up prayers for her that day. She had been conspicuous for her
benevolence in the town, and was liked. She was very ready with her charity, like her
brother Alexey, who gave away his money freely, without considering whether it was
necessary to give it or not. Nina Fyodorovna used to pay the school fees for poor children;
used to give away tea, sugar, and jam to old women; used to provide trousseaux for poor
brides; and if she picked up a newspaper, she always looked first of all to see if there were
any appeals for charity or a paragraph about somebody's being in a destitute condition.
She was holding now in her hand a bundle of notes, by means of which various poor
people, her protégés, had procured goods from a grocer's shop.
They had been sent her the evening before by the shopkeeper with a request for the payment
of the total -- eighty-two roubles.
"My goodness, what a lot they've had! They've no conscience!" she said, deciphering with
difficulty her ugly handwriting. "It's no joke! Eighty-two roubles! I declare I won't pay it."
"I'll pay it to-day," said Laptev.
"Why should you? Why should you?" cried Nina Fyodorovna in agitation. "It's quite enough
for me to take two hundred and fifty every month from you and our brother. God bless
you!" she added, speaking softly, so as not to be overheard by the servants.
"Well, but I spend two thousand five hundred a month," he said. "I tell you again, dear: you
have just as much right to spend it as I or Fyodor. Do understand that, once for all. There
are three of us, and of every three kopecks of our father's money, one belongs to you."
But Nina Fyodorovna did not understand, and her expression looked as though she were
mentally solving some very difficult problem. And this lack of comprehension in pecuniary
matters, always made Laptev feel uneasy and troubled. He suspected that she had private
debts in addition which worried her and of which she scrupled to tell him.
Then came the sound of footsteps and heavy breathing; it was the doctor coming up the
stairs, dishevelled and unkempt as usual.
"Ru-ru-ru," he was humming. "Ru-ru."
To avoid meeting him, Laptev went into the dining-room, and then went downstairs to his
own room. It was clear to him that to get on with the doctor and to drop in at his house
without formalities was impossible; and to meet the "old brute," as Panaurov called him,
was distasteful. That was why he so rarely saw Yulia. He reflected now that the father was
not at home, that if he were to take Yulia Sergeyevna her parasol, he would be sure to find
her at home alone, and his heart ached with joy. Haste, haste!
He took the parasol and, violently agitated, flew on the wings of love. It was hot in the
street. In the big courtyard of the doctor's house, overgrown with coarse grass and nettles,
some twenty urchins were playing ball. These were all the children of working-class
families who tenanted the three disreputable-looking lodges, which the doctor was always
meaning to have done up, though he put it off from year to year. The yard resounded with
ringing, healthy voices. At some distance on one side, Yulia Sergeyevna was standing at her
porch, her hands folded, watching the game.
"Good-morning!" Laptev called to her.
She looked round. Usually he saw her indifferent, cold, or tired as she had been the evening
before. Now her face looked full of life and frolic, like the faces of the boys who were
playing ball.
"Look, they never play so merrily in Moscow," she said, going to meet him. "There are no
such big yards there, though; they've no place to run there. Papa has only just gone to you,"
she added, looking round at the children.
"I know; but I've not come to see him, but to see you," said Laptev, admiring her
youthfulness, which he had not noticed till then, and seemed only that day to have
discovered in her; it seemed to him as though he were seeing her slender white neck with
the gold chain for the first time. "I've come to see you . . ." he repeated. "My sister has sent
you your parasol; you forgot it yesterday."
She put out her hand to take the parasol, but he pressed it to his bosom and spoke
passionately, without restraint, yielding again to the sweet ecstasy he had felt the night
before, sitting under the parasol.
"I entreat you, give it me. I shall keep it in memory of you . . . of our acquaintance. It's so
wonderful!"
"Take it," she said, and blushed; "but there's nothing wonderful about it."
He looked at her in ecstasy, in silence, not knowing what to say.
"Why am I keeping you here in the heat?" she said after a brief pause, laughing. "Let us go
indoors."
"I am not disturbing you?"
They went into the hall. Yulia Sergeyevna ran upstairs, her white dress with blue flowers on
it rustling as she went.
