Part 15

I remembered one of the first storms. . . . Just the same sort of thunder had rumbled overhead in the forest the first time I was in the forester's house. . . . The “girl in red” and I were standing at the window then, looking out at the pine trees that were illuminated by the lightning. Dread shone in the eyes of that beautiful creature. She told me her mother had been killed by lightning, and that she herself was thirsting for an effective death. . . . She wanted to be dressed like the richest lady of the district. She understood that luxurious dress suited her beauty. And, conscious of her vain majesty, she wanted to mount to the top of the “Stone Grave” and there meet an effective death.

Her wish had . . . though not on the sto . . .*

* Here, unfortunately, there are again erasures. It is evident Kamyshev blotted out not at the time of writing but afterwards. At the end of the novel I will draw _special_ attention to these erasures.—A. Ch.

Losing all hope of falling asleep, I rose and sat down on the bed. The quiet murmur of the rain gradually changed into the angry roar I was so fond of hearing when my soul was free from dread and wrath. . . . Now this roar appeared to me to be ominous. One clap of thunder succeeded the other without intermission.

“The husband killed his wife!” croaked the parrot.

Those were its last words. . . . Closing my eyes in pusillanimous fear, I groped my way in the dark to the cage and hurled it into a corner. . . .

“May the devil take you!” I cried, when I heard the clatter of the falling cage and the squeak of the parrot.

Poor, noble bird! That flight into the corner cost it dear. The next day the cage contained only a cold corpse. Why did I kill it? If its favourite phrase about a husband who killed his wife remin . . .*

* Here nearly a whole page is carelessly blotted out. Only a few words are spared, which give no clue to the meaning of what is obliterated.—A. Ch.

My predecessor's mother when she gave up the lodging to me made me pay for the whole of the furniture, not excepting the photographs of people I did not know. But she did not take a kopeck from me for the expensive parrot. On the eve of her departure for Finland she passed the whole night taking leave of her noble bird. I remember the sobs and the lamentations that accompanied this leave-taking. I remember the tears she shed when asking me to take care of her friend until her return. I gave her my word of honour that her parrot would not regret having made my acquaintance. And I had not kept that word! I had killed the bird. I can imagine what the old woman would say if she knew of the fate of her screamer!

XXIII

Somebody tapped gently at my window. The little house in which I lived stood on the high road, and was one of the first houses in the village, and I often heard a tap at my window, especially in bad weather when a wayfarer sought a night's lodging. This time it was no wayfarer who knocked at my window. I went up to the window and waited there for a flash of lightning, when I saw the dark silhouette of a tall thin man. He was standing before the window and seemed to be shivering with cold. I opened the window.

“Who is there? What do you want?” I asked.

“Sergey Petrovich, it's I!” I heard a plaintive voice, such as people have who are starved with cold and fright. “It's I! I've come to you, dear friend!”

To my great astonishment, I recognized in the plaintive voice of the dark silhouette the voice of my friend Doctor Pavel Ivanovich. This visit of “Screw's,” who led a regular life and went to bed before twelve, was quite incomprehensible. What could have caused him to change his rules and appear at my house at two o'clock in the night, and in such weather too?

“What do you want?” I asked, at the same time in the bottom of my heart sending this unexpected guest to the devil.

“Forgive me, golubchik. . . . I wanted to knock at the door, but your Polycarp is sure to be sleeping like a dead man now, so I decided to tap at the window.”

“But what do you want?”

Pavil Ivanovich came close up to my window and mumbled something incomprehensible. He was trembling, and looked like a drunken man.

“I am listening!” I said, losing my patience.

“You . . . you are angry, I see; but . . . if you only knew all that has happened you would cease to be angry at your sleep being disturbed by visitors at an unseemly hour. It's no time for sleep now. Oh, my God, my God! I have lived in the world for thirty years, and to-day is the first time I am so terribly unhappy! I am unhappy, Sergey Petrovich!”

“Ach! but what has happened? And what have I to do with it? I myself can scarcely stand on my legs. . . . I can't be bothered about others!”

“Sergey Petrovich!” Screw said in a plaintive voice, stretching out towards my head his hand wet with rain, “Honest man! My friend!”

And then I heard a man crying. The doctor wept.

“Pavel Ivanovich, go home!” I said after a short silence. “I can't talk with you now. . . . I am afraid of my own mood, and of yours. We won't understand each other. . . .”

“My dear friend!” the doctor said in an imploring voice, “Marry her.”

