with great pleasure. It was a good match. He became engaged.
“There’s nothing to be particularly pleased about,” said old Voronov to his wife, who was standing near his desk looking at him wistfully.
“He is good-natured.”
“Good-natured, indeed! That’s not the point. But, as a matter of fact, he has lived: he has lived a good deal. I know the Lutkovsky stock. What has he got except good intentions and his service? What we can give them will not provide for them.”
“But they love one another, and they have been so frank about it,” she said. She was so gentle and so mild.
“Yes, of course, he’s all right. They’re all alike, but I wanted someone better for Marie. She is such an openhearted, tender little soul. There was something else I had wished for. But it can’t be helped. Come.” And they left the room together.
Just at first father seemed displeased. No, not exactly displeased, but sad, not quite himself. I know him. Just as though he did not like him. I cannot understand it; I am not the only one. It is not because I am engaged to him, but nobility, truthfulness, and purity are so clearly written all over his being that one could not find more of them anywhere. It is evident that what is in his mind is on his tongue: he has nothing to hide. He only hides his own noble qualities. He will not, he cannot bear to speak of his Sevastopol exploits, nor about Michel. He blushed when I spoke of him. I thank Thee, Lord. I desire nothing, nothing more.
Lutkovsky went to Moscow to make preparations for the wedding. He stopped at the chevalier, and there on the stairway he met Souschov. “Ah, Alexis, is it true that you are going to get married?”
“Yes, it is true.”
“I congratulate you. I know them. It is a charming family. I knew your bride too. She is beautiful. Let us have dinner together.”
They dined together, and had first one bottle, then a second.
“Let’s be off. Let’s drive somewhere; there’s nothing else to do.”
They drove to the Hermitage, which had only just been opened. As they approached the theatre they met Anna. Anna did not know; but even if she had known he was going to be married, she would not have altered her manner, and would have smiled and shown her dimples with even more delight.
“Oh, there, how dull you are; come along!” She took his hand.
“Take care,” said Souschov behind them. “Directly, directly.”
Lutkovsky walked as far as the theatre with her, and then handed her over to Basil, whom he happened to meet there.
“No, it is wrong. I will go home. Why did I come?”
Notwithstanding urgent requests to remain, he went home. In his hotel room he drank two glasses of seltzer water, and sat down at the table to make up his accounts. In the morning he had to go out on business—to borrow money. His brother had refused to lend him any, and so he had got it from a moneylender. He sat there making his calculations, and all the while his thoughts returned to Anna, and he felt annoyed that he had refused her, though be felt proud that he had done so.
He took out Marie’s photograph. She was a strong, well-developed, slender Russian beauty. He looked at the picture with admiration, then put it in front of him and went on with his work.
Suddenly in the corridor he heard the voices of Anna and Souschov. He was leading her straight to his door.
“Alexis, how could you?”
She entered his room.
Next morning Lutkovsky vent to breakfast with Souschov, who reproached him.
“You must know how terribly this would grieve her.”
“Of course I do. Don’t worry. I am as dumb as a fish. May I—Alexis has returned from Moscow, the same clear, childlike soul. I see he is unhappy because he is not rich, for my sake—only for my sake. Last night the conversation turned on children, on our future children. I cannot believe I shall have children, or even one child. It is impossible. I shall die of happiness. Oh, but if I had them, how could I love them and him? The two things do not go together. Well, what is to be will be.”
A month later the wedding took place. In the autumn Lutkovsky got a post in the Civil Service, and they went to St. Petersburg. In September they discovered that she was going to be a mother, and in March her first son was born.
The accouchement, as is usually the case, was unexpected, and confusion ensued just because everyone had wanted to foresee everything, and things actually turned out quite different.
Father Vasily
A Fragment
I
It was autumn. Before daybreak a cart rattled over the road, which was in bad repair, and drove up to Father Vasily’s double-fronted thatched house. A peasant in a cap, with the collar of his kaftan turned up, jumped out of the cart, and, turning his horse round, knocked with his big whip at the window of the room which he knew to be that of the priest’s cook.
“Who’s there?”
“I want the priest.”
“What for?”
“For someone who is sick.”
“Where do you come from?”
“From Vozdrevo.”
A man struck a light, and, coming out into the yard, opened the gate for the peasant.
The priest’s wife—a short, stout woman, dressed in a quilted jacket, with a shawl over her head and felt boots on her feet—came out and began to speak in an angry, hoarse voice.
“What evil spirit has brought you here?”
“I have come for the priest.”
“What are you servants thinking about? You haven’t lit the fire yet.”
“Is it time yet?”
“If it were not time I shouldn’t say anything.”
The peasant from Vozdrevo went to the kitchen, crossed himself before the icon, and, making a low bow to the priest’s wife, sat down on a bench near the door.
The peasant’s wife had been suffering a long time; and, having given birth to a stillborn child, was
