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Anton Chekhov
- Three Years
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III IV
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VIII
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XVII
IV Going into his sister's room, and seeing to his surprise Yulia
Sergeyevna, Laptev had again the humiliating sensation of a man
who feels himself an object of repulsion. He concluded that if
after what had happened yesterday she could bring herself so
easily to visit his sister and meet him, it must be because she
was not concerned about him, and regarded him as a complete
nonentity. But when he greeted her, and with a pale face and
dust under her eyes she looked at him mournfully and
remorsefully, he saw that she, too, was miserable.
She did not feel well. She only stayed ten minutes, and began
saying good-bye. And as she went out she said to Laptev:
"Will you see me home, Alexey Fyodorovitch?"
They walked along the street in silence, holding their hats, and
he, walking a little behind, tried to screen her from the wind.
In the lane it was more sheltered, and they walked side by side.
"Forgive me if I was not nice yesterday;" and her voice quavered
as though she were going to cry. "I was so wretched! I did not
sleep all night."
"I slept well all night," said Laptev, without looking at her;
"but that doesn't mean that I was happy. My life is broken. I'm
deeply unhappy, and after your refusal yesterday I go about like
a man poisoned. The most difficult thing was said yesterday.
To-day I feel no embarrassment and can talk to you frankly. I
love you more than my sister, more than my dead mother. . . . I
can live without my sister, and without my mother, and I have
lived without them, but life without you -- is meaningless to
me; I can't face it. . . ."
And now too, as usual, he guessed her intention.
He realised that she wanted to go back to what had happened the
day before, and with that object had asked him to accompany her,
and now was taking him home with her. But what could she add to
her refusal? What new idea had she in her head? From everything,
from her glances, from her smile, and even from her tone, from
the way she held her head and shoulders as she walked beside
him, he saw that, as before, she did not love him, that he was a
stranger to her. What more did she want to say?
Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home.
"You are very welcome. I'm always glad to see you, Fyodor
Alexeyitch," he said, mixing up his Christian name and his
father's. "Delighted, delighted!"
He had never been so polite before, and Laptev saw that he knew
of his offer; he did not like that either. He was sitting now in
the drawing-room, and the room impressed him strangely, with its
poor, common decorations, its wretched pictures, and though
there were arm-chairs in it, and a huge lamp with a shade over
it, it still looked like an uninhabited place, a huge barn, and
it was obvious that no one could feel at home in such a room,
except a man like the doctor. The next room, almost twice as
large, was called the reception-room, and in it there were only
rows of chairs, as though for a dancing class. And while Laptev
was sitting in the drawing-room talking to the doctor about his
sister, he began to be tortured by a suspicion. Had not Yulia
Sergeyevna been to his sister Nina's, and then brought him here
to tell him that she would accept him? Oh, how awful it was! But
the most awful thing of all was that his soul was capable of
such a suspicion. And he imagined how the father and the
daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the night before, in
prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last had come to
the conclusion that Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in refusing a
rich man. The words that parents use in such cases kept ringing
in his ears:
"It is true you don't love him, but think what good you could
do!"
The doctor was going out to see patients. Laptev would have gone
with him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said:
"I beg you to stay."
She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to
refuse an honourable, good man who loved her, simply because he
was not attractive, especially when marrying him would make it
possible for her to change her mode of life, her cheerless,
monotonous, idle life in which youth was passing with no
prospect of anything better in the future -- to refuse him under
such circumstances was madness, caprice and folly, and that God
might even punish her for it.
The father went out. When the sound of his steps had died away,
she suddenly stood up before Laptev and said resolutely, turning
horribly white as she did so:
"I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch. . . .
I accept your offer."
He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed him awkwardly on
the head with cold lips.
He felt that in this love scene the chief thing -- her love --
was lacking, and that there was a great deal that was not
wanted; and he longed to cry out, to run away, to go back to
Moscow at once. But she was close to him, and she seemed to him
so lovely, and he was suddenly overcome by passion. He reflected
that it was too late for deliberation now; he embraced her
passionately, and muttered some words, calling her thou; he
kissed her on the neck, and then on the cheek, on the head. . .
