the first day I knew that my dreams of a life of labour and of a vineyard were worthless. As for love, I ought to tell you that living with a woman who has read Spencer and has followed you to the ends of the earth is no more interesting than living with any Anfissa or Akulina. There's the same smell of ironing, of powder, and of medicines, the same curl-papers every morning, the same self-deception.'
'You can't get on in the house without an iron,' said Samoylenko, blushing at Laevsky's speaking to him so openly of a lady he knew. 'You are out of humour to-day, Vanya, I notice. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna is a splendid woman, highly educated, and you are a man of the highest intellect. Of course, you are not married,' Samoylenko went on, glancing round at the adjacent tables, 'but that's not your fault; and besides . . . one ought to be above conventional prejudices and rise to the level of modern ideas. I believe in free love myself, yes. . . . But to my thinking, once you have settled together, you ought to go on living together all your life.'
'Without love?'
'I will tell you directly,' said Samoylenko. 'Eight years ago there was an old fellow, an agent, here—a man of very great intelligence. Well, he used to say that the great thing in married life was patience. Do you hear, Vanya? Not love, but patience. Love cannot last long. You have lived two years in love, and now evidently your married life has reached the period when, in order to preserve equilibrium, so to speak, you ought to exercise all your patience. . . .'
'You believe in your old agent; to me his words are meaningless. Your old man could be a hypocrite; he could exercise himself in the virtue of patience, and, as he did so, look upon a person he did not love as an object indispensable for his moral exercises; but I have not yet fallen so low. If I want to exercise myself in patience, I will buy dumb-bells or a frisky horse, but I'll leave human beings alone.'
Samoylenko asked for some white wine with ice. When they had drunk a glass each, Laevsky suddenly asked:
'Tell me, please, what is the meaning of softening of the brain?'
'How can I explain it to you? . . . It's a disease in which the brain becomes softer . . . as it were, dissolves.'
'Is it curable?'
'Yes, if the disease is not neglected. Cold douches, blisters. . . .
Something internal, too.'
'Oh! . . . Well, you see my position; I can't live with her: it is more than I can do. While I'm with you I can be philosophical about it and smile, but at home I lose heart completely; I am so utterly miserable, that if I were told, for instance, that I should have to live another month with her, I should blow out my brains. At the same time, parting with her is out of the question. She has no friends or relations; she cannot work, and neither she nor I have any money. . . . What could become of her? To whom could she go? There is nothing one can think of. . . . Come, tell me, what am I to do?'
'H'm! . . .' growled Samoylenko, not knowing what to answer. 'Does she love you?'
'Yes, she loves me in so far as at her age and with her temperament she wants a man. It would be as difficult for her to do without me as to do without her powder or her curl-papers. I am for her an indispensable, integral part of her boudoir.'
Samoylenko was embarrassed.
'You are out of humour to-day, Vanya,' he said. 'You must have had a bad night.'
'Yes, I slept badly. . . . Altogether, I feel horribly out of sorts, brother. My head feels empty; there's a sinking at my heart, a weakness. . . . I must run away.'
'Run where?'
'There, to the North. To the pines and the mushrooms, to people and ideas. . . . I'd give half my life to bathe now in some little stream in the province of Moscow or Tula; to feel chilly, you know, and then to stroll for three hours even with the feeblest student, and to talk and talk endlessly. . . . And the scent of the hay! Do you remember it? And in the evening, when one walks in the garden, sounds of the piano float from the house; one hears the train passing. . . .'
Laevsky laughed with pleasure; tears came into his eyes, and to cover them, without getting up, he stretched across the next table for the matches.
'I have not been in Russia for eighteen years,' said Samoylenko. 'I've forgotten what it is like. To my mind, there is not a country more splendid than the Caucasus.'
'Vereshtchagin has a picture in which some men condemned to death are languishing at the bottom of a very deep well. Your magnificent Caucasus strikes me as just like that well. If I were offered the choice of a chimney- sweep in Petersburg or a prince in the Caucasus, I should choose the job of chimney-sweep.'
Laevsky grew pensive. Looking at his stooping figure, at his eyes fixed dreamily at one spot, at his pale, perspiring face and sunken temples, at his bitten nails, at the slipper which had dropped off his heel, displaying a badly darned sock, Samoylenko was moved to pity, and probably because Laevsky reminded him of a helpless child, he asked:
'Is your mother living?'
'Yes, but we are on bad terms. She could not forgive me for this affair.'
Samoylenko was fond of his friend. He looked upon Laevsky as a good-natured fellow, a student, a man with no nonsense about him, with whom one could drink, and laugh, and talk without reserve. What he understood in him he disliked extremely. Laevsky drank a great deal and at unsuitable times; he played cards, despised his work, lived beyond his means, frequently made use of unseemly expressions in conversation, walked about the streets in his slippers, and quarrelled with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna before other people—and Samoylenko did not like this. But the fact that Laevsky had once been a student in the Faculty of Arts, subscribed to two fat reviews, often talked so cleverly that only a few people understood him, was living with a well-educated woman—all this Samoylenko did not understand, and he liked this and respected Laevsky, thinking him superior to himself.
'There is another point,' said Laevsky, shaking his head. 'Only it is between ourselves. I'm concealing it from Nadyezhda Fyodorovna for the time. . . . Don't let it out before her. . . . I got a letter the day before yesterday, telling me that her husband has died from softening of the brain.'
'The Kingdom of Heaven be his!' sighed Samoylenko. 'Why are you concealing it from her?'
'To show her that letter would be equivalent to 'Come to church to be married.' And we should first have to make our relations clear. When she understands that we can't go on living together, I will show her the letter. Then there will be no danger in it.'
'Do you know what, Vanya,' said Samoylenko, and a sad and imploring expression came into his face, as though he were going to ask him about something very touching and were afraid of being refused. 'Marry her, my dear boy!'
'Why?'
'Do your duty to that splendid woman! Her husband is dead, and so
Providence itself shows you what to do!'
'But do understand, you queer fellow, that it is impossible. To marry without love is as base and unworthy of a man as to perform mass without believing in it.'
'But it's your duty to.'
'Why is it my duty?' Laevsky asked irritably.
'Because you took her away from her husband and made yourself responsible for her.'
'But now I tell you in plain Russian, I don't love her!'
'Well, if you've no love, show her proper respect, consider her wishes. . . .'
''Show her respect, consider her wishes,'' Laevsky mimicked him. 'As though she were some Mother Superior! . . . You are a poor psychologist and physiologist if you think that living with a woman one can get off with nothing but respect and consideration. What a woman thinks most of is her bedroom.'
'Vanya, Vanya!' said Samoylenko, overcome with confusion.
'You are an elderly child, a theorist, while I am an old man in spite of my years, and practical, and we shall never understand one another. We had better drop this conversation. Mustapha!' Laevsky shouted to the waiter.
