AN ARTIST'S STORY

AN ARTIST'S STORY

I

IT was six or seven years ago when I was living in one of the

districts of the province of T----, on the estate of a young landowner

called Byelokurov, who used to get up very early, wear a peasant

tunic, drink beer in the evenings, and continually complain to me

that he never met with sympathy from any one. He lived in the lodge

in the garden, and I in the old seigniorial house, in a big room

with columns, where there was no furniture except a wide sofa on

which I used to sleep, and a table on which I used to lay out

patience. There was always, even in still weather, a droning noise

in the old Amos stoves, and in thunder-storms the whole house shook

and seemed to be cracking into pieces; and it was rather terrifying,

especially at night, when all the ten big windows were suddenly lit

up by lightning.

Condemned by destiny to perpetual idleness, I did absolutely nothing.

For hours together I gazed out of window at the sky, at the birds,

at the avenue, read everything that was brought me by post, slept.

Sometimes I went out of the house and wandered about till late in

the evening.

One day as I was returning home, I accidentally strayed into a place

I did not know. The sun was already sinking, and the shades of

evening lay across the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely

planted, very tall fir-trees stood like two dense walls forming a

picturesque, gloomy avenue. I easily climbed over the fence and

walked along the avenue, slipping over the fir-needles which lay

two inches deep on the ground. It was still and dark, and only here

and there on the high tree-tops the vivid golden light quivered and

made rainbows in the spiders' webs. There was a strong, almost

stifling smell of resin. Then I turned into a long avenue of limes.

Here, too, all was desolation and age; last year's leaves rusted

mournfully under my feet and in the twilight shadows lurked between

the trees. From the old orchard on the right came the faint, reluctant

note of the golden oriole, who must have been old too. But at last

the limes ended. I walked by an old white house of two storeys with

a terrace, and there suddenly opened before me a view of a courtyard,

a large pond with a bathing-house, a group of green willows, and a

village on the further bank, with a high, narrow belfry on which

there glittered a cross reflecting the setting sun.

For a moment it breathed upon me the fascination of something near

and very familiar, as though I had seen that landscape at some time

in my childhood.

At the white stone gates which led from the yard to the fields,

old-fashioned solid gates with lions on them, were standing two

girls. One of them, the elder, a slim, pale, very handsome girl

with a perfect haystack of chestnut hair and a little obstinate

mouth, had a severe expression and scarcely took notice of me, while

the other, who was still very young, not more than seventeen or

eighteen, and was also slim and pale, with a large mouth and large

eyes, looked at me with astonishment as I passed by, said something

in English, and was overcome with embarrassment. And it seemed to

me that these two charming faces, too, had long been familiar to

me. And I returned home feeling as though I had had a delightful

dream.

One morning soon afterwards, as Byelokurov and I were walking near

the house, a carriage drove unexpectedly into the yard, rustling

over the grass, and in it was sitting one of those girls. It was

the elder one. She had come to ask for subscriptions for some

villagers whose cottages had been burnt down. Speaking with great

earnestness and precision, and not looking at us, she told us how

many houses in the village of Siyanovo had been burnt, how many

men, women, and children were left homeless, and what steps were

proposed, to begin with, by the Relief Committee, of which she was

now a member. After handing us the subscription list for our

signatures, she put it away and immediately began to take leave of

us.

"You have quite forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovitch," she said to

Byelokurov as she shook hands with him. "Do come, and if Monsieur

N. (she mentioned my name) cares to make the acquaintance of admirers

of his work, and will come and see us, mother and I will be delighted."

I bowed.

When she had gone Pyotr Petrovitch began to tell me about her. The

girl was, he said, of good family, and her name was Lidia Voltchaninov,

and the estate on which she lived with her mother and sister, like

the village on the other side of the pond, was called Shelkovka.

Her father had once held an important position in Moscow, and had

died with the rank of privy councillor. Although they had ample

means, the Voltchaninovs lived on their estate summer and winter

without going away. Lidia was a teacher in the Zemstvo school in

her own village, and received a salary of twenty-five roubles a

month. She spent nothing on herself but her salary, and was proud

of earning her own living.