.
She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations,
and both of them were already regretting what they had said and
both were asking themselves in confusion:
"Why has this happened?"
"If only you knew how miserable I am!" she said, wringing her
hands.
"What is it?" he said, going up to her, wringing his hands too.
"My dear, for God's sake, tell me -- what is it? Only tell the
truth, I entreat you -- nothing but the truth!"
"Don't pay any attention to it," she said, and forced herself to
smile. "I promise you I'll be a faithful, devoted wife. . . .
Come this evening."
Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading aloud an
historical novel, he recalled it all and felt wounded that his
splendid, pure, rich feeling was met with such a shallow
response. He was not loved, but his offer had been accepted --
in all probability because he was rich: that is, what was
thought most of in him was what he valued least of all in
himself. It was quite possible that Yulia, who was so pure and
believed in God, had not once thought of his money; but she did
not love him -- did not love him, and evidently she had
interested motives, vague, perhaps, and not fully thought out --
still, it was so. The doctor's house with its common furniture
was repulsive to him, and he looked upon the doctor himself as a
wretched, greasy miser, a sort of operatic Gaspard from "Les
Cloches de Corneville." The very name "Yulia" had a vulgar
sound. He imagined how he and his Yulia would stand at their
wedding, in reality complete strangers to one another, without a
trace of feeling on her side, just as though their marriage had
been made by a professional matchmaker; and the only consolation
left him now, as commonplace as the marriage itself, was the
reflection that he was not the first, and would not be the last;
that thousands of people were married like that; and that with
time, when Yulia came to know him better, she would perhaps grow
fond of him.
"Romeo and Juliet!" he said, as he shut the novel, and he
laughed. "I am Romeo, Nina. You may congratulate me. I made an
offer to Yulia Byelavin to-day."
Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but when she believed it,
she began to cry; she was not pleased at the news.
"Well, I congratulate you," she said. "But why is it so sudden?"
"No, it's not sudden. It's been going on since March, only you
don't notice anything. . . . I fell in love with her last March
when I made her acquaintance here, in your rooms."
"I thought you would marry some one in our Moscow set," said
Nina Fyodorovna after a pause. "Girls in our set are simpler.
But what matters, Alyosha, is that you should be happy -- that
matters most. My Grigory Nikolaitch did not love me, and there's
no concealing it; you can see what our life is. Of course any
woman may love you for your goodness and your brains, but, you
see, Yulitchka is a girl of good family from a high-class
boarding-school; goodness and brains are not enough for her. She
is young, and, you, Alyosha, are not so young, and are not
good-looking."
To soften the last words, she stroked his head and said:
"You're not good-looking, but you're a dear."
She was so agitated that a faint flush came into her cheeks, and
she began discussing eagerly whether it would be the proper
thing for her to bless Alyosha with the ikon at the wedding. She
was, she reasoned, his elder sister, and took the place of his
mother; and she kept trying to convince her dejected brother
that the wedding must be celebrated in proper style, with pomp
and gaiety, so that no one could find fault with it.
Then he began going to the Byelavins' as an accepted suitor,
three or four times a day; and now he never had time to take
Sasha's place and read aloud the historical novel. Yulia used to
receive him in her two rooms, which were at a distance from the
drawing-room and her father's study, and he liked them very
much. The walls in them were dark; in the corner stood a case of
ikons; and there was a smell of good scent and of the oil in the
holy lamp. Her rooms were at the furthest end of the house; her
bedstead and dressing-table were shut off by a screen. The doors
of the bookcase were covered on the inside with a green curtain,
and there were rugs on the floor, so that her footsteps were
noiseless -- and from this he concluded that she was of a
reserved character, and that she liked a quiet, peaceful,
secluded life. In her own home she was treated as though she
were not quite grown up. She had no money of her own, and
sometimes when they were out for walks together, she was
overcome with confusion at not having a farthing. Her father
allowed her very little for dress and books, hardly ten pounds a
year. And, indeed, the doctor himself had not much money in
spite of his good practice. He played cards every night at the
club, and always lost. Moreover, he bought mortgaged houses
through a building society, and let them. The tenants were
irregular in paying the rent, but he was convinced that such
speculations were profitable. He had mortgaged his own house in
which he and his daughter were living, and with the money so
raised had bought a piece of waste ground, and had already begun
to build on it a large two-storey house, meaning to mortgage it,
too, as soon as it was finished.
