Part 15

_In later years Chirikov abandoned his didactic themes and devoted himself entirely to purely psychological studies of provincial life which he knows so well and of which “Faust” is a good example._

_One of his plays, “The Chosen People,” was produced in America by the Orleniev Company of Russian actors, of which Mme. Nazimova was a member._

[Illustration]

FAUST BY EUGENE CHIRIKOV

Translated by Lizzie B. Gorin. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.

When Iván Mikhailovich awoke one morning, the whole household was already long up, and from the distance came the ringing voices of the children, the rattling of the breakfast dishes, the commanding voice of Maria Petrovna, his mother-in-law, and from the drawing-room the chirping of the canary, which sounded to his ears like a policeman’s whistle. He did not feel like getting up--he felt like lying a bit longer, too lazy to dress, therefore he smoked a few cigarettes before getting up strength for the ordeal.

He usually rose dissatisfied and out of sorts, because he did not much fancy the rules of life by which one had to hurry with ablutions, toilet, breakfast, and then go to the bank.

“Go and see if papa has awakened yet!” he heard his wife’s voice, and a moment afterward a round, little head was thrust through the doorway, and a child’s treble chimed in:

“Papa! Are you up?”

“I am, I am!” Iván Mikhailovich replied, ill-pleased, and angrily rinsed his mouth, gurgling, sputtering, and groaning.

At the breakfast table he sat sulky and preoccupied, as if wholly taken up with some very important thoughts, and did not deign to pay the least attention to any one. His wife, casually glancing up at him, thought: “He must have lost at cards at the club last night, and does not know now where to get the money to pay up.”

At ten, Iván Mikhailovich went to the bank, from which he returned at four, tired, hungry, and out of sorts. Sitting down to the table, he tucked his napkin under his chin, and ate with a loud smacking of the lips; after he had filled himself, he invariably grew good-natured, and said: “Well, now we shall take a little nap,” and went into his study, in which were displayed a bearskin, a pair of reindeer antlers, and a rifle from which he had never fired a shot. There he coughed and spat for a long time, and afterward snored so loudly that the children feared to approach too near the door of the study, and when the nurse wished to stop a fight or a quarrel between them, she would say: “There--the bear is asleep in papa’s room--I will let the bear out after you!”

Iván Mikhailovich was usually awakened about eight in the evening, when he would once more grow angry and shout: “Yes, yes, I hear,” immediately falling asleep again. Afterward he came out of the study puffy and heavy-eyed, looking indeed very much like a bear, and began to shout in a husky voice:

“I would like to know why I was not awakened in time?”

“You were, and you replied, ‘I hear!’”

“I did! Well, what of it? A person is not supposed to be responsible for what he says when half asleep. Is the samovár ready?”

Then he went into the dining-room, and sat down to the tea-table with his paper--and again with the appearance of a man whose thoughts are wholly occupied with very serious and important matters. His wife, Xenia Pavlovna, poured out the tea, and he could hardly see her face from behind the samovár. Maria Petrovna sat at the other end of the table, with a child’s stocking in her hand, which she was forever darning.

They were generally silent, only rarely exchanging laconic questions and answers: “More tea?”--“Please”--“Again there is no lemon?”--“Why, it is lying before your very nose!”

After tea Iván Mikhailovich went to his club, where he played cards, after which he had his supper there, and coming home about two past midnight, he found his wife already sleeping. Only Maria Petrovna was still up, and she usually met him in déshabillé, with an old wrap thrown over her shoulders, her hair in disorder, and with sighs. Iván Mikhailovich understood but too well the hidden meaning of these sighs: they expressed silent reproaches and indirect disapproval of his conduct. Therefore, while taking off his rubbers, Iván Mikhailovich said: “Please spare me your sighs!”

Xenia Pavlovna never reproached her husband. She had long ago become accustomed to either Iván Mikhailovich’s snoring or being away. Only Maria Petrovna could not become resigned to it.