"An interesting family," said Byelokurov. "Let us go over one day.

They will be delighted to see you."

One afternoon on a holiday we thought of the Voltchaninovs, and

went to Shelkovka to see them. They--the mother and two daughters

--were at home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, who at one time

had been handsome, but now, asthmatic, depressed, vague, and

over-feeble for her years, tried to entertain me with conversation

about painting. Having heard from her daughter that I might come

to Shelkovka, she had hurriedly recalled two or three of my landscapes

which she had seen in exhibitions in Moscow, and now asked what I

meant to express by them. Lidia, or as they called her Lida, talked

more to Byelokurov than to me. Earnest and unsmiling, she asked him

why he was not on the Zemstvo, and why he had not attended any of

its meetings.

"It's not right, Pyotr Petrovitch," she said reproachfully. "It's

not right. It's too bad."

"That's true, Lida--that's true," the mother assented. "It isn't

right."

"Our whole district is in the hands of Balagin," Lida went on,

addressing me. "He is the chairman of the Zemstvo Board, and he has

distributed all the posts in the district among his nephews and

sons-in-law; and he does as he likes. He ought to be opposed. The

young men ought to make a strong party, but you see what the young

men among us are like. It's a shame, Pyotr Petrovitch!"

The younger sister, Genya, was silent while they were talking of

the Zemstvo. She took no part in serious conversation. She was not

looked upon as quite grown up by her family, and, like a child, was

always called by the nickname of Misuce, because that was what she

had called her English governess when she was a child. She was all

the time looking at me with curiosity, and when I glanced at the

photographs in the album, she explained to me: "That's uncle . . .

that's god-father," moving her finger across the photograph. As she

did so she touched me with her shoulder like a child, and I had a

close view of her delicate, undeveloped chest, her slender shoulders,

her plait, and her thin little body tightly drawn in by her sash.

We played croquet and lawn tennis, we walked about the garden, drank

tea, and then sat a long time over supper. After the huge empty

room with columns, I felt, as it were, at home in this small snug

house where there were no oleographs on the walls and where the

servants were spoken to with civility. And everything seemed to me

young and pure, thanks to the presence of Lida and Misuce, and there

was an atmosphere of refinement over everything. At supper Lida

talked to Byelokurov again of the Zemstvo, of Balagin, and of school

libraries. She was an energetic, genuine girl, with convictions,

and it was interesting to listen to her, though she talked a great

deal and in a loud voice--perhaps because she was accustomed to

talking at school. On the other hand, Pyotr Petrovitch, who had

retained from his student days the habit of turning every conversation

into an argument, was tedious, flat, long-winded, and unmistakably

anxious to appear clever and advanced. Gesticulating, he upset a

sauce-boat with his sleeve, making a huge pool on the tablecloth,

but no one except me appeared to notice it.

It was dark and still as we went home.

"Good breeding is shown, not by not upsetting the sauce, but by not

noticing it when somebody else does," said Byelokurov, with a sigh.

"Yes, a splendid, intellectual family! I've dropped out of all

decent society; it's dreadful how I've dropped out of it! It's all

through work, work, work!"

He talked of how hard one had to work if one wanted to be a model

farmer. And I thought what a heavy, sluggish fellow he was! Whenever

he talked of anything serious he articulated "Er-er" with intense

effort, and worked just as he talked--slowly, always late and

behind-hand. I had little faith in his business capacity if only

from the fact that when I gave him letters to post he carried them

about in his pocket for weeks together.

"The hardest thing of all," he muttered as he walked beside me--

"the hardest thing of all is that, work as one may, one meets with

no sympathy from any one. No sympathy!"

II

I took to going to see the Voltchaninovs. As a rule I sat on the

lower step of the terrace; I was fretted by dissatisfaction with

myself; I was sorry at the thought of my life passing so rapidly

and uninterestingly, and felt as though I would like to tear out

of my breast the heart which had grown so heavy. And meanwhile I

heard talk on the terrace, the rustling of dresses, the pages of a

book being turned. I soon grew accustomed to the idea that during

the day Lida received patients, gave out books, and often went into

the village with a parasol and no hat, and in the evening talked

aloud of the Zemstvo and schools. This slim, handsome, invariably

austere girl, with her small well-cut mouth, always said dryly when

the conversation turned on serious subjects:

"That's of no interest to you."

