feeling of dreariness. After he had finished his dinner they sat in the drawing-room by the light of a single lamp, and did not speak; it was painful to him to lie to her, and she wanted to ask him something, but could not make up her mind to. So passed half an hour. Gruzin glanced at his watch.
'I suppose it's time for me to go.'
'No, stay a little.... We must have a talk.'
Again they were silent. He sat down to the piano, struck one chord, then began playing, and sang softly, 'What does the coming day bring me?' but as usual he got up suddenly and tossed his head.
'Play something,' Zinaida Fyodorovna asked him.
'What shall I play?' he asked, shrugging his shoulders. 'I have forgotten everything. I've given it up long ago.'
Looking at the ceiling as though trying to remember, he played two pieces of Tchaikovsky with exquisite expression, with such warmth, such insight! His face was just as usual—neither stupid nor intelligent—and it seemed to me a perfect marvel that a man whom I was accustomed to see in the midst of the most degrading, impure surroundings, was capable of such purity, of rising to a feeling so lofty, so far beyond my reach. Zinaida Fyodorovna's face glowed, and she walked about the drawing-room in emotion.
'Wait a bit, Godmother; if I can remember it, I will play you something,' he said; 'I heard it played on the violoncello.'
Beginning timidly and picking out the notes, and then gathering confidence, he played Saint-Saens's 'Swan Song.' He played it through, and then played it a second time.
'It's nice, isn't it?' he said.
Moved by the music, Zinaida Fyodorovna stood beside him and asked:
'Tell me honestly, as a friend, what do you think about me?'
'What am I to say?' he said, raising his eyebrows. 'I love you and think nothing but good of you. But if you wish that I should speak generally about the question that interests you,' he went on, rubbing his sleeve near the elbow and frowning, 'then, my dear, you know.... To follow freely the promptings of the heart does not always give good people happiness. To feel free and at the same time to be happy, it seems to me, one must not conceal from oneself that life is coarse, cruel, and merciless in its conservatism, and one must retaliate with what it deserves— that is, be as coarse and as merciless in one's striving for freedom. That's what I think.'
'That's beyond me,' said Zinaida Fyodorovna, with a mournful smile. 'I am exhausted already. I am so exhausted that I wouldn't stir a finger for my own salvation.'
'Go into a nunnery.'
He said this in jest, but after he had said it, tears glistened in Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes and then in his.
'Well,' he said, 'we've been sitting and sitting, and now we must go. Good-bye, dear Godmother. God give you health.'
He kissed both her hands, and stroking them tenderly, said that he should certainly come to see her again in a day or two. In the hall, as he was putting on his overcoat, that was so like a child's pelisse, he fumbled long in his pockets to find a tip for me, but found nothing there.
'Good-bye, my dear fellow,' he said sadly, and went away.
I shall never forget the feeling that this man left behind him.
Zinaida Fyodorovna still walked about the room in her excitement. That she was walking about and not still lying down was so much to the good. I wanted to take advantage of this mood to speak to her openly and then to go away, but I had hardly seen Gruzin out when I heard a ring. It was Kukushkin.
'Is Georgy Ivanitch at home?' he said. 'Has he come back? You say no? What a pity! In that case, I'll go in and kiss your mistress's hand, and so away. Zinaida Fyodorovna, may I come in?' he cried. 'I want to kiss your hand. Excuse my being so late.'
He was not long in the drawing-room, not more than ten minutes, but I felt as though he were staying a long while and would never go away. I bit my lips from indignation and annoyance, and already hated Zinaida Fyodorovna. 'Why does she not turn him out?' I thought indignantly, though it was evident that she was bored by his company.
When I held his fur coat for him he asked me, as a mark of special good-will, how I managed to get on without a wife.
'But I don't suppose you waste your time,' he said, laughingly. 'I've no doubt Polya and you are as thick as thieves.... You rascal!'
In spite of my experience of life, I knew very little of mankind at that time, and it is very likely that I often exaggerated what was of little consequence and failed to observe what was important. It seemed to me it was not without motive that Kukushkin tittered and flattered me. Could it be that he was hoping that I, like a flunkey, would gossip in other kitchens and servants' quarters of his coming to see us in the evenings when Orlov was away, and staying with Zinaida Fyodorovna till late at night? And when my tittle-tattle came to the ears of his acquaintance, he would drop his eyes in confusion and shake his little finger. And would not he, I thought, looking at his little honeyed face, this very evening at cards pretend and perhaps declare that he had already won Zinaida Fyodorovna from Orlov?
That hatred which failed me at midday when the old father had come, took possession of me now. Kukushkin went away at last, and as I listened to the shuffle of his leather goloshes, I felt greatly tempted to fling after him, as a parting shot, some coarse word of abuse, but I restrained myself. And when the steps had died away on the stairs, I went back to the hall, and, hardly conscious of what I was doing, took up the roll of papers that Gruzin had left behind, and ran headlong downstairs. Without cap or overcoat, I ran down into the street. It was not cold, but big flakes of snow were falling and it was windy.
'Your Excellency!' I cried, catching up Kukushkin. 'Your Excellency!'
He stopped under a lamp-post and looked round with surprise. 'Your Excellency!' I said breathless, 'your Excellency!'
And not able to think of anything to say, I hit him two or three times on the face with the roll of paper. Completely at a loss, and hardly wondering—I had so completely taken him by surprise—he leaned his back against the lamp-post and put up his hands to protect his face. At that moment an army doctor passed, and saw how I was beating the man, but he merely looked at us in astonishment and went on. I felt ashamed and I ran back to the house.
XII
With my head wet from the snow, and gasping for breath, I ran to my room, and immediately flung off my swallow-tails, put on a reefer jacket and an overcoat, and carried my portmanteau out into the passage; I must get away! But before going I hurriedly sat down and began writing to Orlov:
'I leave you my false passport,' I began. 'I beg you to keep it as a memento, you false man, you Petersburg official!
'To steal into another man's house under a false name, to watch under the mask of a flunkey this person's intimate life, to hear everything, to see everything in order later on, unasked, to accuse a man of lying—all this, you will say, is on a level with theft. Yes, but I care nothing for fine feelings now. I have endured dozens of your dinners and suppers when you said and did what you liked, and I had to hear, to look on, and be silent. I don't want to make you a present of my silence. Besides, if there is not a living soul at hand who dares to tell you the truth without flattery, let your flunkey Stepan wash your magnificent countenance for you.'
I did not like this beginning, but I did not care to alter it. Besides, what did it matter?
The big windows with their dark curtains, the bed, the crumpled dress coat on the floor, and my wet footprints, looked gloomy and forbidding. And there was a peculiar stillness.
Possibly because I had run out into the street without my cap and goloshes I was in a high fever. My face burned, my legs ached.... My heavy head drooped over the table, and there was that kind of division in my thought when every idea in the brain seemed dogged by its shadow.
'I am ill, weak, morally cast down,' I went on; 'I cannot write to you as I should like to. From the first moment I desired to insult and humiliate you, but now I do not feel that I have the right to do so. You and I have both fallen, and neither of us will ever rise up again; and even if my letter were eloquent, terrible, and passionate, it would still seem like beating on the lid of a coffin: however one knocks upon it, one will not wake up the dead! No
