As we drove home, Masha kept turning to look back at the school; the green roof, which I had painted, now glistened in the sun, and we could see it for a long time. And I felt that the glances Masha cast at it now were farewell glances.
XVI
IN THE EVENING she got ready for town.
Lately she had often gone to town and spent the night there. In her absence, I was unable to work, my hands would drop and go weak; our big yard seemed a dull, disgusting wasteland, the orchard rustled angrily, and without her, the house, the trees, the horses were, for me, no longer ‘‘ours.’’
I didn’t go anywhere out of the house but kept sitting at her desk, by her bookcase with the books on farming, those former favorites, now no longer needed, looking at me so abashedly. For hours at a time, while it struck seven, eight, nine, while the autumn night, black as soot, was falling outside the windows, I would examine her old glove, or the pen she always wrote with, or her little scissors; I did nothing and was clearly aware that if I had done something before, if I had plowed, mowed, chopped wood, it was only because she wanted it. And if she had sent me to clean a deep well, where I’d have to stand up to my waist in water, I’d have gone into the well, regardless of whether it was necessary or not. But now, when she was not around, Dubechnya, with its decay, unkemptness, banging shutters, thieves by night and by day, seemed to me a chaos in which any work would be useless. And why should I work here, why worry and think about the future, if I felt that the ground was disappearing from under me, that my role here in Dubechnya had been played, in short, that the same lot awaited me as had befallen the books on farming? Oh, what anguish it was at night, in the hours of solitude, when I listened every moment with anxiety, as if waiting for someone to cry out to me that it was time to go. I wasn’t sorry for Dubechnya, I was sorry for my love, whose autumn had obviously also come. What enormous happiness it is to love and be loved, and how terrible to feel that you’re beginning to fall from that high tower!
Masha came back from town the next day towards evening. She was displeased with something but concealed it, and only asked why all the storm windows had been put in— you could suffocate that way. I removed two of the storm windows. We had no wish to eat, but we sat down and had supper.
‘‘Go and wash your hands,’’ said my wife. ‘‘You smell of putty.’’
She brought new illustrated magazines from town, and we looked at them together after supper. Some had supplements with fashion pictures and patterns. Masha gave them a cursory glance and set them aside in order to give them a separate and proper examination later; but one dress with a wide, smooth, bell-shaped skirt and big sleeves caught her interest, and she looked at it seriously and attentively for a moment.
‘‘That’s not bad,’’ she said.
‘‘Yes, that dress would go very well on you,’’ I said. ‘‘Very well!’’
And, looking at the dress with loving emotion, admiring that gray spot only because she liked it, I went on tenderly:
‘‘A wonderful, charming dress! Beautiful, splendid Masha! My dear Masha!’’
And tears dropped on the picture.
‘‘Splendid Masha...’ I murmured. ‘‘Dear, sweet Masha...’
She went and lay down, and I sat for another hour looking at the illustrations.
‘‘You shouldn’t have removed the storm windows,’’ she said from the bedroom. ‘‘I’m afraid it will be cold. Look how it’s blowing!’’
I read here and there in the ‘‘miscellany’’—about how to make cheap ink, and about the world’s biggest diamond. I again came upon the fashion picture of the dress she liked, and I imagined her at a ball, with a fan, bare shoulders, brilliant, magnificent, well versed in music and painting and literature, and how small, how brief, my role seemed to me!
Our meeting, this marriage of ours, was only an episode of which this alive, richly endowed woman would have many in her life. All that was best in the world, as I’ve already said, was at her disposal and came to her perfectly gratis, and even ideas and fashionable intellectual trends served for her pleasure, diversifying her life, and I was merely a coachman who drove her from one enthusiasm to another. Now she no longer needed me, she would flutter off, and I would be left alone.
And as if in answer to my thoughts, a desperate cry came from the yard:
‘‘He-e-elp!’’
It was a shrill woman’s voice, and as if wishing to imitate it, the wind in the chimney also howled in a shrill voice. About half a minute went by, and again I heard through the noise of the wind, but as if from the other end of the yard:
‘‘He-e-elp!’’
‘‘Misail, do you hear?’’ my wife asked softly. ‘‘Do you hear?’’
She came out to me from the bedroom in just her night-gown, her hair undone, and listened, looking at the dark window.
‘‘Somebody’s being strangled!’’ she said. ‘‘Just what we needed.’’
I took a gun and went out. It was very dark in the yard, a strong wind was blowing, so that it was hard to stand. I walked to the gate, listened: the trees rustled, the wind whistled, and in the orchard a dog howled lazily, probably the peasant simpleton’s. Beyond the gate it was pitch dark, not a single light on the tracks. And near the wing where the office was last year, there suddenly came a stifled cry:
‘‘He-e-elp!’’
‘‘Who’s there?’’ I called.
Two men were fighting. One was pushing the other out, but the other was resisting, and both were breathing heavily.
‘‘Let go!’’ said one, and I recognized Ivan Cheprakov; it was he who had cried in a shrill woman’s voice. ‘‘Let go, curse you, or I’ll bite your hands all over!’’
I recognized the other as Moisei. I pulled them apart and, with that, couldn’t help myself and hit Moisei twice in the face. He fell down, then got up, and I hit him once more.