“You've gone mad!” I said, and banged the window to. . . .

First the parrot, then the doctor suffered from my mood. I did not ask him to come in, and I slammed the window in his face. Two rude and indecorous sallies for which I would have challenged anybody, even a woman, to a duel.* But meek and good-natured “Screw” had no ideas about duels. He did not know what it is to be angry.

* The last sentence is written above some erased lines in which, however, one can decipher: “would have torn his head from his shoulders and broken all the windows.”—A. Ch.

About two minutes later there was a flash of lightning, and glancing out of the window I saw the bent figure of my guest. His pose this time was one of supplication, of expectancy, the pose of a beggar watching for alms. He was probably waiting for me to pardon him, and to allow him to say what he had to communicate.

Fortunately my conscience was moved; I was sorry for myself, sorry that nature had implanted in me so much violence and meanness. My base soul as well as my healthy body were as hard as flint.*

* Here follows a pretentiously-plastic explanation of the spiritual endurance of the author. The sight of human affliction, blood, post-mortem examinations, etc., etc., he maintains, produce no effect on him. The whole of this passage bears the imprint of boastful _naïveté_ and insincerity. It astonishes by its coarseness, and I have deleted it. As a characterization of Kamyshev it has no importance.—A. Ch.

I went to the window and opened it.

“Come into the room!” I said.

“Never! . . . Every minute is precious! Poor Nadia has poisoned herself, and the doctor cannot leave her side. . . . With difficulty we saved the poor thing. . . . Such a misfortune! And you don't want to hear it and slam the window to!”

“Still she is alive?”

“‘Still’! . . . My good friend, that is not the way to speak about misfortunes! Who could have supposed that such a clever, honest nature would want to depart this life on account of such a creature as that Count? No, my friend, it is a misfortune for men that women cannot be perfect! However clever a woman may be, with whatever perfections she may be endowed, she has still a screw in her that prevents her and other people from living. . . . For instance, let us take Nadia. . . . Why did she do it? Self-love, nothing but self-love! Unhealthy self-love! In order to wound you she conceived the idea of marrying this Count. . . . She neither wanted his money nor his title . . . she only wanted to satisfy her monstrous self-love. . . . Suddenly a failure! You know that _his_ wife has arrived. . . . It appears that this debauchee is married. . . . And people say that women are more enduring, that they know how to suffer better than men! Where is there endurance here, when such a miserable cause makes them snatch up sulphur matches? This is not endurance, it is vanity!”

“You will catch cold. . . .”

“What I have just seen is worse than any cold. . . . Those eyes, that pallor. . . . Oh! To unsuccessful love, to the unsuccessful attempt to mortify you is now added unsuccessful suicide. . . . It is difficult to imagine greater misfortunes! . . . My dear fellow, if you have but a drop of compassion, if . . . if you would see her . . . Well, why should you not go to her? You love her! Even if you do not love her, why should you not sacrifice your leisure to her? Human life is precious, and for it one can give . . . all! Save her life!”

Somebody knocked loudly at my door. I shuddered. . . . My heart bled. . . . I do not believe in presentiments, but this time my alarm was not without cause. . . . Somebody was knocking at my door from without. . . .

“Who is there?” I cried out of the window.

“I come to beg your favour!”

“What do you want?”

“A letter from the Count, your Honour! There has been a murder!”

A dark figure muffled up in a sheepskin coat came to the window and, swearing at the weather, handed me a letter. . . . I hurried away from the window, lit a candle, and read the following: “For God's sake forget everything in the world and come at once! Olga has been murdered. I have lost my head and am going mad.—Yours, A. K.”

Olga murdered! My head grew dizzy, and it was black before my eyes, from this short phrase. . . . I sat down on the bed and my hands fell at my sides. I was unable to reason!

“Is that you, Pavel Ivanovich?” I heard the voice of the muzhik who had been sent to me ask. “I was just going to drive on to you. . . . I have a letter for you, too.”

Five minutes later “Screw” and I were driving in a closed carriage towards the Count's estate. The rain rattled on the roof of the carriage, and the whole time there were blinding flashes of lightning in front of us.

XXIV

We heard the roar of the lake. . . .

The last act of the drama was just beginning, and two of the actors were driving to see a harrowing sight.

“Well, and what do you think awaits us?” I asked dear Pavel Ivanovich.

“I can't imagine. . . . I don't know. . . .”

“I also don't know. . . .”