"I can't be disturbed," she answered, stopping on the landing. "I never do anything. Every
day is a holiday for me, from morning till night."
"What you say is inconceivable to me," he said, going up to her. "I grew up in a world in
which every one without exception, men and women alike, worked hard every day."
"But if one has nothing to do?" she asked. "One has to arrange one's life under such
conditions, that work is inevitable. There can be no clean and happy life without work."
Again he pressed the parasol to his bosom, and to his own surprise spoke softly, in a voice
unlike his own:
"If you would consent to be my wife I would give everything -- I would give everything.
There's no price I would not pay, no sacrifice I would not make."
She started and looked at him with wonder and alarm.
"What are you saying!" she brought out, turning pale. "It's impossible, I assure you. Forgive
me."
Then with the same rustle of her skirts she went up higher, and vanished through the
doorway.
Laptev grasped what this meant, and his mood was transformed, completely, abruptly, as
though a light in his soul had suddenly been extinguished. Filled with the shame of a man
humiliated, of a man who is disdained, who is not liked, who is distasteful, perhaps
disgusting, who is shunned, he walked out of the house.
"I would give everything," he thought, mimicking himself as he went home through the heat
and recalled the details of his declaration. "I would give everything -- like a regular
tradesman. As though she wanted your everything!"
All he had just said seemed to him repulsively stupid. Why had he lied, saying that he had
grown up in a world where every one worked, without exception? Why had he talked to her
in a lecturing tone about a clean and happy life? It was not clever, not interesting; it was
false -- false in the Moscow style. But by degrees there followed that mood of indifference
into which criminals sink after a severe sentence. He began thinking that, thank God!
everything was at an end and that the terrible uncertainty was over; that now there was no
need to spend whole days in anticipation, in pining, in thinking always of the same thing.
Now everything was clear; he must give up all hope of personal happiness, live without
desires, without hopes, without dreams, or expectations, and to escape that dreary sadness
which he was so sick of trying to soothe, he could busy himself with other people's affairs,
other people's happiness, and old age would come on imperceptibly, and life would reach
its end -- and nothing more was wanted. He did not care, he wished for nothing, and could
reason about it coolly, but there was a sort of heaviness in his face especially under his eyes,
his forehead felt drawn tight like elastic -- and tears were almost starting into his eyes.
Feeling weak all over, he lay down on his bed, and in five minutes was sound asleep.
III
The proposal Laptev had made so suddenly threw Yulia Sergeyevna into despair.
She knew Laptev very little, had made his acquaintance by chance; he was a rich man, a
partner in the well-known Moscow firm of "Fyodor Laptev and Sons"; always serious,
apparently clever, and anxious about his sister s illness. It had seemed to her that he took no
notice of her whatever, and she did not care about him in the least -- and then all of a
sudden that declaration on the stairs, that pitiful, ecstatic face. . . .
The offer had overwhelmed her by its suddenness and by the fact that the word wife had
been uttered, and by the necessity of rejecting it. She could not remember what she had said
to Laptev, but she still felt traces of the sudden, unpleasant feeling with which she had
rejected him. He did not attract her; he looked like a shopman; he was not interesting; she
could not have answered him except with a refusal, and yet she felt uncomfortable, as
though she had done wrong.
"My God! without waiting to get into the room, on the stairs," she said to herself in despair,
addressing the ikon which hung over her pillow; "and no courting beforehand, but so
strangely, so oddly. . . ."
In her solitude her agitation grew more intense every hour, and it was beyond her strength
to master this oppressive feeling alone. She needed some one to listen to her story and to
tell her that she had done right. But she had no one to talk to. She had lost her mother long
before; she thought her father a queer man, and could not talk to him seriously. He worried
her with his whims, his extreme readiness to take offence, and his meaningless gestures;
and as soon as one began to talk to him, he promptly turned the conversation on himself.
And in her prayer she was not perfectly open, because she did not know for certain what she
ought to pray for.
The samovar was brought in. Yulia Sergeyevna, very pale and tired, looking dejected, came
into the dining-room to make tea -- it was one of her duties -- and poured out a glass for her
father. Sergey Borisovitch, in his long coat that reached below his knees, with his red face
and unkempt hair, walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, pacing, not
from corner to corner, but backwards and forwards at random, like a wild beast in its cage.