“What kind of a husband is he! All you see of him is his dressing-gown on the peg,” she said.

“Oh, don’t say that, mother. All husbands are like that,” remarked Xenia Pavlovna, but her face became sad and clouded, and at last a sort of concentrated musing settled upon it. Walking up and down the salon in the twilight, she would keep thinking about something or other, and sing in a low, sweet voice: “Beyond the distant horizon there is a happy land.”

Then she shook her head with a jerk and went into the nursery. Here she played dolls with the children, romped about with them, and told them fairy-tales about Sister Alenushka and Brother Ivanushka.

The older boy was very like his father before the latter got into the habit of snoring and spitting and appearing before Xenia Pavlovna in his shirt-sleeves. Gazing at this boy of hers, Xenia Pavlovna was carried away into the past, and the dreams of her far-away youth, dimmed and partly obscured by time, drove out of her heart the feeling of emptiness, oppressive ennui, and dissatisfaction.

“Mama! Mamochka! Now tell us about Baba Yaga! Good?”

“Well, very good. Once there was a Baba Yaga, with a bony leg--”

“Did she snore?” asked the little girl, and her blue eyes opened wide, resting with fear and expectation on her mother’s face. Xenia Pavlovna broke out in a hearty laugh, caught her girlie in her arms, and, kissing her, forgot everything else in the world.

About twice a month they received. All their guests were sedate, respectable, and dull; people whose whole life ran smoothly, monotonously, without a hitch, through the same deep rut; they were all very tiresome, and loved to tell the same things over and over, and behave and act as if by long-established rule. First they sat in the drawing-room and spoke of their dwellings, of the weather, and while Xenia Pavlovna entertained them with conversation, her mother set the tea things, and while she filled the dishes with preserves she looked apprehensively into the jars and muttered: “It’s lasting so well that fresh fruit is not even to be thought of. The Lord grant it lasts till Easter.” And putting the sugar from the large paper bag into the cut-glass sugar-bowl, she thought aloud: “Twenty pounds, indeed! Why, even forty would not suffice!”

“Please come and have some tea!” she said invitingly, with an amiable, pleasant smile on her face. In the dining-room, where tea was served, they all took their places in a staid and dignified manner, making fun of those who were unlucky enough to get places at the table corners, telling them that they would not marry for seven years; and playing with their teaspoons, they said: “Merci,” and “Ach, if you will be so kind!” And then they once more returned to the talk about their apartments, the high price of provisions, and the ailments of the little ones. Tea finished, they repaired to the drawing-room, in which the little card-tables had already been placed, and provided with candles, cards, and chalk; everybody became livelier, and the oppressive frame of mind, under which people always labor when they are called upon to do something they had not come to do, was dispelled.

The gentlemen and ladies sat down at the tables, quarreled, disputed, reproached one another, and broke out simultaneously into peals of merriment; in the main, they all seemed now the most happy people in the world. They were so much engrossed with the play that they resembled maniacs, who could with difficulty understand if an outsider, there by some chance, not playing cards, and therefore suffering with ennui, spoke to them about some outside matter.

Xenia Pavlovna did not play: she and her mother were wholly taken up with the preparations for supper, while the guests were occupied with the whist-tables. She and Maria Petrovna quarreled a little on such occasions, but always managed to hide their differences from their guests.

When supper was announced all the guests sprang from their seats, pushed back their chairs, and laughingly went to the table. Only two of the most enthusiastic would remain in their places, and continue to wrangle and to gesticulate over the Knave of Spades, seeming not to care whether they had their supper or not, if only they could prove to each other the truth of their own assertions. The master of the house would put his arm about the waist of each and carry them off.

“Well, let us have a tiny one!” Iván Mikhailovich generally began. A few “tiny” ones were drunk without any well-wishing, then they drank the health of Xenia Pavlovna and the other ladies present. Their faces reddened, their eyes became languishing, and from across the table was continually heard: “Please pass the caviar this way, Peter Vasilievich!” or “Please send those delicious herrings our way, Nicolai Gregorievich!”