“Hamlet once regretted that the Lord of heaven and earth had forbidden the sin of suicide; in like manner I regret that fate has made me a doctor. . . . I regret it deeply!”

“I fear that, in my turn, I must regret that I am an examining magistrate,” I said. “If the Count has not made a mistake and confounded murder with suicide, and if Olga has really been murdered, my poor nerves will have much to suffer!”

“You can refuse this affair!”

I looked inquiringly at Pavel Ivanovich, but, of course, owing to the darkness, I could see nothing. . . . How could he know that I could refuse this affair? I was Olga's lover, but who knew it, with the exception of Olga herself and perhaps also Pshekhotsky, who had favoured me once with applause?

“Why do you think I can refuse?” I asked “Screw.”

“You could fall ill, or tender your resignation. All this is not dishonourable, because there is somebody to take your place. A doctor is placed in quite other conditions.”

“Only that?” I thought.

Our carriage, after a long, wearisome drive over the clayey roads stopped at last before the porch. Two windows just above the porch were brightly illuminated Through the one on the right side, which was in Olga's room, a dim light issued. All the other windows looked like black spots. On the stairs we met the Scops-Owl. She looked at me with her piercing little eyes, and her wrinkled face became more wrinkled in an evil, mocking smile.

Her eyes seemed to say “You'll have a great surprise!”

She probably thought we had come to carouse, and we did not know there was grief in the house.

“Let me draw your attention to this,” I said to Pavil Ivanovich, as I pulled the cap off the old woman's head and exposed her completely bare pate. “This old witch is ninety years old, my good soul. If some day you and I had to make a post-mortem examination of her, we should arrive at very different conclusions. You would find senile atrophy of the brain, and I would assure you that she was the cleverest and the most cunning creature in the whole district. . . . The devil in petticoats!”

I was astounded when I entered the ballroom. The picture I saw there was quite unexpected. All the chairs and sofas were occupied by people. . . . Groups of people were standing about in the corners and near the windows. . . . Where had they all come from? If anybody had told me I would meet these people there, I would have laughed at him. Their presence was so improbable and out of place in the Count's house at that time, when in one of the rooms Olga was either dying or already lying dead. They were the gipsy chorus of the chief gipsy Karpov from the restaurant “London”; the same chorus which is known to the reader from one of the first chapters of this book.

When I entered the room my old friend Tina, having recognized me, left one of the groups and came towards me with a cry of joy. A smile spread over her pale and dark complexioned cheeks when I gave her my hand, and tears rose to her eyes when she wanted to tell me something. . . . Tears prevented her from speaking, and I was not able to obtain a single word from her. I turned to the other gipsies, and they explained their presence in the house in this way. In the morning the Count had sent them a telegram demanding that the whole chorus should be at the Count's estate without fail by nine o'clock that evening. In execution of this order they had taken the train and had been in this hall by eight o'clock.

“We had thought to afford pleasure to his Excellency and his guests. . . . We know so many new songs! . . . And suddenly. . . .”

“And suddenly a muzhik arrived on horseback, with the news that a brutal murder had been committed at the shooting party and with the order to prepare a bed for Olga Nikolaevna. The muzhik was not believed, because he was as drunk as a swine, but when a noise was heard on the stairs and a black figure was borne through the dancing hall, there was no more possibility to doubt. . . .”

“And now we don't know what to do! We can't remain here. . . . When the priest comes it is time for gay people to depart. . . . Besides, all the chorus girls are alarmed and crying. . . . They can't be in the same house with a corpse. . . . We must go away, but they won't give us horses! His Excellency the Count is lying ill in bed and will not see anybody, and the servants only laugh at us when we ask for horses. . . . How can we go on foot in such weather and on such a dark night? The servants are in general terribly rude! When we asked for a samovar for our ladies they sent us to the devil. . . .”

All these complaints ended in tearful requests to my magnanimity. Could I not obtain vehicles to enable them to depart from this “accursed” house?

“If the horses are not in the paddocks, and the coachmen have not been sent somewhere, you shall get away,” I said. “I'll give the order. . . .”

The poor people, dressed out in their burlesque costumes, and accustomed to coquet with their swaggering manners, looked very awkward with their sober countenances and undecided poses. My promise to get them sent to the station somewhat encouraged them. The whispers of the men turned into loud talk, and the women ceased crying.