He would stand still by the table, sip his glass of tea with relish, and pace about again, lost
in thought.
"Laptev made me an offer to-day," said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson.
The doctor looked at her and did not seem to understand.
"Laptev?" he queried. "Panaurov's brother-in-law?"
He was fond of his daughter; it was most likely that she would sooner or later be married,
and leave him, but he tried not to think about that. He was afraid of being alone, and for
some reason fancied, that if he were left alone in that great house, he would have an
apoplectic stroke, but he did not like to speak of this directly.
"Well, I'm delighted to hear it," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I congratulate you with
all my heart. It offers you a splendid opportunity for leaving me, to your great satisfaction.
And I quite understand your feelings. To live with an old father, an invalid, half crazy, must
be very irksome at your age. I quite understand you. And the sooner I'm laid out and in the
devil's clutches, the better every one will be pleased. I congratulate you with all my heart."
"I refused him."
The doctor felt relieved, but he was unable to stop himself and went on:
"I wonder, I've long wondered, why I've not yet been put into a madhouse -- why I'm still
wearing this coat instead of a strait-waistcoat? I still have faith in justice, in goodness. I am
a fool, an idealist, and nowadays that's insanity, isn't it? And how do they repay me for my
honesty? They almost throw stones at me and ride rough-shod over me. And even my
nearest kith and kin do nothing but try to get the better of me. It's high time the devil
fetched an old fool like me. . . ."
"There's no talking to you like a rational being!" said Yulia.
She got up from the table impulsively, and went to her room in great wrath, remembering
how often her father had been unjust to her. But a little while afterwards she felt sorry for
her father, too, and when he was going to the club she went downstairs with him, and shut
the door after him. It was a rough and stormy night; the door shook with the violence of the
wind, and there were draughts in all directions in the passage, so that the candle was almost
blown out. In her own domain upstairs Yulia Sergeyevna went the round of all the rooms,
making the sign of the cross over every door and window; the wind howled, and it sounded
as though some one were walking on the roof. Never had it been so dreary, never had she
felt so lonely.
She asked herself whether she had done right in rejecting a man, simply because his
appearance did not attract her. It was true he was a man she did not love, and to marry him
would mean renouncing forever her dreams, her conceptions of happiness in married life,
but would she ever meet the man of whom she dreamed, and would he love her? She was
twenty-one already. There were no eligible young men in the town. She pictured all the men
she knew -- government clerks, schoolmasters, officers, and some of them were married
already, and their domestic life was conspicuous for its dreariness and triviality; others were
uninteresting, colourless, unintelligent, immoral. Laptev was, anyway, a Moscow man, had
taken his degree at the university, spoke French. He lived in the capital, where there were
lots of clever, noble, remarkable people; where there was noise and bustle, splendid
theatres, musical evenings, first-rate dressmakers, confectioners. . . . In the Bible it was
written that a wife must love her husband, and great importance was given to love in
novels, but wasn't there exaggeration in it? Was it out of the question to enter upon married
life without love? It was said, of course, that love soon passed away, and that nothing was
left but habit, and that the object of married life was not to be found in love, nor in
happiness, but in duties, such as the bringing up of one's children, the care of one's
household, and so on. And perhaps what was meant in the Bible was love for one's husband
as one's neighbour, respect for him, charity.
At night Yulia Sergeyevna read the evening prayers attentively, then knelt down, and
pressing her hands to her bosom, gazing at the flame of the lamp before the ikon, said with
feeling:
"Give me understanding, Holy Mother, our Defender! Give me understanding, O Lord!"
She had in the course of her life come across elderly maiden ladies, poor and of no
consequence in the world, who bitterly repented and openly confessed their regret that they
had refused suitors in the past. Would not the same thing happen to her? Had not she better
go into a convent or become a Sister of Mercy?
She undressed and got into bed, crossing herself and crossing the air around her. Suddenly
the bell rang sharply and plaintively in the corridor.