Bon mots, jests, and anecdotes were incessantly exchanged, some of them very stale and told for the fiftieth time at that very table. On these occasions Iván Mikhailovich never failed to recount with evident pride that he and Xenia had married for love. “Ours was a love match. I can almost say that I abducted Xenia Pavlovna.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, just so! I remember it as if it happened to-day. I nearly committed suicide! Yes! We had an appointment in the garden (a luxurious garden it was! They very foolishly sold both the house and garden!) Well, so I stand there in the old arbor, stand and wait. And my heart is beating so loudly that it seems to me that a train must be passing somewhere--tock-tock-tock!” Here Iván Mikhailovich began to tell in detail how it all happened, and Xenia Pavlovna listened to his narrative from where she sat, slightly blushing, with half-closed eyes, and a little shiver. “At last she arrived in a carriage!”

“Came on foot, not in a carriage!” Xenia Pavlovna unexpectedly corrected him, because every stroke, every detail of these far-away recollections was inexpressibly dear to her.

“Well, in a carriage or on foot. What material difference does it make!” angrily remarked Iván Mikhailovich, greatly displeased at being interrupted, and continued his story, totally ignoring the correction as well as Xenia Pavlovna herself, as if this Xenia Pavlovna and--that other one--about whom he was telling his guests had nothing whatsoever in common.

After supper they once more drank tea, yawned, covering the mouth with the hand, or with the napkin, and breathed hard, looking at their watches, and exchanging glances with their wives. “Yes, it is about time!” replied the wives, and the guests began to take their leave, the women kissed good-by, the men looked for their rubbers and hats, and again joked.

After the guests had gone, leaving behind them tobacco smoke, glasses half-full of undrunk tea, and the scraps of the supper, the house suddenly subsided into quiet and peace, and Xenia Pavlovna sank into a chair, and remained motionless in a silent antipathy to her surroundings. She rested from the idle talk, noise, amiable smiles, and entertaining, and felt as if she were just recovering from a serious illness or had had to go through some severe penance. The mother, passing through the drawing-room, quickly threw open the ventilators, and remarked: “Just like a barrack,” pulling out of the jardinieres the cigarette-stubs which had been stuck into the earth by the smokers, and, waxing angry: “I purposely placed two ash-trays on each card-table, but no! they must go and stick their cigarette-stubs into the flower-pots!” Then she began to set the house to rights and clear the tables; and all this she did with irritation. Iván Mikhailovich threw off his coat, opened his vest, and, walking through the rooms, yawned, opening his mouth wide and displaying his teeth. Then he went into the bedroom, undressed, and stretched himself comfortably on the soft mattress of the splendid, wide bed.

“Can’t you leave off putting the things in order till morning! Eh, how cleanliness has suddenly taken hold of them!” he shouted through the whole house, and listened: “Well, now the babes have revolted!”

From the nursery came the crying of the children and the soothing voice of his wife. Well, now he knew that the racket would go on for a long time--she would not get away from them so soon. And, turning to the wall, he pulled the coverlet higher.

Once or twice during the month they went visiting. And there the same story was repeated: conversations about the health of the little ones, the dwelling-houses, servants, the green tables, cigarette smoke, disputes about the Knave of Spades, and a supper with vodka, cheap wine, caviar, pickled herrings, and the indispensable cutlets and green pease. And after they left here, too, no doubt, was an opening of ventilators, and a perfect enjoyment of the ensuing quiet and peace.

And so their life went on from day to day, monotonous and tiresome, like a rainy evening, when everything is wet, gray, and cloudy--an oppressive, colorless life. “We live just as if we were turning over the pages of a cook-book. One day only differs from another in so far as that yesterday we had rice soup and cutlets for dinner, and to-day cabbage soup and cutlets,” sometimes thought Xenia Pavlovna, and a kind of despair suddenly took possession of all her being, and it seemed to her that she must decide on something, do something. But what should she do? And in reply to this a sad smile appeared on her lips--gentle and helpless--and her eyes filled with unbidden tears.

