No More Learning

Perhaps in it there was said all that N. had scarcely
hoped to express in their brief, hurried interview. He had not even
dismounted. . . . Whether he had been in haste or whether he had been
afraid of being false to himself at the hour of parting--God only
knows. . . .

I stopped, without coming out on the path, threw the envelope in the
most conspicuous place on it, and kept my eyes upon it, supposing that
Mme. M. would notice the loss and come back and look for it. But after
waiting four minutes I could stand it no longer, I picked up my find
again, put it in my pocket, and set off to overtake Mme. M. I came upon
her in the big avenue in the garden. She was walking straight towards
the house with a swift and hurried step, though she was lost in thought,
and her eyes were on the ground. I did not know what to do. Go up to
her, give it her? That would be as good as saying that I knew
everything, that I had seen it all. I should betray myself at the first
word. And how should I look, at her? How would she look at me. I kept
expecting that she would discover her loss and return on her tracks.
Then I could, unnoticed, have flung the envelope on the path and she
would have found it. But no! We were approaching the house; she had
already been noticed. . . .

As ill-luck would have it every one had got up very early that day,
because, after the unsuccessful expedition of the evening before, they
had arranged something new, of which I had heard nothing. All were
preparing to set off, and were having breakfast in the verandah. I
waited for ten minutes, that I might not be seen with Mme. M. , and
making a circuit of the garden approached the house from the other side
a long time after her. She was walking up and down the verandah with her
arms folded, looking pale and agitated, and was obviously trying her
utmost to suppress the agonizing, despairing misery which could be
plainly discerned in her eyes, her walk, her every movement. Sometimes
she went down the verandah steps and walked a few paces among the
flower-beds in the direction of the garden; her eyes were impatiently,
greedily, even incautiously, seeking something on the sand of the path
and on the floor of the verandah. There could be no doubt she had
discovered her loss and imagined she had dropped the letter somewhere
here, near the house--yes, that must be so, she was convinced of it.

Some one noticed that she was pale and agitated, and others made the
same remark. She was besieged with questions about her health and
condolences. She had to laugh, to jest, to appear lively. From time to
time she looked at her husband, who was standing at the end of the
terrace talking to two ladies, and the poor woman was overcome by the
same shudder, the same embarrassment, as on the day of his first
arrival. Thrusting my hand into my pocket and holding the letter tight
in it, I stood at a little distance from them all, praying to fate that
Mme. M. should notice me. I longed to cheer her up, to relieve her
anxiety if only by a glance; to say a word to her on the sly. But when
she did chance to look at me I dropped my eyes.

I saw her distress and I was not mistaken. To this day I don't know her
secret. I know nothing but what I saw and what I have just described.
The intrigue was not such, perhaps, as one might suppose at the first
glance. Perhaps that kiss was the kiss of farewell, perhaps it was the
last slight reward for the sacrifice made to her peace and honour. N.
was going away, he was leaving her, perhaps for ever. Even that letter I
was holding in my hand--who can tell what it contained! How can one
judge? and who can condemn? And yet there is no doubt that the sudden
discovery of her secret would have been terrible--would have been a
fatal blow for her. I still remember her face at that minute, it could
not have shown more suffering. To feel, to know, to be convinced, to
expect, as though it were one's execution, that in a quarter of an hour,
in a minute perhaps, all might be discovered, the letter might be found
by some one, picked up; there was no address on it, it might be opened,
and then. . . . What then? What torture could be worse than what was
awaiting her? She moved about among those who would be her judges. In
another minute their smiling flattering faces would be menacing and
merciless. She would read mockery, malice and icy contempt on those
faces, and then her life would be plunged in everlasting darkness, with
no dawn to follow. . . . Yes, I did not understand it then as I understand
it now. I could only have vague suspicions and misgivings, and a
heart-ache at the thought of her danger, which I could not fully
understand. But whatever lay hidden in her secret, much was expiated, if
expiation were needed, by those moments of anguish of which I was
witness and which I shall never forget.

But then came a cheerful summons to set off; immediately every one was
bustling about gaily; laughter and lively chatter were heard on all
sides. Within two minutes the verandah was deserted. Mme. M. declined to
join the party, acknowledging at last that she was not well. But, thank
God, all the others set off, every one was in haste, and there was no
time to worry her with commiseration, inquiries, and advice. A few
remained at home. Her husband said a few words to her; she answered that
she would be all right directly, that he need not be uneasy, that there
was no occasion for her to lie down, that she would go into the garden,
alone . . . with me . . . here she glanced at me. Nothing could be more
fortunate! I flushed with pleasure, with delight; a minute later we were
on the way.

She walked along the same avenues and paths by which she had returned
from the copse, instinctively remembering the way she had come, gazing
before her with her eyes fixed on the ground, looking about intently
without answering me, possibly forgetting that I was walking beside her.

But when we had already reached the place where I had picked up the
letter, and the path ended, Mme. M. suddenly stopped, and in a voice
faint and weak with misery said that she felt worse, and that she would
go home. But when she reached the garden fence she stopped again and
thought a minute; a smile of despair came on her lips, and utterly worn
out and exhausted, resigned, and making up her mind to the worst, she
turned without a word and retraced her steps, even forgetting to tell me
of her intention.

My heart was torn with sympathy, and I did not know what to do.

