IT was a sunny August midday as, in company with a Russian prince who
had come down in the world, I drove into the immense so-called
Shabelsky pine-forest where we were intending to look for woodcocks. In
virtue of the part he plays in this story my poor prince deserves a
detailed description. He was a tall, dark man, still youngish, though
already somewhat battered by life; with long moustaches like a police
captain's; with prominent black eyes, and with the manners of a retired
army man. He was a man of Oriental type, not very intelligent, but
straightforward and honest, not a bully, not a fop, and not a
rake—virtues which, in the eyes of the general public, are equivalent to
a certificate of being a nonentity and a poor creature. People
generally did not like him (he was never spoken of in the district,
except as "the illustrious duffer"). I personally found the poor prince
extremely nice with his misfortunes and failures, which made up indeed
his whole life. First of all he was poor. He did not play cards, did not
drink, had no occupation, did not poke his nose into anything, and
maintained a perpetual silence but yet he had somehow succeeded in
getting through thirty to forty thousand roubles left him at his
father's death. God only knows what had become of the money. All that I
can say is that owing to lack of supervision a great deal was stolen by
stewards, bailiffs, and even footmen; a great deal went on lending
money, giving bail, and standing security. There were few landowners in
the district who did not owe him money. He gave to all who asked, and
not so much from good nature or confidence in people as from exaggerated
gentlemanliness as though he would say: "Take it and feel how
comme il faut
I am!" By the time I made his acquaintance he had got into debt
himself, had learned what it was like to have a second mortgage on his
land, and had sunk so deeply into difficulties that there was no chance
of his ever getting out of them again. There were days when he had no
dinner, and went about with an empty cigar-holder, but he was always
seen clean and fashionably dressed, and always smelt strongly of
ylang-ylang.
The prince's second misfortune was his absolute solitariness. He was
not married, he had no friends nor relations. His silent and reserved
character and his
comme il faut deportment, which became the more
conspicuous the more anxious he was to conceal his poverty, prevented
him from becoming intimate with people. For love affairs he was too
heavy, spiritless, and cold, and so rarely got on with women. . . .
When we reached the forest this prince and I got out of the chaise
and walked along a narrow woodland path which was hidden among huge
ferns. But before we had gone a hundred paces a tall, lank figure with a
long oval face, wearing a shabby reefer jacket, a straw hat, and patent
leather boots, rose up from behind a young fir-tree some three feet
high, as though he had sprung out of the ground. The stranger held in
one hand a basket of mushrooms, with the other he playfully fingered a
cheap watch-chain on his waistcoat. On seeing us he was taken aback,
smoothed his waistcoat, coughed politely, and gave an agreeable smile,
as though he were delighted to see such nice people as us. Then, to our
complete surprise, he came up to us, scraping with his long feet on the
grass, bending his whole person, and, still smiling agreeably, lifted
his hat and pronounced in a sugary voice with the intonations of a
whining dog:
"Aie, aie . . . gentlemen, painful as it is, it is my duty to warn
you that shooting is forbidden in this wood. Pardon me for venturing to
disturb you, though unacquainted, but . . . allow me to present myself. I
am Grontovsky, the head clerk on Madame Kandurin's estate."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, but why can't we shoot?"
"Such is the wish of the owner of this forest!"
The prince and I exchanged glances. A moment passed in silence. The
prince stood looking pensively at a big fly agaric at his feet, which he
had crushed with his stick. Grontovsky went on smiling agreeably. His
whole face was twitching, exuding honey, and even the watch-chain on his
waistcoat seemed to be smiling and trying to impress us all with its
refinement. A shade of embarrassment passed over us like an angel
passing; all three of us felt awkward.
"Nonsense!" I said. "Only last week I was shooting here!"
"Very possible!" Grontovsky sniggered through his teeth. "As a matter
of fact everyone shoots here regardless of the prohibition. But once I
have met you, it is my duty . . . my sacred duty to warn you. I am a man
in a dependent position. If the forest were mine, on the word of honour
of a Grontovsky, I should not oppose your agreeable pleasure. But whose
fault is it that I am in a dependent position?"
The lanky individual sighed and shrugged his shoulders. I began
arguing, getting hot and protesting, but the more loudly and
impressively I spoke the more mawkish and sugary Grontovsky's face
became. Evidently the consciousness of a certain power over us afforded
him the greatest gratification. He was enjoying his condescending tone,
his politeness, his manners, and with peculiar relish pronounced his
sonorous surname, of which he was probably very fond. Standing before us
he felt more than at ease, but judging from the confused sideway
glances he cast from time to time at his basket, only one thing was
spoiling his satisfaction--the mushrooms, womanish, peasantish, prose,
derogatory to his dignity.
"We can't go back!" I said. "We have come over ten miles!"
