Everybody laughed, including Kish.
Fyodor arrived. Red spots on his face, hurrying, he gave his greetings and led his brother to the study. Lately he had avoided gatherings of many people and preferred the company of a single person.
‘‘Let the young people laugh in there, but here you and I can have a heart-to-heart talk,’’ he said, sitting down in a deep chair away from the lamp. ‘‘We haven’t seen each other for a long time, brother. When was the last time you came to the warehouse? Must be a week ago.’’
‘‘Yes. I have nothing to do there. And, I confess, I’m sick of the old man.’’
‘‘Of course, they can do without us at the warehouse, but one must have some sort of occupation. In the sweat of your brow you shall eat your bread, as they say.18 God loves labor.’’
Pyotr brought a glass of tea on a tray. Fyodor drank it without sugar and asked for more. He was a great tea drinker and could drink ten glasses in an evening.
‘‘You know what, brother?’’ he said, getting up and going over to his brother. ‘‘Clever sophistries aside, why don’t you get yourself elected representative, and by easy stages we’ll make you a member of the board, and then associate head. The further the better; you’re an intelligent, educated man, you’ll be noticed and invited to Petersburg—zemstvo and city council activists are in fashion there, brother, and lo and behold, you won’t be fifty yet, and you’ll already be a privy councillor with a ribbon over your shoulder.’’
Laptev did not reply. He realized that all this—the privy councillor and the ribbon—was what Fyodor himself wanted, and he did not know how to reply.
The brothers sat and said nothing. Fyodor opened his watch and looked into it for a long, long time with strained attention, as if he wanted to observe the movement of the hands, and Laptev found the expression on his face strange.
Supper was served. Laptev went to the dining room, but Fyodor remained in the study. The argument was over, and Yartsev was saying in the tone of a professor reading a lecture:
‘‘Owing to differences of climate, energy, taste, and age, equality among people is physically impossible. But a cultured man can make this inequality harmless, as has already been done with swamps and bears. One scientist did succeed in having a cat, a mouse, a buzzard, and a sparrow eat from the same plate, and education, it must be hoped, will do the same with people. Life keeps going forward, forward, culture makes enormous progress before our eyes, and obviously the time will come when, for instance, the present-day situation of factory workers will seem as absurd as serfdom seems to us, when girls were traded for dogs.’’
‘‘That won’t be soon, it won’t be very soon,’’ Kostya said and grinned, ‘‘it won’t be very soon that Rothschild thinks his cellars of gold are absurd, and until then, the worker can slave away and be swollen with hunger. No, uncle. We mustn’t wait, we must fight. If a cat eats from the same plate as a mouse, do you think it’s conscious of it? Not at all. It was forced.’’
‘‘Fyodor and I are rich, our father is a capitalist, a millionaire, it’s with us you must fight!’’ Laptev said and rubbed his forehead with his palm. ‘‘Fighting with me—that doesn’t fit in with my thinking! I’m rich, but what has money given me so far, what has this power given me? How am I happier than you? My childhood was like hard labor, and money didn’t save me from birching. When Nina was sick and dying, my money didn’t help her. If someone doesn’t love me, I can’t force him to love me, though I spend a hundred million.’’
‘‘But you can do a lot of good,’’ said Kish.
‘‘What sort of good! Yesterday you solicited me for some mathematician who is looking for a post. Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can. I can give him money, but that’s not what he wants. Once I solicited a post for a poor violinist from a famous musician, and his answer was: ‘You have turned to me precisely because you are not a musician.’ And so I will answer you: you’ve turned to me for help with such assurance, because you’ve never once been in the position of a rich man.’’
‘‘Why this comparison with the famous musician, I don’t understand!’’ said Yulia Sergeevna, and she turned red. ‘‘What does the famous musician have to do with it!’’
Her face trembled with hatred, and she lowered her eyes to conceal this feeling. And not only her husband but everyone sitting at the table understood the expression of her face.
‘‘What does the famous musician have to do with it!’’ she repeated quietly. ‘‘Nothing is easier than helping a poor man.’’
Silence ensued. Pyotr served grouse, but no one ate it, everyone ate only salad. Laptev no longer remembered what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful but merely the fact that he had interfered in the conversation.
After supper he went to his study; tensely, with pounding heart, expecting new humiliations, he listened to what was going on in the drawing room. There again an argument started; then Yartsev sat at the piano and sang a sentimental romance. He was a jack-of-all-trades: he could sing, play, and even do magic tricks.
‘‘As you like, gentlemen, but I don’t wish to sit at home,’’ said Yulia. ‘‘We must go somewhere.’’
They decided to drive out of town and sent Kish to the Merchants’ Club for a troika. Laptev was not invited, because he usually did not go out of town, and because his brother was now with him, but the way he understood it was that his society bored them, and that in this gay young company, he was quite superfluous. And his vexation, his bitter feeling were so strong that he all but wept; he was even glad that they treated him so unkindly, that they disdained him, that he was a stupid, boring husband, a moneybags, and it seemed to him that he would be even more glad if his wife was unfaithful to him that night with his best friend and then confessed it, looking at him with hatred... He was jealous of the students they knew, the actors, the singers, Yartsev, even passersby, and he now passionately wished that she would indeed be unfaithful to him, wanted to find her with someone, then poison himself, to get rid of this nightmare once and for all. Fyodor was drinking tea and swallowing loudly. But then he, too, got ready to go.
‘‘Our old man must be losing his sight,’’ he said, putting on his coat. ‘‘He sees quite poorly.’’
Laptev also put on his coat and left. He saw his brother off to Strastnoy, took a cab, and went to the Yar.
‘‘And this is called family happiness!’’ he laughed at himself. ‘‘This is love!’’
His teeth were chattering, and he did not know whether it was jealousy or something else. At the Yar he walked among the tables, listened to a coupleteer in the big hall; he did not have a single phrase prepared in case he met his people, and was certain beforehand that if he met his wife, he would only smile pitifully and stupidly, and