We went, or rather I led her, to the place from which an hour before I
had heard the tramp of a horse and their conversation. Here, close to a
shady elm tree, was a seat hewn out of one huge stone, about which grew
ivy, wild jasmine, and dog-rose; the whole wood was dotted with little
bridges, arbours, grottoes, and similar surprises. Mme. M. sat down on
the bench and glanced unconsciously at the marvellous view that lay open
before us. A minute later she opened her book, and fixed her eyes upon
it without reading, without turning the pages, almost unconscious of
what she was doing. It was about half-past nine. The sun was already
high and was floating gloriously in the deep, dark blue sky, as though
melting away in its own light. The mowers were by now far away; they
were scarcely visible from our side of the river; endless ridges of mown
grass crept after them in unbroken succession, and from time to time the
faintly stirring breeze wafted their fragrance to us. The never ceasing
concert of those who "sow not, neither do they reap" and are free as the
air they cleave with their sportive wings was all about us. It seemed as
though at that moment every flower, every blade of grass was exhaling
the aroma of sacrifice, was saying to its Creator, "Father, I am blessed
and happy. "

I glanced at the poor woman, who alone was like one dead amidst all this
joyous life; two big tears hung motionless on her lashes, wrung from her
heart by bitter grief. It was in my power to relieve and console this
poor, fainting heart, only I did not know how to approach the subject,
how to take the first step. I was in agonies. A hundred times I was on
the point of going up to her, but every time my face glowed like fire.

Suddenly a bright idea dawned upon me. I had found a way of doing it; I
revived.

"Would you like me to pick you a nosegay? " I said, in such a joyful
voice that Mme M. immediately raised her head and looked at me intently.

"Yes, do," she said at last in a weak voice, with a faint smile, at once
dropping her eyes on the book again.

"Or soon they will be mowing the grass here and there will be no
flowers," I cried, eagerly setting to work.

I had soon picked my nosegay, a poor, simple one, I should have been
ashamed to take it indoors; but how light my heart was as I picked the
flowers and tied them up! The dog-rose and the wild jasmine I picked
closer to the seat, I knew that not far off there was a field of rye,
not yet ripe. I ran there for cornflowers; I mixed them with tall ears
of rye, picking out the finest and most golden. Close by I came upon a
perfect nest of forget-me-nots, and my nosegay was almost complete.
Farther away in the meadow there were dark-blue campanulas and wild
pinks, and I ran down to the very edge of the river to get yellow
water-lilies. At last, making my way back, and going for an instant into
the wood to get some bright green fan-shaped leaves of the maple to put
round the nosegay, I happened to come across a whole family of pansies,
close to which, luckily for me, the fragrant scent of violets betrayed
the little flower hiding in the thick lush grass and still glistening
with drops of dew. The nosegay was complete. I bound it round with fine
long grass which twisted into a rope, and I carefully lay the letter in
the centre, hiding it with the flowers, but in such a way that it could
be very easily noticed if the slightest attention were bestowed upon my
nosegay.

I carried it to Mme. M.

On the way it seemed to me that the letter was lying too much in view: I
hid it a little more. As I got nearer I thrust it still further in the
flowers; and finally, when I was on the spot, I suddenly poked it so
deeply into the centre of the nosegay that it could not be noticed at
all from outside. My cheeks were positively flaming. I wanted to hide my
face in my hands and run away at once, but she glanced at my flowers as
though she had completely forgotten that I had gathered them.
Mechanically, almost without looking, she held out her hand and took my
present; but at once laid it on the seat as though I had handed it to
her for that purpose and dropped her eyes to her book again, seeming
lost in thought. I was ready to cry at this mischance. "If only my
nosegay were close to her," I thought; "if only she had not forgotten
it! " I lay down on the grass not far off, put my right arm under my
head, and closed my eyes as though I were overcome by drowsiness. But I
waited, keeping my eyes fixed on her.

Ten minutes passed, it seemed to me that she was getting paler and paler
. . . fortunately a blessed chance came to my aid.

This was a big, golden bee, brought by a kindly breeze, luckily for me.
It first buzzed over my head, and then flew up to Mme. M. She waved it
off once or twice, but the bee grew more and more persistent. At last
Mme. M. snatched up my nosegay and waved it before my face. At that
instant the letter dropped out from among the flowers and fell straight
upon the open book. I started. For some time Mme. M. , mute with
amazement, stared first at the letter and then at the flowers which she
was holding in her hands, and she seemed unable to believe her eyes. All
at once she flushed, started, and glanced at me. But I caught her
movement and I shut my eyes tight, pretending to be asleep. Nothing
would have induced me to look her straight in the face at that moment.
My heart was throbbing and leaping like a bird in the grasp of some
village boy. I don't remember how long I lay with my eyes shut, two or
three minutes. At last I ventured to open them. Mme. M. was greedily
reading the letter, and from her glowing cheeks, her sparkling, tearful
eyes, her bright face, every feature of which was quivering with joyful
emotion, I guessed that there was happiness in the letter and all her
misery was dispersed like smoke. An agonizing, sweet feeling gnawed at
my heart, it was hard for me to go on pretending. . . .

I shall never forget that minute!

Suddenly, a long way off, we heard voices--

"Mme. M. ! Natalie! Natalie! "

Mme. M. did not answer, but she got up quickly from the seat, came up to
me and bent over me. I felt that she was looking straight into my face.
My eyelashes quivered, but I controlled myself and did not open my eyes.
I tried to breathe more evenly and quietly, but my heart smothered me
with its violent throbbing. Her burning breath scorched my cheeks; she
bent close down to my face as though trying to make sure. At last a kiss
and tears fell on my hand, the one which was lying on my breast.