"Oh, my God!" she said, feeling a nervous irritation all over her at the sound. She lay still
and kept thinking how poor this provincial life was in events, monotonous and yet not
peaceful. One was constantly having to tremble, to feel apprehensive, angry or guilty, and in
the end one's nerves were so strained, that one was afraid to peep out of the bedclothes.
A little while afterwards the bell rang just as sharply again. The servant must have been
asleep and had not heard. Yulia Sergeyevna lighted a candle, and feeling vexed with the
servant, began with a shiver to dress, and when she went out into the corridor, the maid was
already closing the door downstairs.
"I thought it was the master, but it's some one from a patient," she said.
Yulia Sergeyevna went back to her room. She took a pack of cards out of the chest of
drawers, and decided that if after shuffling the cards well and cutting, the bottom card
turned out to be a red one, it would mean yes -- that is, she would accept Laptev's offer; and
that if it was a black, it would mean no. The card turned out to be the ten of spades.
That relieved her mind -- she fell asleep; but in the morning, she was wavering again
between yes and no, and she was dwelling on the thought that she could, if she chose,
change her life. The thought harassed her, she felt exhausted and unwell; but yet, soon after
eleven, she dressed and went to see Nina Fyodorovna. She wanted to see Laptev: perhaps
now he would seem more attractive to her; perhaps she had been wrong about him
hitherto. . . .
She found it hard to walk against the wind. She struggled along, holding her hat on with
both hands, and could see nothing for the dust.
IV
Going into his sister's room, and seeing to his surprise Yulia Sergeyevna, Laptev had again
the humiliating sensation of a man who feels himself an object of repulsion. He concluded
that if after what had happened yesterday she could bring herself so easily to visit his sister
and meet him, it must be because she was not concerned about him, and regarded him as a
complete nonentity. But when he greeted her, and with a pale face and dust under her eyes
she looked at him mournfully and remorsefully, he saw that she, too, was miserable.
She did not feel well. She only stayed ten minutes, and began saying good-bye. And as she
went out she said to Laptev:
"Will you see me home, Alexey Fyodorovitch?"
They walked along the street in silence, holding their hats, and he, walking a little behind,
tried to screen her from the wind. In the lane it was more sheltered, and they walked side by
side.
"Forgive me if I was not nice yesterday;" and her voice quavered as though she were going
to cry. "I was so wretched! I did not sleep all night."
"I slept well all night," said Laptev, without looking at her; "but that doesn't mean that I was
happy. My life is broken. I'm deeply unhappy, and after your refusal yesterday I go about
like a man poisoned. The most difficult thing was said yesterday. To-day I feel no
embarrassment and can talk to you frankly. I love you more than my sister, more than my
dead mother. . . . I can live without my sister, and without my mother, and I have lived
without them, but life without you -- is meaningless to me; I can't face it. . . ."
And now too, as usual, he guessed her intention.
He realised that she wanted to go back to what had happened the day before, and with that
object had asked him to accompany her, and now was taking him home with her. But what
could she add to her refusal? What new idea had she in her head? From everything, from
her glances, from her smile, and even from her tone, from the way she held her head and
shoulders as she walked beside him, he saw that, as before, she did not love him, that he
was a stranger to her. What more did she want to say?
Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home.
"You are very welcome. I'm always glad to see you, Fyodor Alexeyitch," he said, mixing up
his Christian name and his father's. "Delighted, delighted!"
He had never been so polite before, and Laptev saw that he knew of his offer; he did not
like that either. He was sitting now in the drawing-room, and the room impressed him
strangely, with its poor, common decorations, its wretched pictures, and though there were
arm-chairs in it, and a huge lamp with a shade over it, it still looked like an uninhabited
place, a huge barn, and it was obvious that no one could feel at home in such a room, except
a man like the doctor. The next room, almost twice as large, was called the reception-room,
and in it there were only rows of chairs, as though for a dancing class. And while Laptev
was sitting in the drawing-room talking to the doctor about his sister, he began to be
tortured by a suspicion. Had not Yulia Sergeyevna been to his sister Nina's, and then
brought him here to tell him that she would accept him? Oh, how awful it was! But the
most awful thing of all was that his soul was capable of such a suspicion. And he imagined
how the father and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the night before, in
prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last had come to the conclusion that Yulia
had acted thoughtlessly in refusing a rich man. The words that parents use in such cases
kept ringing in his ears:
"It is true you don't love him, but think what good you could do!"