Then she would get a fit of the blues. Everything suddenly began to bore her, she did not care to see any one, nor talk to any one; it seemed to her that people spoke not of what they thought, nor of what interested them, but were, on the contrary, doing their best to hide their real thoughts; that they laughed at things not because they thought them laughable, but simply from politeness and wishing to appear amiable. And that all of them were only pretending to be good and clever, while in reality they were trivial, stupid, and unbearably tiresome.

She sat down at the window, resting her head on her hand, and looked out upon the street, where the tiresome, hateful day was dying away in a gray twilight. She remembered her youth, when life had seemed so big, with immeasurable horizons enveloped in an alluring, dove-colored mist, so interesting in its endless variations, so enigmatic and incomprehensible; when it seemed that the most important and wished-for thing was still before her, when her maiden heart stood still with fear and curiosity before the unknown future, when her heart was filled with a vague alarm in the expectation of a great happiness, perhaps the happiness of a triumphant love. And here it is--real life. The horizon ends with the grocery store across the street and is enveloped in the poesy of the cook-book. All of them live from day to day, are bored, gossip, speak of their dwellings, servants, occupations, play cards, bear children, and complain--the husbands about their wives and the wives about their husbands. And there is no triumphant love anywhere--but only triumphant triviality, rascality, and ennui. All that was interesting in life was already a thing of the past, it had all happened long before; then she had been supremely happy, and that happiness--which is given to one only once in life--passed away imperceptibly, and would nevermore return.

It grew darker; on the streets appeared timidly blinking yellow lights. The bells rang for vespers, and this ringing of the church-bells awakened in her soul something vague and alarming: a sad longing for something which had gone forever; or was it that it reproached the soul soiled by life? “Evening bells, evening bells!” Xenia whispered with a deep sigh.

Suddenly in the dim drawing-room appeared a whitish figure: it was Iván Mikhailovich, who came out of his study without a vest. He stretched, yawned, let out an “O-go-go-go!” and remarked: “I dined well and enjoyed a splendid snooze. What are you dreaming about?”

“Oh, just so, I was thinking what a tiresome affair it is to live in this world!”

“How is that! After you have given birth to three children you all at once begin to find life tiresome?”

“Oh, how commonplace and trivial this is!”

“Well, you are again in the dumps!” Iván Mikhailovich spoke angrily and turned away. Xenia Pavlovna broke into a laugh, then this laugh became intermixed with crying, and ended in hysterics.

“W-ell! The devil is loose!” muttered Iván Mikhailovich, and rang for the maid, whom he ordered to fetch some water. “Cold, from the faucet.”

His mother-in-law, rushing into the room, cried: “What is the matter? What have you done to her?” The whites of her eyes glittered in the dark, and her whole demeanor expressed a thirst for revenge and complete redress. “What have you done to her?”

“I have done absolutely nothing to her! And I do not know, absolutely do not know, why she started all this comedy! She is simply an unbalanced woman, your daughter is, absolutely unbalanced!”

“You have offended her?”

“Neither by word nor intention! I came into the drawing-room and found her moaning at the window; all at once, without provocation, she began to laugh, then to cry,” said Iván Mikhailovich, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating, and Maria Petrovna, whom Iván Mikhailovich, in moments of exasperation, sometimes called “the old witch,” did not believe him, and insistently demanded an explanation: “Don’t you tell me that. Where did you get it that she is unbalanced? We never had any one of an unbalanced mind in our family--every one was healthy and sane. What have you been doing to her?”