"Natalie! Natalie! where are you," we heard again, this time quite
close.

"Coming," said Mme. M. , in her mellow, silvery voice, which was so
choked and quivering with tears and so subdued that no one but I could
hear that, "Coming! "

But at that instant my heart at last betrayed me and seemed to send all
my blood rushing to my face. At that instant a swift, burning kiss
scalded my lips. I uttered a faint cry. I opened my eyes, but at once
the same gauze kerchief fell upon them, as though she meant to screen me
from the sun. An instant later she was gone. I heard nothing but the
sound of rapidly retreating steps. I was alone. . . .

I pulled off her kerchief and kissed it, beside myself with rapture; for
some moments I was almost frantic. . . .
Hardly able to breathe, leaning on
my elbow on the grass, I stared unconsciously before me at the
surrounding slopes, streaked with cornfields, at the river that flowed
twisting and winding far away, as far as the eye could see, between
fresh hills and villages that gleamed like dots all over the sunlit
distance--at the dark-blue, hardly visible forests, which seemed as
though smoking at the edge of the burning sky, and a sweet stillness
inspired by the triumphant peacefulness of the picture gradually brought
calm to my troubled heart. I felt more at ease and breathed more freely,
but my whole soul was full of a dumb, sweet yearning, as though a veil
had been drawn from my eyes as though at a foretaste of something. My
frightened heart, faintly quivering with expectation, was groping
timidly and joyfully towards some conjecture . . . and all at once my
bosom heaved, began aching as though something had pierced it, and
tears, sweet tears, gushed from my eyes. I hid my face in my hands, and
quivering like a blade of grass, gave myself up to the first
consciousness and revelation of my heart, the first vague glimpse of my
nature. My childhood was over from that moment.

* * * * *

When two hours later I returned home I did not find Mme. M. Through some
sudden chance she had gone back to Moscow with her husband. I never saw
her again.




MR. PROHARTCHIN

A STORY


In the darkest and humblest corner of Ustinya Fyodorovna's flat lived
Semyon Ivanovitch Prohartchin, a well-meaning elderly man, who did not
drink. Since Mr. Prohartchin was of a very humble grade in the service,
and received a salary strictly proportionate to his official capacity,
Ustinya Fyodorovna could not get more than five roubles a month from him
for his lodging. Some people said that she had her own reasons for
accepting him as a lodger; but, be that as it may, as though in despite
of all his detractors, Mr. Prohartchin actually became her favourite, in
an honourable and virtuous sense, of course. It must be observed that
Ustinya Fyodorovna, a very respectable woman, who had a special
partiality for meat and coffee, and found it difficult to keep the
fasts, let rooms to several other boarders who paid twice as much as
Semyon Ivanovitch, yet not being quiet lodgers, but on the contrary all
of them "spiteful scoffers" at her feminine ways and her forlorn
helplessness, stood very low in her good opinion, so that if it had not
been for the rent they paid, she would not have cared to let them stay,
nor indeed to see them in her flat at all. Semyon Ivanovitch had become
her favourite from the day when a retired, or, perhaps more correctly
speaking, discharged clerk, with a weakness for strong drink, was
carried to his last resting-place in Volkovo. Though this gentleman had
only one eye, having had the other knocked out owing, in his own words,
to his valiant behaviour; and only one leg, the other having been broken
in the same way owing to his valour; yet he had succeeded in winning all
the kindly feeling of which Ustinya Fyodorovna was capable, and took the
fullest advantage of it, and would probably have gone on for years
living as her devoted satellite and toady if he had not finally drunk
himself to death in the most pitiable way. All this had happened at
Peski, where Ustinya Fyodorovna only had three lodgers, of whom, when
she moved into a new flat and set up on a larger scale, letting to about
a dozen new boarders, Mr. Prohartchin was the only one who remained.

Whether Mr. Prohartchin had certain incorrigible defects, or whether his
companions were, every one of them, to blame, there seemed to be
misunderstandings on both sides from the first. We must observe here
that all Ustinya Fyodorovna's new lodgers without exception got on
together like brothers; some of them were in the same office; each one
of them by turns lost all his money to the others at faro, preference
and _bixe_; they all liked in a merry hour to enjoy what they called the
fizzing moments of life in a crowd together; they were fond, too, at
times of discussing lofty subjects, and though in the end things rarely
passed off without a dispute, yet as all prejudices were banished from
the whole party the general harmony was not in the least disturbed
thereby. The most remarkable among the lodgers were Mark Ivanovitch, an
intelligent and well-read man; then Oplevaniev; then Prepolovenko, also
a nice and modest person; then there was a certain Zinovy Prokofyevitch,
whose object in life was to get into aristocratic society; then there
was Okeanov, the copying clerk, who had in his time almost wrested the
distinction of prime favourite from Semyon Ivanovitch; then another
copying clerk called Sudbin; the plebeian Kantarev; there were others
too. But to all these people Semyon Ivanovitch was, as it were, not one
of themselves. No one wished him harm, of course, for all had from the
very first done Prohartchin justice, and had decided in Mark
Ivanovitch's words that he, Prohartchin, was a good and harmless fellow,
though by no means a man of the world, trustworthy, and not a flatterer,
who had, of course, his failings; but that if he were sometimes unhappy
it was due to nothing else but lack of imagination. What is more, Mr.
Prohartchin, though deprived in this way of imagination, could never
have made a particularly favourable impression from his figure or
manners (upon which scoffers are fond of fastening), yet his figure did
not put people against him. Mark Ivanovitch, who was an intelligent
person, formally undertook Semyon Ivanovitch's defence, and declared in
rather happy and flowery language that Prohartchin was an elderly and
respectable man, who had long, long ago passed the age of romance. And
so, if Semyon Ivanovitch did not know how to get on with people, it must
have been entirely his own fault.