"What's to be done?" sighed Grontovsky. "If you had come not ten but a
hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America or from
some other distant land, even then I should think it my duty . . .
sacred, so to say, obligation . . ."
"Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?" asked the prince.
"Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna . . ."
"Is she at home now?"
"Yes . . . I tell you what, you go to her, it is not more than half a
mile from here; if she gives you a note, then I. . . . I needn't say!
Ha—ha . . . he—he—!"
"By all means," I agreed. "It's much nearer than to go back. . . .
You go to her, Sergey Ivanitch," I said, addressing the prince. "You
know her."
The prince, who had been gazing the whole time at the crushed agaric, raised his eyes to me, thought a minute, and said:
"I used to know her at one time, but . . . it's rather awkward for me
to go to her. Besides, I am in shabby clothes. . . . You go, you don't
know her. . . . It's more suitable for you to go."
I agreed. We got into our chaise and, followed by Grontovsky's
smiles, drove along the edge of the forest to the manor house. I was not
acquainted with Nadyezhda Lvovna Kandurin, nee Shabelsky. I had never
seen her at close quarters, and knew her only by hearsay. I knew that
she was incredibly wealthy, richer than anyone else in the province.
After the death of her father, Shabelsky, who was a landowner with no
other children, she was left with several estates, a stud farm, and a
lot of money. I had heard that, though she was only twenty-five or
twenty-six, she was ugly, uninteresting, and as insignificant as
anybody, and was only distinguished from the ordinary ladies of the
district by her immense wealth.
It has always seemed to me that wealth is felt, and that the rich
must have special feelings unknown to the poor. Often as I passed by
Nadyezhda Lvovna's big fruit garden, in which stood the large, heavy
house with its windows always curtained, I thought: "What is she
thinking at this moment? Is there happiness behind those blinds?" and so
on. Once I saw her from a distance in a fine light cabriolet, driving a
handsome white horse, and, sinful man that I am, I not only envied her,
but even thought that in her poses, in her movements, there was
something special, not to be found in people who are not rich, just as
persons of a servile nature succeed in discovering "good family" at the
first glance in people of the most ordinary exterior, if they are a
little more distinguished than themselves. Nadyezhda Lvovna's inner life
was only known to me by scandal. It was said in the district that five
or six years ago, before she was married, during her father's lifetime,
she had been passionately in love with Prince Sergey Ivanitch, who was
now beside me in the chaise. The prince had been fond of visiting her
father, and used to spend whole days in his billiard room, where he
played pyramids indefatigably till his arms and legs ached. Six months
before the old man's death he had suddenly given up visiting the
Shabelskys. The gossip of the district having no positive facts to go
upon explained this abrupt change in their relations in various ways.
Some said that the prince, having observed the plain daughter's feeling
for him and being unable to reciprocate it, considered it the duty of a
gentleman to cut short his visits. Others maintained that old Shabelsky
had discovered why his daughter was pining away, and had proposed to the
poverty-stricken prince that he should marry her; the prince, imagining
in his narrow-minded way that they were trying to buy him together with
his title, was indignant, said foolish things, and quarrelled with
them. What was true and what was false in this nonsense was difficult to
say. But that there was a portion of truth in it was evident, from the
fact that the prince always avoided conversation about Nadyezhda Lvovna.
I knew that soon after her father's death Nadyezhda Lvovna had
married one Kandurin, a bachelor of law, not wealthy, but adroit, who
had come on a visit to the neighbourhood. She married him not from love,
but because she was touched by the love of the legal gentleman who, so
it was said, had cleverly played the love-sick swain. At the time I am
describing, Kandurin was for some reason living in Cairo, and writing
thence to his friend, the marshal of the district, "Notes of Travel,"
while she sat languishing behind lowered blinds, surrounded by idle
parasites, and whiled away her dreary days in petty philanthropy.
On the way to the house the prince fell to talking.
"It's three days since I have been at home," he said in a half
whisper, with a sidelong glance at the driver. "I am not a child, nor a
silly woman, and I have no prejudices, but I can't stand the bailiffs.
When I see a bailiff in my house I turn pale and tremble, and even have a
twitching in the calves of my legs. Do you know Rogozhin refused to
honour my note?"
The prince did not, as a rule, like to complain of his straitened
circumstances; where poverty was concerned he was reserved and
exceedingly proud and sensitive, and so this announcement surprised me.
He stared a long time at the yellow clearing, warmed by the sun, watched
a long string of cranes float in the azure sky, and turned facing me.
"And by the sixth of September I must have the money ready for the
bank . . . the interest for my estate," he said aloud, by now regardless
of the coachman. "And where am I to get it? Altogether, old man, I am
in a tight fix! An awfully tight fix!"
The prince examined the cock of his gun, blew on it for some reason,
and began looking for the cranes which by now were out of sight.