She did not like me. She disliked me because I was a landscape

painter and did not in my pictures portray the privations of the

peasants, and that, as she fancied, I was indifferent to what she

put such faith in. I remember when I was travelling on the banks

of Lake Baikal, I met a Buriat girl on horseback, wearing a shirt

and trousers of blue Chinese canvas; I asked her if she would sell

me her pipe. While we talked she looked contemptuously at my European

face and hat, and in a moment she was bored with talking to me; she

shouted to her horse and galloped on. And in just the same way Lida

despised me as an alien. She never outwardly expressed her dislike

for me, but I felt it, and sitting on the lower step of the terrace,

I felt irritated, and said that doctoring peasants when one was not

a doctor was deceiving them, and that it was easy to be benevolent

when one had six thousand acres.

Meanwhile her sister Misuce had no cares, and spent her life in

complete idleness just as I did. When she got up in the morning she

immediately took up a book and sat down to read on the terrace in

a deep arm-chair, with her feet hardly touching the ground, or hid

herself with her book in the lime avenue, or walked out into the

fields. She spent the whole day reading, poring greedily over her

book, and only from the tired, dazed look in her eyes and the extreme

paleness of her face one could divine how this continual reading

exhausted her brain. When I arrived she would flush a little, leave

her book, and looking into my face with her big eyes, would tell

me eagerly of anything that had happened--for instance, that the

chimney had been on fire in the servants' hall, or that one of the

men had caught a huge fish in the pond. On ordinary days she usually

went about in a light blouse and a dark blue skirt. We went for

walks together, picked cherries for making jam, went out in the

boat. When she jumped up to reach a cherry or sculled in the boat,

her thin, weak arms showed through her transparent sleeves. Or I

painted a sketch, and she stood beside me watching rapturously.

One Sunday at the end of July I came to the Voltchaninovs about

nine o clock in the morning. I walked about the park, keeping a

good distance from the house, looking for white mushrooms, of which

there was a great number that summer, and noting their position so

as to come and pick them afterwards with Genya. There was a warm

breeze. I saw Genya and her mother both in light holiday dresses

coming home from church, Genya holding her hat in the wind. Afterwards

I heard them having tea on the terrace.

For a careless person like me, trying to find justification for my

perpetual idleness, these holiday mornings in our country-houses

in the summer have always had a particular charm. When the green

garden, still wet with dew, is all sparkling in the sun and looks

radiant with happiness, when there is a scent of mignonette and

oleander near the house, when the young people have just come back

from church and are having breakfast in the garden, all so charmingly

dressed and gay, and one knows that all these healthy, well-fed,

handsome people are going to do nothing the whole long day, one

wishes that all life were like that. Now, too, I had the same

thought, and walked about the garden prepared to walk about like

that, aimless and unoccupied, the whole day, the whole summer.

Genya came out with a basket; she had a look in her face as though

she knew she would find me in the garden, or had a presentiment of

it. We gathered mushrooms and talked, and when she asked a question

she walked a little ahead so as to see my face.

"A miracle happened in the village yesterday," she said. "The lame

woman Pelagea has been ill the whole year. No doctors or medicines

did her any good; but yesterday an old woman came and whispered

something over her, and her illness passed away."

"That's nothing much," I said. "You mustn't look for miracles only

among sick people and old women. Isn't health a miracle? And life

itself? Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle."

"And aren't you afraid of what is beyond understanding?"

"No. Phenomena I don't understand I face boldly, and am not overwhelmed

by them. I am above them. Man ought to recognise himself as superior

to lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything in nature, even

what seems miraculous and is beyond his understanding, or else he

is not a man, but a mouse afraid of everything."

Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very great deal, and could

guess correctly what I did not know. She longed for me to initiate

her into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful--into that

higher world in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home. And

she talked to me of God, of the eternal life, of the miraculous.