The first thing they noticed was the unmistakable parsimony and
niggardliness of Semyon Ivanovitch. That was at once observed and noted,
for Semyon Ivanovitch would never lend any one his teapot, even for a
moment; and that was the more unjust as he himself hardly ever drank
tea, but when he wanted anything drank, as a rule, rather a pleasant
decoction of wild flowers and certain medicinal herbs, of which he
always had a considerable store. His meals, too, were quite different
from the other lodgers'. He never, for instance, permitted himself to
partake of the whole dinner, provided daily by Ustinya Fyodorovna for
the other boarders. The dinner cost half a rouble; Semyon Ivanovitch
paid only twenty-five kopecks in copper, and never exceeded it, and so
took either a plate of soup with pie, or a plate of beef; most
frequently he ate neither soup nor beef, but he partook in moderation of
white bread with onion, curd, salted cucumber, or something similar,
which was a great deal cheaper, and he would only go back to his half
rouble dinner when he could stand it no longer. . . .

Here the biographer confesses that nothing would have induced him to
allude to such realistic and low details, positively shocking and
offensive to some lovers of the heroic style, if it were not that these
details exhibit one peculiarity, one characteristic, in the hero of this
story; for Mr. Prohartchin was by no means so poor as to be unable to
have regular and sufficient meals, though he sometimes made out that he
was. But he acted as he did regardless of obloquy and people's
prejudices, simply to satisfy his strange whims, and from frugality and
excessive carefulness: all this, however, will be much clearer later on.
But we will beware of boring the reader with the description of all
Semyon Ivanovitch's whims, and will omit, for instance, the curious and
very amusing description of his attire; and, in fact, if it were not for
Ustinya Fyodorovna's own reference to it we should hardly have alluded
even to the fact that Semyon Ivanovitch never could make up his mind to
send his linen to the wash, or if he ever did so it was so rarely that
in the intervals one might have completely forgotten the existence of
linen on Semyon Ivanovitch. From the landlady's evidence it appeared
that "Semyon Ivanovitch, bless his soul, poor lamb, for twenty years had
been tucked away in his corner, without caring what folks thought, for
all the days of his life on earth he was a stranger to socks,
handkerchiefs, and all such things," and what is more, Ustinya
Fyodorovna had seen with her own eyes, thanks to the decrepitude of the
screen, that the poor dear man sometimes had had nothing to cover his
bare skin.

Such were the rumours in circulation after Semyon Ivanovitch's death.
But in his lifetime (and this was one of the most frequent occasions of
dissension) he could not endure it if any one, even somebody on friendly
terms with him, poked his inquisitive nose uninvited into his corner,
even through an aperture in the decrepit screen. He was a taciturn man
difficult to deal with and prone to ill health. He did not like people
to give him advice, he did not care for people who put themselves
forward either, and if any one jeered at him or gave him advice unasked,
he would fall foul of him at once, put him to shame, and settle his
business. "You are a puppy, you are a featherhead, you are not one to
give advice, so there--you mind your own business, sir. You'd better
count the stitches in your own socks, sir, so there! "

Semyon Ivanovitch was a plain man, and never used the formal mode of
address to any one. He could not bear it either when some one who knew
his little ways would begin from pure sport pestering him with
questions, such as what he had in his little trunk. . . . Semyon Ivanovitch
had one little trunk. It stood under his bed, and was guarded like the
apple of his eye; and though every one knew that there was nothing in it
except old rags, two or three pairs of damaged boots and all sorts of
rubbish, yet Mr. Prohartchin prized his property very highly, and they
used even to hear him at one time express dissatisfaction with his old,
but still sound, lock, and talk of getting a new one of a special German
pattern with a secret spring and various complications. When on one
occasion Zinovy Prokofyevitch, carried away by the thoughtlessness of
youth, gave expression to the very coarse and unseemly idea, that Semyon
Ivanovitch was probably hiding and treasuring something in his box to
leave to his descendants, every one who happened to be by was stupefied
at the extraordinary effects of Zinovy Prokofyevitch's sally. At first
Mr. Prohartchin could not find suitable terms for such a crude and
coarse idea. For a long time words dropped from his lips quite
incoherently, and it was only after a while they made out that Semyon
Ivanovitch was reproaching Zinovy Prokofyevitch for some shabby action
in the remote past; then they realized that Semyon Ivanovitch was
predicting that Zinovy Prokofyevitch would never get into aristocratic
society, and that the tailor to whom he owed a bill for his suits would
beat him--would certainly beat him--because the puppy had not paid him
for so long; and finally, "You puppy, you," Semyon Ivanovitch added,
"here you want to get into the hussars, but you won't, I tell you,
you'll make a fool of yourself. And I tell you what, you puppy, when
your superiors know all about it they will take and make you a copying
clerk; so that will be the end of it! Do you hear, puppy? " Then Semyon
Ivanovitch subsided, but after lying down for five hours, to the intense
astonishment of every one he seemed to have reached a decision, and
began suddenly reproaching and abusing the young man again, at first to
himself and afterwards addressing Zinovy Prokofyevitch. But the matter
did not end there, and in the evening, when Mark Ivanovitch and
Prepolovenko made tea and asked Okeanov to drink it with them, Semyon
Ivanovitch got up from his bed, purposely joined them, subscribing his
fifteen or twenty kopecks, and on the pretext of a sudden desire for a
cup of tea began at great length going into the subject, and explaining
that he was a poor man, nothing but a poor man, and that a poor man like
him had nothing to save. Mr. Prohartchin confessed that he was a poor
man on this occasion, he said, simply because the subject had come up;
that the day before yesterday he had meant to borrow a rouble from that
impudent fellow, but now he should not borrow it for fear the puppy
should brag, that that was the fact of the matter, and that his salary
was such that one could not buy enough to eat, and that finally, a poor
man, as you see, he sent his sister-in-law in Tver five roubles every
month, that if he did not send his sister-in-law in Tver five roubles
every month his sister-in-law would die, and if his sister-in-law, who
was dependent on him, were dead, he, Semyon Ivanovitch, would long ago
have bought himself a new suit. . . . And Semyon Ivanovitch went on talking
in this way at great length about being a poor man, about his
sister-in-law and about roubles, and kept repeating the same thing over
and over again to impress it on his audience till he got into a regular
muddle and relapsed into silence. Only three days later, when they had
all forgotten about him, and no one was thinking of attacking him, he
added something in conclusion to the effect that when Zinovy
Prokofyevitch went into the hussars the impudent fellow would have his
leg cut off in the war, and then he would come with a wooden leg and
say; "Semyon Ivanovitch, kind friend, give me something to eat! " and
then Semyon Ivanovitch would not give him something to eat, and would
not look at the insolent fellow; and that's how it would be, and he
could just make the best of it.