Laptev now lived in a sort of cloud, feeling as though he were
not himself, but his double, and did many things which he would
never have brought himself to do before. He went three or four
times to the club with the doctor, had supper with him, and
offered him money for house-building. He even visited Panaurov
at his other establishment. It somehow happened that Panaurov
invited him to dinner, and without thinking, Laptev accepted. He
was received by a lady of five-and-thirty. She was tall and
thin, with hair touched with grey, and black eyebrows,
apparently not Russian. There were white patches of powder on
her face. She gave him a honeyed smile and pressed his hand
jerkily, so that the bracelets on her white hands tinkled. It
seemed to Laptev that she smiled like that because she wanted to
conceal from herself and from others that she was unhappy. He
also saw two little girls, aged five and three, who had a marked
likeness to Sasha. For dinner they had milk-soup, cold veal, and
chocolate. It was insipid and not good; but the table was
splendid, with gold forks, bottles of Soyer, and cayenne pepper,
an extraordinary bizarre cruet-stand, and a gold pepper-pot.
It was only as he was finishing the milk-soup that Laptev
realised how very inappropriate it was for him to be dining
there. The lady was embarrassed, and kept smiling, showing her
teeth. Panaurov expounded didactically what being in love was,
and what it was due to.
"We have in it an example of the action of electricity," he said
in French, addressing the lady. "Every man has in his skin
microscopic glands which contain currents of electricity. If you
meet with a person whose currents are parallel with your own,
then you get love."
When Laptev went home and his sister asked him where he had been
he felt awkward, and made no answer.
He felt himself in a false position right up to the time of the
wedding. His love grew more intense every day, and Yulia seemed
to him a poetic and exalted creature; but, all the same, there
was no mutual love, and the truth was that he was buying her and
she was selling herself. Sometimes, thinking things over, he
fell into despair and asked himself: should he run away? He did
not sleep for nights together, and kept thinking how he should
meet in Moscow the lady whom he had called in his letters "a
certain person," and what attitude his father and his brother,
difficult people, would take towards his marriage and towards
Yulia. He was afraid that his father would say something rude to
Yulia at their first meeting. And something strange had happened
of late to his brother Fyodor. In his long letters he had taken
to writing of the importance of health, of the effect of illness
on the mental condition, of the meaning of religion, but not a
word about Moscow or business. These letters irritated Laptev,
and he thought his brother's character was changing for the
worse.
The wedding was in September. The ceremony took place at the
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, after mass, and the same day
the young couple set off for Moscow. When Laptev and his wife,
in a black dress with a long train, already looking not a girl
but a married woman, said good-bye to Nina Fyodorovna, the
invalid's face worked, but there was no tear in her dry eyes.
She said:
"If -- which God forbid -- I should die, take care of my little
girls."
"Oh, I promise!" answered Yulia Sergeyevna, and her lips and
eyelids began quivering too.
"I shall come to see you in October," said Laptev, much moved.
"You must get better, my darling."
They travelled in a special compartment. Both felt depressed and
uncomfortable. She sat in the corner without taking off her hat,
and made a show of dozing, and he lay on the seat opposite, and
he was disturbed by various thoughts -- of his father, of "a
certain person," whether Yulia would like her Moscow flat. And
looking at his wife, who did not love him, he wondered
dejectedly "why this had happened."
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