The doctor was going out to see patients. Laptev would have gone with him, but Yulia
Sergeyevna said:
"I beg you to stay."
She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to refuse an honourable, good
man who loved her, simply because he was not attractive, especially when marrying him
would make it possible for her to change her mode of life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle
life in which youth was passing with no prospect of anything better in the future -- to refuse
him under such circumstances was madness, caprice and folly, and that God might even
punish her for it.
The father went out. When the sound of his steps had died away, she suddenly stood up
before Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly white as she did so:
"I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch. . . . I accept your offer."
He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed him awkwardly on the head with cold lips.
He felt that in this love scene the chief thing -- her love -- was lacking, and that there was a
great deal that was not wanted; and he longed to cry out, to run away, to go back to Moscow
at once. But she was close to him, and she seemed to him so lovely, and he was suddenly
overcome by passion. He reflected that it was too late for deliberation now; he embraced
her passionately, and muttered some words, calling her thou; he kissed her on the neck, and
then on the cheek, on the head. . . .
She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations, and both of them were
already regretting what they had said and both were asking themselves in confusion:
"Why has this happened?"
"If only you knew how miserable I am!" she said, wringing her hands.
"What is it?" he said, going up to her, wringing his hands too. "My dear, for God's sake, tell
me -- what is it? Only tell the truth, I entreat you -- nothing but the truth!"
"Don't pay any attention to it," she said, and forced herself to smile. "I promise you I'll be a
faithful, devoted wife. . . . Come this evening."
Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading aloud an historical novel, he recalled it all and
felt wounded that his splendid, pure, rich feeling was met with such a shallow response. He
was not loved, but his offer had been accepted -- in all probability because he was rich: that
is, what was thought most of in him was what he valued least of all in himself. It was quite
possible that Yulia, who was so pure and believed in God, had not once thought of his
money; but she did not love him -- did not love him, and evidently she had interested
motives, vague, perhaps, and not fully thought out -- still, it was so. The doctor's house with
its common furniture was repulsive to him, and he looked upon the doctor himself as a
wretched, greasy miser, a sort of operatic Gaspard from "Les Cloches de Corneville." The
very name "Yulia" had a vulgar sound. He imagined how he and his Yulia would stand at
their wedding, in reality complete strangers to one another, without a trace of feeling on her
side, just as though their marriage had been made by a professional matchmaker; and the
only consolation left him now, as commonplace as the marriage itself, was the reflection
that he was not the first, and would not be the last; that thousands of people were married
like that; and that with time, when Yulia came to know him better, she would perhaps grow
fond of him.
"Romeo and Juliet!" he said, as he shut the novel, and he laughed. "I am Romeo, Nina. You
may congratulate me. I made an offer to Yulia Byelavin to-day."
Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but when she believed it, she began to cry; she
was not pleased at the news.
"Well, I congratulate you," she said. "But why is it so sudden?"
"No, it's not sudden. It's been going on since March, only you don't notice anything. . . . I
fell in love with her last March when I made her acquaintance here, in your rooms."
"I thought you would marry some one in our Moscow set," said Nina Fyodorovna after a
pause. "Girls in our set are simpler. But what matters, Alyosha, is that you should be happy
-- that matters most. My Grigory Nikolaitch did not love me, and there's no concealing it;
you can see what our life is. Of course any woman may love you for your goodness and
your brains, but, you see, Yulitchka is a girl of good family from a high-class boarding-
school; goodness and brains are not enough for her. She is young, and, you, Alyosha, are
not so young, and are not good-looking."
To soften the last words, she stroked his head and said:
"You're not good-looking, but you're a dear."
She was so agitated that a faint flush came into her cheeks, and she began discussing
eagerly whether it would be the proper thing for her to bless Alyosha with the ikon at the
wedding. She was, she reasoned, his elder sister, and took the place of his mother; and she
kept trying to convince her dejected brother that the wedding must be celebrated in proper
style, with pomp and gaiety, so that no one could find fault with it.