All this naturally seemed very curious and at the same time fearfully
amusing. Without much reflection, all the lodgers joined together for
further investigation, and simply from curiosity determined to make a
final onslaught on Semyon Ivanovitch _en masse_. And as Mr. Prohartchin,
too, had of late--that is, ever since he had begun living in the same
flat with them--been very fond of finding out everything about them and
asking inquisitive questions, probably for private reasons of his own,
relations sprang up between the opposed parties without any preparation
or effort on either side, as it were by chance and of itself. To get
into relations Semyon Ivanovitch always had in reserve his peculiar,
rather sly, and very ingenuous manoeuvre, of which the reader has
learned something already. He would get off his bed about tea-time, and
if he saw the others gathered together in a group to make tea he would
go up to them like a quiet, sensible, and friendly person, hand over his
twenty kopecks, as he was entitled to do, and announce that he wished to
join them. Then the young men would wink at one another, and so
indicating that they were in league together against Semyon Ivanovitch,
would begin a conversation, at first strictly proper and decorous. Then
one of the wittier of the party would, _à propos_ of nothing, fall to
telling them news consisting most usually of entirely false and quite
incredible details. He would say, for instance, that some one had heard
His Excellency that day telling Demid Vassilyevitch that in his opinion
married clerks were more trustworthy than unmarried, and more suitable
for promotion; for they were steady, and that their capacities were
considerably improved by marriage, and that therefore he--that is, the
speaker--in order to improve and be better fitted for promotion, was
doing his utmost to enter the bonds of matrimony as soon as possible
with a certain Fevronya Prokofyevna. Or he would say that it had more
than once been remarked about certain of his colleagues that they were
entirely devoid of social graces and of well-bred, agreeable manners,
and consequently unable to please ladies in good society, and that,
therefore, to eradicate this defect it would be suitable to deduct
something from their salary, and with the sum so obtained, to hire a
hall, where they could learn to dance, acquire the outward signs of
gentlemanliness and good-breeding, courtesy, respect for their seniors,
strength of will, a good and grateful heart and various agreeable
qualities. Or he would say that it was being arranged that some of the
clerks, beginning with the most elderly, were to be put through an
examination in all sorts of subjects to raise their standard of culture,
and in that way, the speaker would add, all sorts of things would come
to light, and certain gentlemen would have to lay their cards on the
table--in short, thousands of similar very absurd rumours were
discussed. To keep it up, every one believed the story at once, showed
interest in it, asked questions, applied it to themselves; and some of
them, assuming a despondent air, began shaking their heads and asking
every one's advice, saying what were they to do if they were to come
under it? It need hardly be said that a man far less credulous and
simple-hearted than Mr. Prohartchin would have been puzzled and carried
away by a rumour so unanimously believed. Moreover, from all
appearances, it might be safely concluded that Semyon Ivanovitch was
exceedingly stupid and slow to grasp any new unusual idea, and that when
he heard anything new, he had always first, as it were, to chew it over
and digest it, to find out the meaning, and struggling with it in
bewilderment, at last perhaps to overcome it, though even then in a
quite special manner peculiar to himself alone. . . .