"Sergey Ivanitch," I asked, after a minute's silence, "imagine if they sell your Shatilovka, what will you do?"
"I? I don't know! Shatilovka can't be saved, that's clear as
daylight, but I cannot imagine such a calamity. I can't imagine myself
without my daily bread secure. What can I do? I have had hardly any
education; I have not tried working yet; for government service it is
late to begin, . . . Besides, where could I serve? Where could I be of
use? Admitting that no great cleverness is needed for serving in our
Zemstvo, for example, yet I suffer from . . . the devil knows what, a
sort of faintheartedness, I haven't a ha'p'orth of pluck. If I went into
the Service I should always feel I was not in my right place. I am not
an idealist; I am not a Utopian; I haven't any special principles; but
am simply, I suppose, stupid and thoroughly incompetent, a neurotic and a
coward. Altogether not like other people. All other people are like
other people, only I seem to be something . . . a poor thing. . . . I
met Naryagin last Wednesday --you know him?--drunken, slovenly . . .
doesn't pay his debts, stupid" (the prince frowned and tossed his head) .
. . "a horrible person! He said to me, staggering: 'I'm being balloted
for as a justice of the peace!' Of course, they won't elect him, but,
you see, he believes he is fit to be a justice of the peace and
considers that position within his capacity. He has boldness and
self-confidence. I went to see our investigating magistrate too. The man
gets two hundred and fifty roubles a month, and does scarcely anything.
All he can do is to stride backwards and forwards for days together in
nothing but his underclothes, but, ask him, he is convinced he is doing
his work and honourably performing his duty. I couldn't go on like that!
I should be ashamed to look the clerk in the face."
At that moment Grontovsky, on a chestnut horse, galloped by us with a
flourish. On his left arm the basket bobbed up and down with the
mushrooms dancing in it. As he passed us he grinned and waved his hand,
as though we were old friends.
"Blockhead!" the prince filtered through his teeth, looking after
him. "It's wonderful how disgusting it sometimes is to see satisfied
faces. A stupid, animal feeling due to hunger, I expect. . . . What was I
saying? Oh, yes, about going into the Service, . . . I should be
ashamed to take the salary, and yet, to tell the truth, it is stupid. If
one looks at it from a broader point of view, more seriously, I am
eating what isn't mine now. Am I not? But why am I not ashamed of that. .
. . It is a case of habit, I suppose . . . and not being able to
realize one's true position. . . . But that position is most likely
awful. . ."
I looked at him, wondering if the prince were showing off. But his
face was mild and his eyes were mournfully following the movements of
the chestnut horse racing away, as though his happiness were racing away
with it.
Apparently he was in that mood of irritation and sadness when women
weep quietly for no reason, and men feel a craving to complain of
themselves, of life, of God. . . .
When I got out of the chaise at the gates of the house the prince said to me:
"A man once said, wanting to annoy me, that I have the face of a
cardsharper. I have noticed that cardsharpers are usually dark. Do you
know, it seems that if I really had been born a cardsharper I should
have remained a decent person to the day of my death, for I should never
have had the boldness to do wrong. I tell you frankly I have had the
chance once in my life of getting rich if I had told a lie, a lie to
myself and one woman . . . and one other person whom I know would have
forgiven me for lying; I should have put into my pocket a million. But I
could not. I hadn't the pluck!"
From the gates we had to go to the house through the copse by a long
road, level as a ruler, and planted on each side with thick, lopped
lilacs. The house looked somewhat heavy, tasteless, like a facade on the
stage. It rose clumsily out of a mass of greenery, and caught the eye
like a great stone thrown on the velvety turf. At the chief entrance I
was met by a fat old footman in a green swallow-tail coat and big
silver-rimmed spectacles; without making any announcement, only looking
contemptuously at my dusty figure, he showed me in. As I mounted the
soft carpeted stairs there was, for some reason, a strong smell of
india-rubber. At the top I was enveloped in an atmosphere found only in
museums, in signorial mansions and old-fashioned merchant houses; it
seemed like the smell of something long past, which had once lived and
died and had left its soul in the rooms. I passed through three or four
rooms on my way from the entry to the drawing-room. I remember bright
yellow, shining floors, lustres wrapped in stiff muslin, narrow, striped
rugs which stretched not straight from door to door, as they usually
do, but along the walls, so that not venturing to touch the bright floor
with my muddy boots I had to describe a rectangle in each room. In the
drawing-room, where the footman left me, stood old-fashioned ancestral
furniture in white covers, shrouded in twilight. It looked surly and
elderly, and, as though out of respect for its repose, not a sound was
audible.
Even the clock was silent . . . it seemed as though the Princess
Tarakanov had fallen asleep in the golden frame, and the water and the
rats were still and motionless through magic. The daylight, afraid of
disturbing the universal tranquillity, scarcely pierced through the
lowered blinds, and lay on the soft rugs in pale, slumbering streaks.