Then he began going to the Byelavins' as an accepted suitor, three or four times a day; and
now he never had time to take Sasha's place and read aloud the historical novel. Yulia used
to receive him in her two rooms, which were at a distance from the drawing-room and her
father's study, and he liked them very much. The walls in them were dark; in the corner
stood a case of ikons; and there was a smell of good scent and of the oil in the holy lamp.
Her rooms were at the furthest end of the house; her bedstead and dressing-table were shut
off by a screen. The doors of the bookcase were covered on the inside with a green curtain,
and there were rugs on the floor, so that her footsteps were noiseless -- and from this he
concluded that she was of a reserved character, and that she liked a quiet, peaceful,
secluded life. In her own home she was treated as though she were not quite grown up. She
had no money of her own, and sometimes when they were out for walks together, she was
overcome with confusion at not having a farthing. Her father allowed her very little for
dress and books, hardly ten pounds a year. And, indeed, the doctor himself had not much
money in spite of his good practice. He played cards every night at the club, and always
lost. Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses through a building society, and let them. The
tenants were irregular in paying the rent, but he was convinced that such speculations were
profitable. He had mortgaged his own house in which he and his daughter were living, and
with the money so raised had bought a piece of waste ground, and had already begun to
build on it a large two-storey house, meaning to mortgage it, too, as soon as it was finished.
Laptev now lived in a sort of cloud, feeling as though he were not himself, but his double,
and did many things which he would never have brought himself to do before. He went
three or four times to the club with the doctor, had supper with him, and offered him money
for house-building. He even visited Panaurov at his other establishment. It somehow
happened that Panaurov invited him to dinner, and without thinking, Laptev accepted. He
was received by a lady of five-and-thirty. She was tall and thin, with hair touched with grey,
and black eyebrows, apparently not Russian. There were white patches of powder on her
face. She gave him a honeyed smile and pressed his hand jerkily, so that the bracelets on
her white hands tinkled. It seemed to Laptev that she smiled like that because she wanted to
conceal from herself and from others that she was unhappy. He also saw two little girls,
aged five and three, who had a marked likeness to Sasha. For dinner they had milk-soup,
cold veal, and chocolate. It was insipid and not good; but the table was splendid, with gold
forks, bottles of Soyer, and cayenne pepper, an extraordinary bizarre cruet-stand, and a gold
pepper-pot.
It was only as he was finishing the milk-soup that Laptev realised how very inappropriate it
was for him to be dining there. The lady was embarrassed, and kept smiling, showing her
teeth. Panaurov expounded didactically what being in love was, and what it was due to.
"We have in it an example of the action of electricity," he said in French, addressing the
lady. "Every man has in his skin microscopic glands which contain currents of electricity. If
you meet with a person whose currents are parallel with your own, then you get love."
When Laptev went home and his sister asked him where he had been he felt awkward, and
made no answer.
He felt himself in a false position right up to the time of the wedding. His love grew more
intense every day, and Yulia seemed to him a poetic and exalted creature; but, all the same,
there was no mutual love, and the truth was that he was buying her and she was selling
herself. Sometimes, thinking things over, he fell into despair and asked himself: should he
run away? He did not sleep for nights together, and kept thinking how he should meet in
Moscow the lady whom he had called in his letters "a certain person," and what attitude his
father and his brother, difficult people, would take towards his marriage and towards Yulia.
He was afraid that his father would say something rude to Yulia at their first meeting. And
something strange had happened of late to his brother Fyodor. In his long letters he had
taken to writing of the importance of health, of the effect of illness on the mental condition,
of the meaning of religion, but not a word about Moscow or business. These letters irritated
Laptev, and he thought his brother's character was changing for the worse.
The wedding was in September. The ceremony took place at the Church of St. Peter and St.
Paul, after mass, and the same day the young couple set off for Moscow. When Laptev and
his wife, in a black dress with a long train, already looking not a girl but a married woman,
said good-bye to Nina Fyodorovna, the invalid's face worked, but there was no tear in her
dry eyes. She said:
"If -- which God forbid -- I should die, take care of my little girls."
"Oh, I promise!" answered Yulia Sergeyevna, and her lips and eyelids began quivering too.