In this way curious and hitherto unexpected qualities began to show
themselves in Semyon Ivanovitch. . . . Talk and tittle-tattle followed, and
by devious ways it all reached the office at last, with additions. What
increased the sensation was the fact that Mr. Prohartchin, who had
looked almost exactly the same from time immemorial, suddenly, _à
propos_ of nothing, wore quite a different countenance. His face was
uneasy, his eyes were timid and had a scared and rather suspicious
expression. He took to walking softly, starting and listening, and to
put the finishing touch to his new characteristics developed a passion
for investigating the truth. He carried his love of truth at last to
such a pitch as to venture, on two occasions, to inquire of Demid
Vassilyevitch himself concerning the credibility of the strange rumours
that reached him daily by dozens, and if we say nothing here of the
consequence of the action of Semyon Ivanovitch, it is for no other
reason but a sensitive regard for his reputation. It was in this way
people came to consider him as misanthropic and regardless of the
proprieties. Then they began to discover that there was a great deal
that was fantastical about him, and in this they were not altogether
mistaken, for it was observed on more than one occasion that Semyon
Ivanovitch completely forgot himself, and sitting in his seat with his
mouth open and his pen in the air, as though frozen or petrified, looked
more like the shadow of a rational being than that rational being
itself. It sometimes happened that some innocently gaping gentleman, on
suddenly catching his straying, lustreless, questioning eyes, was scared
and all of a tremor, and at once inserted into some important document
either a smudge or some quite inappropriate word. The impropriety of
Semyon Ivanovitch's behaviour embarrassed and annoyed all really
well-bred people. . . . At last no one could feel any doubt of the
eccentricity of Semyon Ivanovitch's mind, when one fine morning the
rumour was all over the office that Mr. Prohartchin had actually
frightened Demid Vassilyevitch himself, for, meeting him in the
corridor, Semyon Ivanovitch had been so strange and peculiar that he had
forced his superior to beat a retreat. . . . The news of Semyon
Ivanovitch's behaviour reached him himself at last. Hearing of it he got
up at once, made his way carefully between the chairs and tables,
reached the entry, took down his overcoat with his own hand, put it on,
went out, and disappeared for an indefinite period. Whether he was led
into this by alarm or some other impulse we cannot say, but no trace was
seen of him for a time either at home or at the office. . . .

We will not attribute Semyon Ivanovitch's fate simply to his
eccentricity, yet we must observe to the reader that our hero was a very
retiring man, unaccustomed to society, and had, until he made the
acquaintance of the new lodgers, lived in complete unbroken solitude,
and had been marked by his quietness and even a certain mysteriousness;
for he had spent all the time that he lodged at Peski lying on his bed
behind the screen, without talking or having any sort of relations with
any one. Both his old fellow-lodgers lived exactly as he did: they, too
were, somehow mysterious people and spent fifteen years lying behind
their screens. The happy, drowsy hours and days trailed by, one after
the other, in patriarchal stagnation, and as everything around them went
its way in the same happy fashion, neither Semyon Ivanovitch nor Ustinya
Fyodorovna could remember exactly when fate had brought them together.

"It may be ten years, it may be twenty, it may be even twenty-five
altogether," she would say at times to her new lodgers, "since he
settled with me, poor dear man, bless his heart! " And so it was very
natural that the hero of our story, being so unaccustomed to society was
disagreeably surprised when, a year before, he, a respectable and modest
man, had found himself, suddenly in the midst of a noisy and boisterous
crew, consisting of a dozen young fellows, his colleagues at the office,
and his new house-mates.

The disappearance of Semyon Ivanovitch made no little stir in the
lodgings. One thing was that he was the favourite; another, that his
passport, which had been in the landlady's keeping, appeared to have
been accidentally mislaid. Ustinya Fyodorovna raised a howl, as was her
invariable habit on all critical occasions. She spent two days in
abusing and upbraiding the lodgers. She wailed that they had chased away
her lodger like a chicken, and all those spiteful scoffers had been the
ruin of him; and on the third day she sent them all out to hunt for the
fugitive and at all costs to bring him back, dead or alive. Towards
evening Sudbin first came back with the news that traces had been
discovered, that he had himself seen the runaway in Tolkutchy Market and
other places, had followed and stood close to him, but had not dared to
speak to him; he had been near him in a crowd watching a house on fire
in Crooked Lane. Half an hour later Okeanov and Kantarev came in and
confirmed Sudbin's story, word for word; they, too, had stood near, had
followed him quite close, had stood not more than ten paces from him,
but they also had not ventured to speak to him, but both observed that
Semyon Ivanovitch was walking with a drunken cadger. The other lodgers
were all back and together at last, and after listening attentively they
made up their minds that Prohartchin could not be far off and would not
be long in returning; but they said that they had all known beforehand
that he was about with a drunken cadger. This drunken cadger was a
thoroughly bad lot, insolent and cringing, and it seemed evident that he
had got round Semyon Ivanovitch in some way. He had turned up just a
week before Semyon Ivanovitch's disappearance in company with Remnev,
had spent a little time in the flat telling them that he had suffered in
the cause of justice, that he had formerly been in the service in the
provinces, that an inspector had come down on them, that he and his
associates had somehow suffered in a good cause, that he had come to
Petersburg and fallen at the feet of Porfiry Grigoryevitch, that he had
been got, by interest, into a department; but through the cruel
persecution of fate he had been discharged from there too, and that
afterwards through reorganization the office itself had ceased to exist,
and that he had not been included in the new revised staff of clerks
owing as much to direct incapacity for official work as to capacity for
something else quite irrelevant--all this mixed up with his passion for
justice and of course the trickery of his enemies. After finishing his
story, in the course of which Mr. Zimoveykin more than once kissed his
sullen and unshaven friend Remnev, he bowed down to all in the room in
turn, not forgetting Avdotya the servant, called them all his
benefactors, and explained that he was an undeserving, troublesome,
mean, insolent and stupid man, and that good people must not be hard on
his pitiful plight and simplicity. After begging for their kind
protection Mr. Zimoveykin showed his livelier side, grew very cheerful,
kissed Ustinya Fyodorovna's hands, in spite of her modest protests that
her hand was coarse and not like a lady's; and towards evening promised
to show the company his talent in a remarkable character dance. But next
day his visit ended in a lamentable _dénouement_. Either because there
had been too much character in the character-dance, or because he had,
in Ustinya Fyodorovna's own words, somehow "insulted her and treated her
as no lady, though she was on friendly terms with Yaroslav Ilyitch
himself, and if she liked might long ago have been an officer's wife,"
Zimoveykin had to steer for home next day. He went away, came back
again, was again turned out with ignominy, then wormed his way into
Semyon Ivanovitch's good graces, robbed him incidentally of his new
breeches, and now it appeared he had led Semyon Ivanovitch astray.