And I, who could never admit that my self and my imagination would

be lost forever after death, answered: "Yes, men are immortal";

"Yes, there is eternal life in store for us." And she listened,

believed, and did not ask for proofs.

As we were going home she stopped suddenly and said:

"Our Lida is a remarkable person--isn't she? I love her very

dearly, and would be ready to give my life for her any minute. But

tell me"--Genya touched my sleeve with her finger--"tell me,

why do you always argue with her? Why are you irritated?"

"Because she is wrong."

Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes.

"How incomprehensible that is!" she said. At that minute Lida had

just returned from somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand,

a slim, beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, she was

giving some orders to one of the men. Talking loudly, she hurriedly

received two or three sick villagers; then with a busy and anxious

face she walked about the rooms, opening one cupboard after another,

and went upstairs. It was a long time before they could find her

and call her to dinner, and she came in when we had finished our

soup. All these tiny details I remember with tenderness, and that

whole day I remember vividly, though nothing special happened. After

dinner Genya lay in a long arm-chair reading, while I sat upon the

bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The whole sky was

overcast with clouds, and it began to spot with fine rain. It was

hot; the wind had dropped, and it seemed as though the day would

never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna came out on the terrace, looking

drowsy and carrying a fan.

"Oh, mother," said Genya, kissing her hand, "it's not good for you

to sleep in the day."

They adored each other. When one went into the garden, the other

would stand on the terrace, and, looking towards the trees, call

"Aa--oo, Genya!" or "Mother, where are you?" They always said their

prayers together, and had the same faith; and they understood each

other perfectly even when they did not speak. And their attitude

to people was the same. Ekaterina Pavlovna, too, grew quickly used

to me and fond of me, and when I did not come for two or three days,

sent to ask if I were well. She, too, gazed at my sketches with

enthusiasm, and with the same openness and readiness to chatter as

Misuce, she told me what had happened, and confided to me her

domestic secrets.

She had a perfect reverence for her elder daughter. Lida did not

care for endearments, she talked only of serious matters; she lived

her life apart, and to her mother and sister was as sacred and

enigmatic a person as the admiral, always sitting in his cabin, is

to the sailors.

"Our Lida is a remarkable person," the mother would often say.

"Isn't she?"

Now, too, while it was drizzling with rain, we talked of Lida.

"She is a remarkable girl," said her mother, and added in an

undertone, like a conspirator, looking about her timidly: "You

wouldn't easily find another like her; only, do you know, I am

beginning to be a little uneasy. The school, the dispensary, books

--all that's very good, but why go to extremes? She is three-and-twenty,

you know; it's time for her to think seriously of herself. With her

books and her dispensary she will find life has slipped by without

having noticed it. . . . She must be married."

Genya, pale from reading, with her hair disarranged, raised her

head and said as it were to herself, looking at her mother:

"Mother, everything is in God's hands."

And again she buried herself in her book.

Byelokurov came in his tunic and embroidered shirt. We played croquet

and tennis, then when it got dark, sat a long time over supper and

talked again about schools, and about Balagin, who had the whole

district under his thumb. As I went away from the Voltchaninovs

that evening, I carried away the impression of a long, long idle

day, with a melancholy consciousness that everything ends in this

world, however long it may be.

Genya saw us out to the gate, and perhaps because she had been with

me all day, from morning till night, I felt dull without her, and

that all that charming family were near and dear to me, and for the

first time that summer I had a yearning to paint.

"Tell me, why do you lead such a dreary, colourless life?" I asked

Byelokurov as I went home. "My life is dreary, difficult, and

monotonous because I am an artist, a strange person. From my earliest

days I've been wrung by envy, self-dissatisfaction, distrust in my

work. I'm always poor, I'm a wanderer, but you--you're a healthy,

normal man, a landowner, and a gentleman. Why do you live in such

an uninteresting way? Why do you get so little out of life? Why

haven't you, for instance, fallen in love with Lida or Genya?"

"You forget that I love another woman," answered Byelokurov.