XXV

Then I went to the Count's study, and as I passed through a whole suite of dark, unlighted rooms, I looked into one of the numerous doors. I saw a touching picture. At a table near a boiling samovar Zosia and her brother Pshekhotsky were seated. . . . Zosia, dressed in a light blouse but still wearing the same bracelets and rings, was smelling at a scent bottle and sipping tea from her cup with fastidious languor. Her eyes were red with weeping. . . . Probably the occurrences at the shooting party had shaken her nerves very much, and had spoilt her frame of mind for a long time to come. Pshekhotsky, with his usual wooden face, was lapping up his tea in large gulps from the saucer and saying something to his sister. To judge from the mentor-like expression of his face, he was trying to calm her and persuade her not to cry.

I naturally found the Count with entirely shattered nerves. This puny and flabby man looked thinner and more fallen in than ever. . . . He was pale, and his lips trembled as if with ague. His head was tied up in a white pocket-handkerchief, which exhaled a strong odour of vinegar that filled the whole room. When I entered the room he jumped up from the sofa, on which he was lying, and rushed towards me wrapped up in the folds of his dressing-gown.

“Oh! oh!” he began, trembling and in a choking voice. “Well?”

And uttering some inarticulate sounds, he pulled me by the sleeve to the sofa and, waiting till I was seated, he pressed against me like a frightened dog and began to pour out all his grievances.

“Who could have expected it? Eh? Wait a moment, golubchik, I'll cover myself up with the plaid. . . . I have fever. . . . Murdered, poor thing! And how brutally murdered! She's still alive, but the village doctor says she'll die this night. . . . A terrible day! . . . She arrived without rhyme or reason, that . . . wife of mine . . . may the devil take her! . . . That was my most unfortunate mistake, Serezha; I was married in Petersburg when drunk. I hid it from you. I was ashamed of it, but there—she has arrived, and you can see her for yourself. . . . Look and be punished. . . . Oh, the accursed weakness! Under the influence of the moment and vodka, I'm capable of doing anything you like! The arrival of my wife is the first present, the scandal with Olga the second. . . . I'm expecting a third. . . . I know what will happen next. . . . I know! I'll go mad! . . .”

Having drunk three glasses of vodka and called himself an ass, a scoundrel and a drunkard, the Count began in a whimpering voice and a confused manner to describe the drama that had taken place at the shooting party. . . . What he told me was approximately the following: About twenty or thirty minutes after I had left, when the astonishment at Zosia's arrival had somewhat subsided, and when Zosia herself, having made acquaintance with the guests, began to play the part of hostess, the company suddenly heard a piercing, heartrending shriek. This shriek came from the forest and was repeated four times. It was so extraordinary that the people who heard it sprang to their feet, the dogs began to bark, and the horses pricked up their ears. The shriek was unnatural, but the Count was able to recognize in it a woman's voice. . . . There were notes of despair and terror in it. . . .

Women must shriek in that way when they see a ghost, or at the sudden death of a child. . . . The alarmed guests looked at the Count; the Count looked at them. . . . For about three minutes there was the silence of the grave.

While the ladies and gentlemen looked at each other, the coachmen and lackeys rushed towards the place from which the cry had come. The first messenger of grief was the old manservant, Il'ya. He ran back to the clearing from the forest, with a pale face, dilated pupils, and wanted to say something, but breathlessness and excitement prevented him from speaking. At last, overcoming his agitation, he crossed himself and said:

“The missis has been murdered!”

“What missis? Who had murdered her?”

But Il'ya made no reply to these questions. . . . The part of the second messenger fell to the lot of a man who was not expected and whose appearance caused general surprise. Both the sudden appearance and the look of this man were astonishing. . . . When the Count saw him, and remembered that Olga was walking about in the forest, his heart sank, and from a terrible presentiment his legs gave way under him.

It was Pëtr Egorych Urbenin, the Count's former bailiff and Olga's husband. At first the company heard heavy footsteps and the cracking of brushwood. . . . It seemed as if a bear was making his way from the forest to the clearing. Then the heavy form of unfortunate Pëtr Egorych came in sight. When he came out of the forest and saw the company assembled on the clearing, he stepped back and stopped as if he were rooted to the ground. For about two minutes he remained silent and motionless, and in this way gave the people time to examine him properly. He had his usual grey jacket on and trousers that were already well worn. He was without a hat, and his matted hair stuck to his sweaty brow and temples. . . . His face, which was usually purple and often almost blue, was now quite pale. . . . His eyes looked around senselessly, staring wildly. . . . His hands and lips trembled. . . .