As soon as the landlady knew that Semyon Ivanovitch was alive and well,
and that there was no need to hunt for his passport, she promptly left
off grieving and was pacified. Meanwhile some of the lodgers determined
to give the runaway a triumphal reception; they broke the bolt and moved
away the screen from Mr. Prohartchin's bed, rumpled up the bed a little,
took the famous box, put it at the foot of the bed; and on the bed laid
the sister-in-law, that is, a dummy made up of an old kerchief, a cap
and a mantle of the landlady's, such an exact counterfeit of a
sister-in-law that it might have been mistaken for one. Having finished
their work they waited for Semyon Ivanovitch to return, meaning to tell
him that his sister-in-law had arrived from the country and was there
behind his screen, poor thing! But they waited and waited.

Already, while they waited, Mark Ivanovitch had staked and lost half a
month's salary to Prepolovenko and Kantarev; already Okeanov's nose had
grown red and swollen playing "flips on the nose" and "three cards;"
already Avdotya the servant had almost had her sleep out and had twice
been on the point of getting up to fetch the wood and light the stove,
and Zinovy Prokofyevitch, who kept running out every minute to see
whether Semyon Ivanovitch were coming, was wet to the skin; but there
was no sign of any one yet--neither Semyon Ivanovitch nor the drunken
cadger. At last every one went to bed, leaving the sister-in-law behind
the screen in readiness for any emergency; and it was not till four
o'clock that a knock was heard at the gate, but when it did come it was
so loud that it quite made up to the expectant lodgers for all the
wearisome trouble they had been through. It was he--he himself--Semyon
Ivanovitch, Mr. Prohartchin, but in such a condition that they all cried
out in dismay, and no one thought about the sister-in-law. The lost man
was unconscious. He was brought in, or more correctly carried in, by a
sopping and tattered night-cabman. To the landlady's question where the
poor dear man had got so groggy, the cabman answered: "Why, he is not
drunk and has not had a drop, that I can tell you, for sure; but
seemingly a faintness has come over him, or some sort of a fit, or maybe
he's been knocked down by a blow. "

They began examining him, propping the culprit against the stove to do
so more conveniently, and saw that it really was not a case of
drunkenness, nor had he had a blow, but that something else was wrong,
for Semyon Ivanovitch could not utter a word, but seemed twitching in a
sort of convulsion, and only blinked, fixing his eyes in bewilderment
first on one and then on another of the spectators, who were all attired
in night array. Then they began questioning the cabman, asking where he
had got him from. "Why, from folks out Kolomna way," he answered. "Deuce
knows what they are, not exactly gentry, but merry, rollicking
gentlemen; so he was like this when they gave him to me; whether they
had been fighting, or whether he was in some sort of a fit, goodness
knows what it was; but they were nice, jolly gentlemen! "

Semyon Ivanovitch was taken, lifted high on the shoulders of two or
three sturdy fellows, and carried to his bed. When Semyon Ivanovitch on
being put in bed felt the sister-in-law, and put his feet on his sacred
box, he cried out at the top of his voice, squatted up almost on his
heels, and trembling and shaking all over, with his hands and his body
he cleared a space as far as he could in his bed, while gazing with a
tremulous but strangely resolute look at those present, he seemed as it
were to protest that he would sooner die than give up the hundredth part
of his poor belongings to any one. . . .

Semyon Ivanovitch lay for two or three days closely barricaded by the
screen, and so cut off from all the world and all its vain anxieties.
Next morning, of course, every one had forgotten about him; time,
meanwhile, flew by as usual, hour followed hour and day followed day.
The sick man's heavy, feverish brain was plunged in something between
sleep and delirium; but he lay quietly and did not moan or complain; on
the contrary he kept still and silent and controlled himself, lying low
in his bed, just as the hare lies close to the earth when it hears the
hunter. At times a long depressing stillness prevailed in the flat, a
sign that the lodgers had all gone to the office, and Semyon Ivanovitch,
waking up, could relieve his depression by listening to the bustle in
the kitchen, where the landlady was busy close by; or to the regular
flop of Avdotya's down-trodden slippers as, sighing and moaning, she
cleared away, rubbed and polished, tidying all the rooms in the flat.
Whole hours passed by in that way, drowsy, languid, sleepy, wearisome,
like the water that dripped with a regular sound from the locker into
the basin in the kitchen. At last the lodgers would arrive, one by one
or in groups, and Semyon Ivanovitch could very conveniently hear them
abusing the weather, saying they were hungry, making a noise, smoking,
quarrelling, and making friends, playing cards, and clattering the cups
as they got ready for tea. Semyon Ivanovitch mechanically made an effort
to get up and join them, as he had a right to do at tea; but he at once
sank back into drowsiness, and dreamed that he had been sitting a long
time at the tea-table, having tea with them and talking, and that Zinovy
Prokofyevitch had already seized the opportunity to introduce into the
conversation some scheme concerning sisters-in-law and the moral
relation of various worthy people to them. At this point Semyon
Ivanovitch was in haste to defend himself and reply. But the mighty
formula that flew from every tongue--"It has more than once been
observed"--cut short all his objections, and Semyon Ivanovitch could do
nothing better than begin dreaming again that to-day was the first of
the month and that he was receiving money in his office.