He was referring to Liubov Ivanovna, the lady who shared the lodge

with him. Every day I saw this lady, very plump, rotund, and

dignified, not unlike a fat goose, walking about the garden, in the

Russian national dress and beads, always carrying a parasol; and

the servant was continually calling her in to dinner or to tea.

Three years before she had taken one of the lodges for a summer

holiday, and had settled down at Byelokurov's apparently forever.

She was ten years older than he was, and kept a sharp hand over

him, so much so that he had to ask her permission when he went out

of the house. She often sobbed in a deep masculine note, and then

I used to send word to her that if she did not leave off, I should

give up my rooms there; and she left off.

When we got home Byelokurov sat down on the sofa and frowned

thoughtfully, and I began walking up and down the room, conscious

of a soft emotion as though I were in love. I wanted to talk about

the Voltchaninovs.

"Lida could only fall in love with a member of the Zemstvo, as

devoted to schools and hospitals as she is," I said. "Oh, for the

sake of a girl like that one might not only go into the Zemstvo,

but even wear out iron shoes, like the girl in the fairy tale. And

Misuce? What a sweet creature she is, that Misuce!"

Byelokurov, drawling out "Er--er," began a long-winded disquisition

on the malady of the age--pessimism. He talked confidently, in a

tone that suggested that I was opposing him. Hundreds of miles of

desolate, monotonous, burnt-up steppe cannot induce such deep

depression as one man when he sits and talks, and one does not know

when he will go.

"It's not a question of pessimism or optimism," I said irritably;

"its simply that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have no sense."

Byelokurov took this as aimed at himself, was offended, and went

away.

III

"The prince is staying at Malozyomovo, and he asks to be remembered

to you," said Lida to her mother. She had just come in, and was

taking off her gloves. "He gave me a great deal of interesting news

. . . . He promised to raise the question of a medical relief centre

at Malozyomovo again at the provincial assembly, but he says there

is very little hope of it." And turning to me, she said: "Excuse

me, I always forget that this cannot be interesting to you."

I felt irritated.

"Why not interesting to me?" I said, shrugging my shoulders. "You

do not care to know my opinion, but I assure you the question has

great interest for me."

"Yes?"

"Yes. In my opinion a medical relief centre at Malozyomovo is quite

unnecessary."

My irritation infected her; she looked at me, screwing up her eyes,

and asked:

"What is necessary? Landscapes?"

"Landscapes are not, either. Nothing is."

She finished taking off her gloves, and opened the newspaper, which

had just been brought from the post. A minute later she said quietly,

evidently restraining herself:

"Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if there had been a medical

relief centre near, she would have lived. And I think even

landscape-painters ought to have some opinions on the subject."

"I have a very definite opinion on that subject, I assure you," I

answered; and she screened herself with the newspaper, as though

unwilling to listen to me. "To my mind, all these schools, dispensaries,

libraries, medical relief centres, under present conditions, only

serve to aggravate the bondage of the people. The peasants are

fettered by a great chain, and you do not break the chain, but only

add fresh links to it--that's my view of it."

She raised her eyes to me and smiled ironically, and I went on

trying to formulate my leading idea.

"What matters is not that Anna died in childbirth, but that all

these Annas, Mavras, Pelageas, toil from early morning till dark,

fall ill from working beyond their strength, all their lives tremble

for their sick and hungry children, all their lives are being

doctored, and in dread of death and disease, fade and grow old

early, and die in filth and stench. Their children begin the same

story over again as soon as they grow up, and so it goes on for

hundreds of years and milliards of men live worse than beasts--

in continual terror, for a mere crust of bread. The whole horror

of their position lies in their never having time to think of their

souls, of their image and semblance. Cold, hunger, animal terror,

a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way

to spiritual activity--that is, to what distinguishes man from

the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living.

You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't free

them from their fetters by that; on the contrary, you bind them in

closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the

number of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got

to pay the Zemstvo for drugs and books, and so toil harder than

ever."

"I am not going to argue with you," said Lida, putting down the

paper. "I've heard all that before. I will only say one thing: one

cannot sit with one's hands in one's lap. It's true that we are not

saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we

do what we can, and we are right. The highest and holiest task for

a civilised being is to serve his neighbours, and we try to serve

them as best we can. You don't like it, but one can't please every

one."

