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 everyone 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 in 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.
3.
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 icon 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 someone 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 offense, 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. Sergei Borisovich, 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 today,” 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 everyone 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 jacket? 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 roughshod 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 someone 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, colorless, 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 theaters, 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 s
oon 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 neighbor, 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 icon, 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 someone 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.
4.
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, Alexei Fyodorovich?”
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. Today 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 realized 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?
Dr. Sergei Borisovich was at home.
“You are very welcome. I’m always glad to see you, Fyodor Alexeyich,” 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 armchairs 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 honorable, 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, Alexei Fyodorovich. . . . 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 today.”
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.”
Peasants and Other Stories Page 8