Three minutes passed and a big, elderly woman in black, with her
cheek bandaged up, walked noiselessly into the drawing-room. She bowed
to me and pulled up the blinds. At once, enveloped in the bright
sunlight, the rats and water in the picture came to life and movement,
Princess Tarakanov was awakened, and the old chairs frowned gloomily.
"Her honour will be here in a minute, sir . . ." sighed the old lady, frowning too.
A few more minutes of waiting and I saw Nadyezhda Lvovna. What struck
me first of all was that she certainly was ugly, short, scraggy, and
round-shouldered. Her thick, chestnut hair was magnificent; her face,
pure and with a look of culture in it, was aglow with youth; there was a
clear and intelligent expression in her eyes; but the whole charm of
her head was lost through the thickness of her lips and the over-acute
facial angle.
I mentioned my name, and announced the object of my visit.
"I really don't know what I am to say!" she said, in hesitation,
dropping her eyes and smiling. "I don't like to refuse, and at the same
time. . . ."
"Do, please," I begged.
Nadyezhda Lvovna looked at me and laughed. I laughed too. She was
probably amused by what Grontovsky had so enjoyed—that is, the right of
giving or withholding permission; my visit suddenly struck me as queer
and strange.
"I don't like to break the long-established rules," said Madame
Kandurin. "Shooting has been forbidden on our estate for the last six
years. No!" she shook her head resolutely. "Excuse me, I must refuse
you. If I allow you I must allow others. I don't like unfairness. Either
let all or no one."
"I am sorry!" I sighed. "It's all the sadder because we have come
more than ten miles. I am not alone," I added, "Prince Sergey Ivanitch
is with me."
I uttered the prince's name with no
arriere pensee, not
prompted by any special motive or aim; I simply blurted it out without
thinking, in the simplicity of my heart. Hearing the familiar name
Madame Kandurin started, and bent a prolonged gaze upon me. I noticed
her nose turn pale.
"That makes no difference . . ." she said, dropping her eyes.
As I talked to her I stood at the window that looked out on the
shrubbery. I could see the whole shrubbery with the avenues and the
ponds and the road by which I had come. At the end of the road, beyond
the gates, the back of our chaise made a dark patch. Near the gate, with
his back to the house, the prince was standing with his legs apart,
talking to the lanky Grontovsky.
Madame Kandurin had been standing all the time at the other window.
She looked from time to time towards the shrubbery, and from the moment I
mentioned the prince's name she did not turn away from the window.
"Excuse me," she said, screwing up her eyes as she looked towards the
road and the gate, "but it would be unfair to allow you only to shoot. .
. . And, besides, what pleasure is there in shooting birds? What's it
for? Are they in your way?"
A solitary life, immured within four walls, with its indoor twilight
and heavy smell of decaying furniture, disposes people to
sentimentality. Madame Kandurin's idea did her credit, but I could not
resist saying:
"If one takes that line one ought to go barefoot. Boots are made out of the leather of slaughtered animals."
"One must distinguish between a necessity and a caprice," Madame Kandurin answered in a toneless voice.
She had by now recognized the prince, and did not take her eyes off
his figure. It is hard to describe the delight and the suffering with
which her ugly face was radiant! Her eyes were smiling and shining, her
lips were quivering and laughing, while her face craned closer to the
panes. Keeping hold of a flower-pot with both hands, with bated breath
and with one foot slightly lifted, she reminded me of a dog pointing and
waiting with passionate impatience for "Fetch it!"
I looked at her and at the prince who could not tell a lie once in
his life, and I felt angry and bitter against truth and falsehood, which
play such an elemental part in the personal happiness of men.
The prince started suddenly, took aim and fired. A hawk, flying over him, fluttered its wings and flew like an arrow far away.
"He aimed too high!" I said. "And so, Nadyezhda Lvovna," I sighed,
moving away from the window, "you will not permit . . ."--Madame
Kandurin was silent.
"I have the honour to take my leave," I said, "and I beg you to forgive my disturbing you. . ."
Madame Kandurin would have turned facing me, and had already moved
through a quarter of the angle, when she suddenly hid her face behind
the hangings, as though she felt tears in her eyes that she wanted to
conceal.
"Good-bye. . . . Forgive me . . ." she said softly.
I bowed to her back, and strode away across the bright yellow floors,
no longer keeping to the carpet. I was glad to get away from this
little domain of gilded boredom and sadness, and I hastened as though
anxious to shake off a heavy, fantastic dream with its twilight, its
enchanted princess, its lustres. . . .
At the front door a maidservant overtook me and thrust a note into my
hand: "Shooting is permitted on showing this. N. K.," I read.