“All right, then! All right, if they were all sane and normal! I am glad to hear it!” said Iván Mikhailovich angrily, and speedily left the house. He went to the club, where he played cards, playing high from pure spite, and losing also from pure spitefulness. In the mean time Maria Petrovna walked around with a pained expression on her face, not being able to understand what had passed between the two. Several times she approached Xenia Pavlovna, and began:

“Why is all this quarreling going on in the house lately? What is the reason for it? Have you found out anything wrong about him, or what?”

“I have found out nothing!”

“Has he offended you in any way?”

“No, no, what makes you think so?”

“You do wrong to hide it from me. It will leak out somehow, do not fear. I shall find out everything, my lady!” Then she suddenly changed her tone and approached the matter from a different side:

“He is jealous. You should not provoke him.”

“Oh, please don’t! He is simply stupid, that is all!” Xenia Pavlovna interrupted her, laughing through her tears, and Maria Petrovna grew angry.

“If a wife speaks like that about her husband, no good will ever come of it!” And she began to defend her son-in-law with all her might, and in the end it appeared, according to her own words, that a better man than Iván Mikhailovich could not be found the world over. “Just look at others, little mother! Take, for instance, the husband of Kapitolina Ivanovna! And it is nothing to her, my lady. She does not complain--she suffers in silence, and would not even think of dubbing her husband ‘stupid’--as you are doing. Of course, what we have we are careless of--and once we lose it--we cry!”

Nevertheless she could get no explanation of what had occurred, and could only take refuge in guesswork and supposition.

She did not go to sleep till the return of her son-in-law, and, sitting in the drawing-room on the sofa, she continually pondered over what now most interested her, letting escape from time to time an “M’m.”

And Iván Mikhailovich, after he had supped and taken an extra glass or two, came home and announced himself by a ring so angry and imperious that it sounded noisily through the quiet rooms, and frightened Maria Petrovna. “He must be drunk,” she thought, and, opening the door, she did not even sigh as usual, but spoke lovingly. “There is some supper left for you in the dining-room.”

Iván Mikhailovich did not reply. He passed through the rooms with protesting step, banged the doors, coughed loudly, and, in general, gave one to understand that he was his own master. And to still more emphasize his independence, he did not go to sleep in the superb double bed with its silver ornaments, but lay down on the sofa in his study under the reindeer antlers and the rifle from which he had never fired a shot.

“Here, take at least a pillow!” came Maria Petrovna’s meek voice from the other side of the door, and the white corner of a pillow was thrust through the slightly open door of the study. Her son-in-law did not reply. “It is uncomfortable to lie that way, your neck will pain you.”

“Don’t you trouble yourself about my neck!” came from the cabinet.

But Maria Petrovna threw the pillow on an easy chair, and the door closed. Iván Mikhailovich was a man who prided himself on the strength of his character, and, therefore, he did not take the pillow, but supported his head with his fist and puffed while he thought of the oppressive disagreeableness of married life.

The dog Norma evidently took the part of the husband, and whenever the couple quarreled and occupied different sleeping rooms, the dog would not stay with the woman.

Opening the door of the study with her paw, she approached the sofa, placed her black muzzle on Iván Mikhailovich’s breast, and gazed at him with eyes that wished to say: “What hags they are, all of them! They even do not know how to appreciate a man like you!” Iván Mikhailovich felt a silent gratitude toward Norma, and patted her with his hand, pulling lovingly at her long ears. But the door of the study again opened slightly, and from the other side came the whisper of Maria Petrovna: “Norma! Norma!” But Norma did not go. Iván Mikhailovich held her by the collar and patted her with redoubled energy. “She will let in fleas,” again came the low voice. “Norma! Norma!”

Iván Mikhailovich sprang from the sofa, closing the door tightly, and the melodious sound of the lock-spring ended the diplomatic overtures of his mother-in-law.

“Sleeps with the dog. A fine thing this!” spoke the grumbling voice behind the door, and all became quiet.

These were scenes with dramatic elements and effects in them. But there were other scenes of the ordinary sort, so to speak, without the dramatic effects, scenes which were repeated regularly in the same form and in the very same expressions.