"That's true, Lida," said her mother--"that's true."

In Lida's presence she was always a little timid, and looked at her

nervously as she talked, afraid of saying something superfluous or

inopportune. And she never contradicted her, but always assented:

"That's true, Lida--that's true."

"Teaching the peasants to read and write, books of wretched precepts

and rhymes, and medical relief centres, cannot diminish either

ignorance or the death-rate, just as the light from your windows

cannot light up this huge garden," said I. "You give nothing. By

meddling in these people's lives you only create new wants in them,

and new demands on their labour."

"Ach! Good heavens! But one must do something!" said Lida with

vexation, and from her tone one could see that she thought my

arguments worthless and despised them.

"The people must be freed from hard physical labour," said I. "We

must lighten their yoke, let them have time to breathe, that they

may not spend all their lives at the stove, at the wash-tub, and

in the fields, but may also have time to think of their souls, of

God--may have time to develop their spiritual capacities. The

highest vocation of man is spiritual activity--the perpetual

search for truth and the meaning of life. Make coarse animal labour

unnecessary for them, let them feel themselves free, and then you

will see what a mockery these dispensaries and books are. Once a

man recognises his true vocation, he can only be satisfied by

religion, science, and art, and not by these trifles."

"Free them from labour?" laughed Lida. "But is that possible?"

"Yes. Take upon yourself a share of their labour. If all of us,

townspeople and country people, all without exception, would agree

to divide between us the labour which mankind spends on the

satisfaction of their physical needs, each of us would perhaps need

to work only for two or three hours a day. Imagine that we all,

rich and poor, work only for three hours a day, and the rest of our

time is free. Imagine further that in order to depend even less

upon our bodies and to labour less, we invent machines to replace

our work, we try to cut down our needs to the minimum. We would

harden ourselves and our children that they should not be afraid

of hunger and cold, and that we shouldn't be continually trembling

for their health like Anna, Mavra, and Pelagea. Imagine that we

don't doctor ourselves, don't keep dispensaries, tobacco factories,

distilleries--what a lot of free time would be left us after all!

All of us together would devote our leisure to science and art.

Just as the peasants sometimes work, the whole community together

mending the roads, so all of us, as a community, would search for

truth and the meaning of life, and I am convinced that the truth

would be discovered very quickly; man would escape from this

continual, agonising, oppressive dread of death, and even from death

itself."

"You contradict yourself, though," said Lida. "You talk about

science, and are yourself opposed to elementary education."

"Elementary education when a man has nothing to read but the signs

on public houses and sometimes books which he cannot understand--

such education has existed among us since the times of Rurik; Gogol's

Petrushka has been reading for ever so long, yet as the village was

in the days of Rurik so it has remained. What is needed is not

elementary education, but freedom for a wide development of spiritual

capacities. What are wanted are not schools, but universities."

"You are opposed to medicine, too."

"Yes. It would be necessary only for the study of diseases as natural

phenomena, and not for the cure of them. If one must cure, it should

not be diseases, but the causes of them. Remove the principal cause

--physical labour, and then there will be no disease. I don't

believe in a science that cures disease," I went on excitedly. "When

science and art are real, they aim not at temporary private ends,

but at eternal and universal--they seek for truth and the meaning

of life, they seek for God, for the soul, and when they are tied

down to the needs and evils of the day, to dispensaries and libraries,

they only complicate and hamper life. We have plenty of doctors,

chemists, lawyers, plenty of people can read and write, but we are

quite without biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. The

whole of our intelligence, the whole of our spiritual energy, is

spent on satisfying temporary, passing needs. Scientific men,

writers, artists, are hard at work; thanks to them, the conveniences

of life are multiplied from day to day. Our physical demands increase,

yet truth is still a long way off, and man still remains the most

rapacious and dirty animal; everything is tending to the degeneration

of the majority of mankind, and the loss forever of all fitness for

life. In such conditions an artist's work has no meaning, and the

more talented he is, the stranger and the more unintelligible is

his position, as when one looks into it, it is evident that he is

working for the amusement of a rapacious and unclean animal, and

is supporting the existing order. And I don't care to work and I

won't work. . . . Nothing is any use; let the earth sink to perdition!"