Undoing the paper round it on the stairs, he looked about him quickly,
and made haste as fast as he could to subtract half of the lawful wages
he had received and conceal it in his boot. Then on the spot, on the
stairs, quite regardless of the fact that he was in bed and asleep, he
made up his mind when he reached home to give his landlady what was due
for board and lodging; then to buy certain necessities, and to show any
one it might concern, as it were casually and unintentionally, that some
of his salary had been deducted, that now he had nothing left to send
his sister-in-law; then to speak with commiseration of his
sister-in-law, to say a great deal about her the next day and the day
after, and ten days later to say something casually again about her
poverty, that his companions might not forget. Making this determination
he observed that Andrey Efimovitch, that everlastingly silent, bald
little man who sat in the office three rooms from where Semyon
Ivanovitch sat, and hadn't said a word to him for twenty years, was
standing on the stairs, that he, too, was counting his silver roubles,
and shaking his head, he said to him: "Money! " "If there's no money
there will be no porridge," he added grimly as he went down the stairs,
and just at the door he ended: "And I have seven children, sir. " Then
the little bald man, probably equally unconscious that he was acting as
a phantom and not as a substantial reality, held up his hand about
thirty inches from the floor, and waving it vertically, muttered that
the eldest was going to school, then glancing with indignation at Semyon
Ivanovitch, as though it were Mr. Prohartchin's fault that he was the
father of seven, pulled his old hat down over his eyes, and with a whisk
of his overcoat he turned to the left and disappeared. Semyon Ivanovitch
was quite frightened, and though he was fully convinced of his own
innocence in regard to the unpleasant accumulation of seven under one
roof, yet it seemed to appear that in fact no one else was to blame but
Semyon Ivanovitch. Panic-stricken he set off running, for it seemed to
him that the bald gentleman had turned back, was running after him, and
meant to search him and take away all his salary, insisting upon the
indisputable number seven, and resolutely denying any possible claim of
any sort of sisters-in-law upon Semyon Ivanovitch. Prohartchin ran and
ran, gasping for breath. . . . Beside him was running, too, an immense
number of people, and all of them were jingling their money in the
tailpockets of their skimpy little dress-coats; at last every one ran
up, there was the noise of fire engines, and whole masses of people
carried him almost on their shoulders up to that same house on fire
which he had watched last time in company with the drunken cadger. The
drunken cadger--alias Mr. Zimoveykin--was there now, too, he met Semyon
Ivanovitch, made a fearful fuss, took him by the arm, and led him into
the thickest part of the crowd. Just as then in reality, all about them
was the noise and uproar of an immense crowd of people, flooding the
whole of Fontanka Embankment between the two bridges, as well as all the
surrounding streets and alleys; just as then, Semyon Ivanovitch, in
company with the drunken cadger, was carried along behind a fence, where
they were squeezed as though in pincers in a huge timber-yard full of
spectators who had gathered from the street, from Tolkutchy Market and
from all the surrounding houses, taverns, and restaurants. Semyon
Ivanovitch saw all this and felt as he had done at the time; in the
whirl of fever and delirium all sorts of strange figures began flitting
before him. He remembered some of them. One of them was a gentleman who
had impressed every one extremely, a man seven feet high, with whiskers
half a yard long, who had been standing behind Semyon Ivanovitch's back
during the fire, and had given him encouragement from behind, when our
hero had felt something like ecstasy and had stamped as though intending
thereby to applaud the gallant work of the firemen, from which he had an
excellent view from his elevated position. Another was the sturdy lad
from whom our hero had received a shove by way of a lift on to another
fence, when he had been disposed to climb over it, possibly to save some
one. He had a glimpse, too, of the figure of the old man with a sickly
face, in an old wadded dressing-gown, tied round the waist, who had made
his appearance before the fire in a little shop buying sugar and tobacco
for his lodger, and who now, with a milk-can and a quart pot in his
hands, made his way through the crowd to the house in which his wife and
daughter were burning together with thirteen and a half roubles in the
corner under the bed. But most distinct of all was the poor, sinful
woman of whom he had dreamed more than once during his illness--she
stood before him now as she had done then, in wretched bark shoes and
rags, with a crutch and a wicker-basket on her back. She was shouting
more loudly than the firemen or the crowd, waving her crutch and her
arms, saying that her own children had turned her out and that she had
lost two coppers in consequence. The children and the coppers, the
coppers and the children, were mingled together in an utterly
incomprehensible muddle, from which every one withdrew baffled, after
vain efforts to understand. But the woman would not desist, she kept
wailing, shouting, and waving her arms, seeming to pay no attention
either to the fire up to which she had been carried by the crowd from
the street or to the people about her, or to the misfortune of
strangers, or even to the sparks and red-hot embers which were beginning
to fall in showers on the crowd standing near. At last Mr. Prohartchin
felt that a feeling of terror was coming upon him; for he saw clearly
that all this was not, so to say, an accident, and that he would not get
off scot-free.