"I shall come to see you in October," said Laptev, much moved. "You must get better, my
darling."
They travelled in a special compartment. Both felt depressed and uncomfortable. She sat in
the corner without taking off her hat, and made a show of dozing, and he lay on the seat
opposite, and he was disturbed by various thoughts -- of his father, of " a certain person,"
whether Yulia would like her Moscow flat. And looking at his wife, who did not love him,
he wondered dejectedly "why this had happened."
V
The Laptevs had a wholesale business in Moscow, dealing in fancy goods: fringe, tape,
trimmings, crochet cotton, buttons, and so on. The gross receipts reached two millions a
year; what the net profit was, no one knew but the old father. The sons and the clerks
estimated the profits at approximately three hundred thousand, and said that it would have
been a hundred thousand more if the old man had not "been too free-handed" -- that is, had
not allowed credit indiscriminately. In the last ten years alone the bad debts had mounted up
to the sum of a million; and when the subject was referred to, the senior clerk would wink
slyly and deliver himself of sentences the meaning of which was not clear to every one:
"The psychological sequences of the age."
Their chief commercial operations were conducted in the town market in a building which
was called the warehouse. The entrance to the warehouse was in the yard, where it was
always dark, and smelt of matting and where the dray-horses were always stamping their
hoofs on the asphalt. A very humble-looking door, studded with iron, led from the yard into
a room with walls discoloured by damp and scrawled over with charcoal, lighted up by a
narrow window covered by an iron grating. Then on the left was another room larger and
cleaner with an iron stove and a couple of chairs, though it, too, had a prison window: this
was the office, and from it a narrow stone staircase led up to the second storey, where the
principal room was. This was rather a large room, but owing to the perpetual darkness, the
low-pitched ceiling, the piles of boxes and bales, and the numbers of men that kept flitting
to and fro in it, it made as unpleasant an impression on a newcomer as the others. In the
offices on the top storey the goods lay in bales, in bundles and in cardboard boxes on the
shelves; there was no order nor neatness in the arrangement of it, and if crimson threads,
tassels, ends of fringe, had not peeped out here and there from holes in the paper parcels, no
one could have guessed what was being bought and sold here. And looking at these
crumpled paper parcels and boxes, no one would have believed that a million was being
made out of such trash, and that fifty men were employed every day in this warehouse, not
counting the buyers.
When at midday, on the day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev went into the warehouse,
the workmen packing the goods were hammering so loudly that in the outer room and the
office no one heard him come in. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a
bundle of letters in his hand; he was wincing at the noise, and he did not notice Laptev
either. The first person to meet him upstairs was his brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was
so like him that they passed for twins. This resemblance always reminded Laptev of his
own personal appearance, and now, seeing before him a short, red-faced man with rather
thin hair, with narrow plebeian hips, looking so uninteresting and so unintellectual, he
asked himself: "Can I really look like that?"
"How glad I am to see you!" said Fyodor, kissing his brother and pressing his hand warmly.
"I have been impatiently looking forward to seeing you every day, my dear fellow. When
you wrote that you were getting married, I was tormented with curiosity, and I've missed
you, too, brother. Only fancy, it's six months since we saw each other. Well? How goes it?
Nina's very bad? Awfully bad?"
"Awfully bad."
"It's in God's hands," sighed Fyodor. "Well, what of your wife? She's a beauty, no doubt? I
love her already. Of course, she is my little sister now. We'll make much of her between
us."
Laptev saw the broad, bent back -- so familiar to him -- of his father, Fyodor Stepanovitch.
The old man was sitting on a stool near the counter, talking to a customer.
"Father, God has sent us joy!" cried Fyodor. "Brother has come!"
Fyodor Stepanovitch was a tall man of exceptionally powerful build, so that, in spite of his
wrinkles and eighty years, he still looked a hale and vigorous man. He spoke in a deep, rich,
sonorous voice, that resounded from his broad chest as from a barrel. He wore no beard, but
a short-clipped military moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was always too hot, he used
all the year round to wear a canvas coat at home and at the warehouse. He had lately had an
operation for cataract. His sight was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk to the
customers and have tea and jam with them.
