'The soup is very good to-day,' the governess ventures timidly.
'Oh, you think so?' says Zhilin, looking at her angrily from under his eyelids. 'Every one to his taste, of course. It must be confessed our tastes are very different, Varvara Vassilyevna. You, for instance, are satisfied with the behaviour of this boy' (Zhilin with a tragic gesture points to his son Fedya); 'you are delighted with him, while I ... I am disgusted. Yes!'
Fedya, a boy of seven with a pale, sickly face, leaves off eating and drops his eyes. His face grows paler still.
'Yes, you are delighted, and I am disgusted. Which of us is right, I cannot say, but I venture to think as his father, I know my own son better than you do. Look how he is sitting! Is that the way decently brought up children sit? Sit properly.'
Fedya tilts his chin up, cranes his neck, and fancies that he is holding himself better. Tears come into his eyes.
'Eat your dinner! Hold your spoon properly! You wait. I'll show you, you horrid boy! Don't dare to whimper! Look straight at me!'
Fedya tries to look straight at him, but his face is quivering and his eyes fill with tears.
'A-ah!... you cry? You are naughty and then you cry? Go and stand in the corner, you beast!'
'But ... let him have his dinner first,' his wife intervenes.
'No dinner for him! Such bla ... such rascals don't deserve dinner!'
Fedya, wincing and quivering all over, creeps down from his chair and goes into the corner.
'You won't get off with that!' his parent persists. 'If nobody else cares to look after your bringing up, so be it; I must begin.... I won't let you be naughty and cry at dinner, my lad! Idiot! You must do your duty! Do you understand? Do your duty! Your father works and you must work, too! No one must eat the bread of idleness! You must be a man! A m-man!'
'For God's sake, leave off,' says his wife in French. 'Don't nag at us before outsiders, at least.... The old woman is all ears; and now, thanks to her, all the town will hear of it.'
'I am not afraid of outsiders,' answers Zhilin in Russian. 'Anfissa Ivanovna sees that I am speaking the truth. Why, do you think I ought to be pleased with the boy? Do you know what he costs me? Do you know, you nasty boy, what you cost me? Or do you imagine that I coin money, that I get it for nothing? Don't howl! Hold your tongue! Do you hear what I say? Do you want me to whip you, you young ruffian?'
Fedya wails aloud and begins to sob.
'This is insufferable,' says his mother, getting up from the table and flinging down her dinner-napkin. 'You never let us have dinner in peace! Your bread sticks in my throat.'
And putting her handkerchief to her eyes, she walks out of the dining-room.
'Now she is offended,' grumbles Zhilin, with a forced smile. 'She's been spoilt.... That's how it is, Anfissa Ivanovna; no one likes to hear the truth nowadays.... It's all my fault, it seems.'
Several minutes of silence follow. Zhilin looks round at the plates, and noticing that no one has yet touched their soup, heaves a deep sigh, and stares at the flushed and uneasy face of the governess.
'Why don't you eat, Varvara Vassilyevna?' he asks. 'Offended, I suppose? I see.... You don't like to be told the truth. You must forgive me, it's my nature; I can't be a hypocrite.... I always blurt out the plain truth' (a sigh). 'But I notice that my presence is unwelcome. No one can eat or talk while I am here.... Well, you should have told me, and I would have gone away.... I will go.'
Zhilin gets up and walks with dignity to the door. As he passes the weeping Fedya he stops.
'After all that has passed here, you are free,' he says to Fedya, throwing back his head with dignity. 'I won't meddle in your bringing up again. I wash my hands of it! I humbly apologise that as a father, from a sincere desire for your welfare, I have disturbed you and your mentors. At the same time, once for all I disclaim all responsibility for your future....'
Fedya wails and sobs more loudly than ever. Zhilin turns with dignity to the door and departs to his bedroom.
When he wakes from his after-dinner nap he begins to feel the stings of conscience. He is ashamed to face his wife, his son, Anfissa Ivanovna, and even feels very wretched when he recalls the scene at dinner, but his amour-propre is too much for him; he has not the manliness to be frank, and he goes on sulking and grumbling.
Waking up next morning, he feels in excellent spirits, and whistles gaily as he washes. Going into the dining- room to breakfast, he finds there Fedya, who, at the sight of his father, gets up and looks at him helplessly.
'Well, young man?' Zhilin greets him good-humouredly, sitting down to the table. 'What have you got to tell me, young man? Are you all right? Well, come, chubby; give your father a kiss.'
With a pale, grave face Fedya goes up to his father and touches his cheek with his quivering lips, then walks away and sits down in his place without a word.
THE BLACK MONK
I
ANDREY VASSILITCH KOVRIN, who held a master's degree at the University, had exhausted himself, and had upset his nerves. He did not send for a doctor, but casually, over a bottle of wine, he spoke to a friend who was a doctor, and the latter advised him to spend the spring and summer in the country. Very opportunely a long letter came from Tanya Pesotsky, who asked him to come and stay with them at Borissovka. And he made up his mind that he really must go.
To begin with—that was in April—he went to his own home, Kovrinka, and there spent three weeks in solitude; then, as soon as the roads were in good condition, he set off, driving in a carriage, to visit Pesotsky, his former guardian, who had brought him up, and was a horticulturist well known all over Russia. The distance from Kovrinka to Borissovka was reckoned only a little over fifty miles. To drive along a soft road in May in a comfortable carriage with springs was a real pleasure.
Pesotsky had an immense house with columns and lions, off which the stucco was peeling, and with a footman in swallow-tails at the entrance. The old park, laid out in the English style, gloomy and severe, stretched for almost three-quarters of a mile to the river, and there ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank, where pines grew with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; the water shone below with an unfriendly gleam, and the peewits flew up with a plaintive cry, and there one always felt that one must sit down and write a ballad. But near the house itself, in the courtyard and orchard, which together with the nurseries covered ninety acres, it was all life and gaiety even in bad weather. Such marvellous roses, lilies, camellias; such tulips of all possible shades, from glistening white to sooty black—such a wealth of flowers, in fact, Kovrin had never seen anywhere as at Pesotsky's. It was only the beginning of spring, and the real glory of the flower-beds was still hidden away in the hot-houses. But even the flowers along the avenues, and here and there in the flower-beds, were enough to make one feel, as one walked about the garden, as though one were in a realm of tender colours, especially in the early morning when the dew was glistening on every petal.
What was the decorative part of the garden, and what Pesotsky contemptuously spoke of as rubbish, had at one time in his childhood given Kovrin an impression of fairyland.
Every sort of caprice, of elaborate monstrosity and mockery at Nature was here. There were espaliers of fruit-trees, a pear-tree in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and lime-trees, an apple-tree in the shape of an umbrella, plum-trees trained into arches, crests, candelabra, and even into the number 1862—the year when Pesotsky first took up horticulture. One came across, too, lovely, graceful trees with strong, straight stems like palms, and it was only by looking intently that one could recognise these trees as gooseberries or currants. But what made the garden most cheerful and gave it a lively air, was the continual coming and going in it, from early morning till evening; people with wheelbarrows, shovels, and watering-cans swarmed round the trees and bushes, in the avenues and the flower-beds, like ants....
Kovrin arrived at Pesotsky's at ten o'clock in the evening. He found Tanya and her father, Yegor Semyonitch, in great anxiety. The clear starlight sky and the thermometer foretold a frost towards morning, and meanwhile Ivan Karlovitch, the gardener, had gone to the town, and they had no one to rely upon. At supper they talked of nothing