"Misuce, go out of the room!" said Lida to her sister, apparently

thinking my words pernicious to the young girl.

Genya looked mournfully at her mother and sister, and went out of

the room.

"These are the charming things people say when they want to justify

their indifference," said Lida. "It is easier to disapprove of

schools and hospitals, than to teach or heal."

"That's true, Lida--that's true," the mother assented.

"You threaten to give up working," said Lida. "You evidently set a

high value on your work. Let us give up arguing; we shall never

agree, since I put the most imperfect dispensary or library of which

you have just spoken so contemptuously on a higher level than any

landscape." And turning at once to her mother, she began speaking

in quite a different tone: "The prince is very much changed, and

much thinner than when he was with us last. He is being sent to

Vichy."

She told her mother about the prince in order to avoid talking to

me. Her face glowed, and to hide her feeling she bent low over the

table as though she were short-sighted, and made a show of reading

the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable to her. I said good-bye

and went home.

IV

It was quite still out of doors; the village on the further side

of the pond was already asleep; there was not a light to be seen,

and only the stars were faintly reflected in the pond. At the gate

with the lions on it Genya was standing motionless, waiting to

escort me.

"Every one is asleep in the village," I said to her, trying to make

out her face in the darkness, and I saw her mournful dark eyes fixed

upon me. "The publican and the horse-stealers are asleep, while we,

well-bred people, argue and irritate each other."

It was a melancholy August night--melancholy because there was

already a feeling of autumn; the moon was rising behind a purple

cloud, and it shed a faint light upon the road and on the dark

fields of winter corn by the sides. From time to time a star fell.

Genya walked beside me along the road, and tried not to look at the

sky, that she might not see the falling stars, which for some reason

frightened her.

"I believe you are right," she said, shivering with the damp night

air. "If people, all together, could devote themselves to spiritual

ends, they would soon know everything."

"Of course. We are higher beings, and if we were really to recognise

the whole force of human genius and lived only for higher ends, we

should in the end become like gods. But that will never be--mankind

will degenerate till no traces of genius remain."

When the gates were out of sight, Genya stopped and shook hands

with me.

"Good-night," she said, shivering; she had nothing but her blouse

over her shoulders and was shrinking with cold. "Come to-morrow."

I felt wretched at the thought of being left alone, irritated and

dissatisfied with myself and other people; and I, too, tried not

to look at the falling stars. "Stay another minute," I said to her,

"I entreat you."

I loved Genya. I must have loved her because she met me when I came

and saw me off when I went away; because she looked at me tenderly

and enthusiastically. How touchingly beautiful were her pale face,

slender neck, slender arms, her weakness, her idleness, her reading.

And intelligence? I suspected in her intelligence above the average.

I was fascinated by the breadth of her views, perhaps because they

were different from those of the stern, handsome Lida, who disliked

me. Genya liked me, because I was an artist. I had conquered her

heart by my talent, and had a passionate desire to paint for her

sake alone; and I dreamed of her as of my little queen who with me

would possess those trees, those fields, the mists, the dawn, the

exquisite and beautiful scenery in the midst of which I had felt

myself hopelessly solitary and useless.

"Stay another minute," I begged her. "I beseech you."

I took off my overcoat and put it over her chilly shoulders; afraid

of looking ugly and absurd in a man's overcoat, she laughed, threw

it off, and at that instant I put my arms round her and covered her

face, shoulders, and hands with kisses.

"Till to-morrow," she whispered, and softly, as though afraid of

breaking upon the silence of the night, she embraced me. "We have

no secrets from one another. I must tell my mother and my sister

at once. . . . It's so dreadful! Mother is all right; mother likes

you--but Lida!"

She ran to the gates.

"Good-bye!" she called.