Laptev bent down and kissed his head and then his lips.
"It's a good long time since we saw you, honoured sir," said the old man -- "a good long
time. Well, am I to congratulate you on entering the state of holy matrimony? Very well,
then; I congratulate you."
And he put his lips out to be kissed. Laptev bent down and kissed him.
"Well, have you brought your young lady?" the old man asked, and without waiting for an
answer, he said, addressing the customer: " 'Herewith I beg to inform you, father, that I'm
going to marry such and such a young lady.' Yes. But as for asking for his father's counsel
or blessing, that's not in the rules nowadays. Now they go their own way. When I married I
was over forty, but I went on my knees to my father and asked his advice. Nowadays we've
none of that."
The old man was delighted to see his son, but thought it unseemly to show his affection or
make any display of his joy. His voice and his manner of saying "your young lady" brought
back to Laptev the depression he had always felt in the warehouse. Here every trifling detail
reminded him of the past, when he used to be flogged and put on Lenten fare; he knew that
even now boys were thrashed and punched in the face till their noses bled, and that when
those boys grew up they would beat others. And before he had been five minutes in the
warehouse, he always felt as though he were being scolded or punched in the face.
Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and said to his brother:
"Here, Alyosha, I must introduce our Tambov benefactor, Grigory Timofeitch. He might
serve as an example for the young men of the day; he's passed his fiftieth birthday, and he
has tiny children."
The clerks laughed, and the customer, a lean old man with a pale face, laughed too.
"Nature above the normal capacity," observed the head-clerk, who was standing at the
counter close by. "It always comes out when it's there."
The head-clerk -- a tall man of fifty, in spectacles, with a dark beard, and a pencil behind
his ear -- usually expressed his ideas vaguely in roundabout hints, while his sly smile
betrayed that he attached particular significance to his words. He liked to obscure his
utterances with bookish words, which he understood in his own way, and many such words
he used in a wrong sense. For instance, the word "except." When he had expressed some
opinion positively and did not want to be contradicted, he would stretch out his hand and
pronounce:
"Except!"
And what was most astonishing, the customers and the other clerks understood him
perfectly. His name was Ivan Vassilitch Potchatkin, and he came from Kashira. Now,
congratulating Laptev, he expressed himself as follows:
"It's the reward of valour, for the female heart is a strong opponent."
Another important person in the warehouse was a clerk called Makeitchev -- a stout, solid,
fair man with whiskers and a perfectly bald head. He went up to Laptev and congratulated
him respectfully in a low voice:
"I have the honour, sir. . . The Lord has heard your parent's prayer. Thank God."
Then the other clerks began coming up to congratulate him on his marriage. They were all
fashionably dressed, and looked like perfectly well-bred, educated men. Since between
every two words they put in a "sir," their congratulations -- something like "Best wishes, sir,
for happiness, sir," uttered very rapidly in a low voice -- sounded rather like the hiss of a
whip in the air -- "Shshsh-s s s s s!" Laptev was soon bored and longing to go home, but it
was awkward to go away. He was obliged to stay at least two hours at the warehouse to
keep up appearances. He walked away from the counter and began asking Makeitchev
whether things had gone well while he was away, and whether anything new had turned up,
and the clerk answered him respectfully, avoiding his eyes. A boy with a cropped head,
wearing a grey blouse, handed Laptev a glass of tea without a saucer; not long afterwards
another boy, passing by, stumbled over a box, and almost fell down, and Makeitchev's face
looked suddenly spiteful and ferocious like a wild beast's, and he shouted at him:
"Keep on your feet!"
The clerks were pleased that their young master was married and had come back at last;
they looked at him with curiosity and friendly feeling, and each one thought it his duty to
say something agreeable when he passed him. But Laptev was convinced that it was not
genuine, and that they were only flattering him because they were afraid of him. He never
could forget how fifteen years before, a clerk, who was mentally deranged, had run out into
the street with nothing on but his shirt and shaking his fists at the windows, shouted that he
had been ill-treated; and how, when the poor fellow had recovered, the clerks had jeered at
him for long afterwards, reminding him how he had called his employers "planters" instead
of "exploiters."
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