And then for two minutes I heard her running. I did not want to go

home, and I had nothing to go for. I stood still for a little time

hesitating, and made my way slowly back, to look once more at the

house in which she lived, the sweet, simple old house, which seemed

to be watching me from the windows of its upper storey, and

understanding all about it. I walked by the terrace, sat on the

seat by the tennis ground, in the dark under the old elm-tree, and

looked from there at the house. In the windows of the top storey

where Misuce slept there appeared a bright light, which changed to

a soft green--they had covered the lamp with the shade. Shadows

began to move. . . . I was full of tenderness, peace, and satisfaction

with myself--satisfaction at having been able to be carried away

by my feelings and having fallen in love, and at the same time I

felt uncomfortable at the thought that only a few steps away from

me, in one of the rooms of that house there was Lida, who disliked

and perhaps hated me. I went on sitting there wondering whether

Genya would come out; I listened and fancied I heard voices talking

upstairs.

About an hour passed. The green light went out, and the shadows

were no longer visible. The moon was standing high above the house,

and lighting up the sleeping garden and the paths; the dahlias and

the roses in front of the house could be seen distinctly, and looked

all the same colour. It began to grow very cold. I went out of the

garden, picked up my coat on the road, and slowly sauntered home.

When next day after dinner I went to the Voltchaninovs, the glass

door into the garden was wide open. I sat down on the terrace,

expecting Genya every minute, to appear from behind the flower-beds

on the lawn, or from one of the avenues, or that I should hear her

voice from the house. Then I walked into the drawing-room, the

dining-room. There was not a soul to be seen. From the dining-room

I walked along the long corridor to the hall and back. In this

corridor there were several doors, and through one of them I heard

the voice of Lida:

"'God . . . sent . . . a crow,'" she said in a loud, emphatic

voice, probably dictating--"'God sent a crow a piece of cheese

. . . . A crow . . . a piece of cheese.' . . . Who's there?" she

called suddenly, hearing my steps.

"It's I."

"Ah! Excuse me, I cannot come out to you this minute; I'm giving

Dasha her lesson."

"Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"

"No, she went away with my sister this morning to our aunt in the

province of Penza. And in the winter they will probably go abroad,"

she added after a pause. "'God sent . . . the crow . . . a piece

. . . of cheese.' . . . Have you written it?"

I went into the hall, and stared vacantly at the pond and the

village, and the sound reached me of "A piece of cheese. . . . God

sent the crow a piece of cheese."

And I went back by the way I had come here for the first time--

first from the yard into the garden past the house, then into the

avenue of lime-trees. . . . At this point I was overtaken by a small

boy who gave me a note:

"I told my sister everything and she insists on my parting from

you," I read. "I could not wound her by disobeying. God will give

you happiness. Forgive me. If only you knew how bitterly my mother

and I are crying!"

Then there was the dark fir avenue, the broken-down fence. . . .

On the field where then the rye was in flower and the corncrakes

were calling, now there were cows and hobbled horses. On the slope

there were bright green patches of winter corn. A sober workaday

feeling came over me and I felt ashamed of all I had said at the

Voltchaninovs', and felt bored with life as I had been before. When

I got home, I packed and set off that evening for Petersburg.

----

I never saw the Voltchaninovs again. Not long ago, on my way to the

Crimea, I met Byelokurov in the train. As before, he was wearing a

jerkin and an embroidered shirt, and when I asked how he was, he

replied that, God be praised, he was well. We began talking. He had

sold his old estate and bought another smaller one, in the name of

Liubov Ivanovna. He could tell me little about the Voltchaninovs.

Lida, he said, was still living in Shelkovka and teaching in the

school; she had by degrees succeeded in gathering round her a circle

of people sympathetic to her who made a strong party, and at the

last election had turned out Balagin, who had till then had the

whole district under his thumb. About Genya he only told me that

she did not live at home, and that he did not know where she was.

I am beginning to forget the old house, and only sometimes when I

am painting or reading I suddenly, apropos of nothing, remember the

green light in the window, the sound of my footsteps as I walked

home through the fields in the night, with my heart full of love,

rubbing my hands in the cold. And still more rarely, at moments

when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and

little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too

--that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet. . . .

Misuce, where are you?