Masha came back from town the next day towards evening. She was displeased with something but concealed it, and only asked why all the storm windows had been put in— you could suffocate that way. I removed two of the storm windows. We had no wish to eat, but we sat down and had supper.
‘‘Go and wash your hands,’’ said my wife. ‘‘You smell of putty.’’
She brought new illustrated magazines from town, and we looked at them together after supper. Some had supplements with fashion pictures and patterns. Masha gave them a cursory glance and set them aside in order to give them a separate and proper examination later; but one dress with a wide, smooth, bell-shaped skirt and big sleeves caught her interest, and she looked at it seriously and attentively for a moment.
‘‘That’s not bad,’’ she said.
‘‘Yes, that dress would go very well on you,’’ I said. ‘‘Very well!’’
And, looking at the dress with loving emotion, admiring that gray spot only because she liked it, I went on tenderly:
‘‘A wonderful, charming dress! Beautiful, splendid Masha! My dear Masha!’’
And tears dropped on the picture.
‘‘Splendid Masha...’ I murmured. ‘‘Dear, sweet Masha...’
She went and lay down, and I sat for another hour looking at the illustrations.
‘‘You shouldn’t have removed the storm windows,’’ she said from the bedroom. ‘‘I’m afraid it will be cold. Look how it’s blowing!’’
I read here and there in the ‘‘miscellany’’—about how to make cheap ink, and about the world’s biggest diamond. I again came upon the fashion picture of the dress she liked, and I imagined her at a ball, with a fan, bare shoulders, brilliant, magnificent, well versed in music and painting and literature, and how small, how brief, my role seemed to me!
Our meeting, this marriage of ours, was only an episode of which this alive, richly endowed woman would have many in her life. All that was best in the world, as I’ve already said, was at her disposal and came to her perfectly gratis, and even ideas and fashionable intellectual trends served for her pleasure, diversifying her life, and I was merely a coachman who drove her from one enthusiasm to another. Now she no longer needed me, she would flutter off, and I would be left alone.
And as if in answer to my thoughts, a desperate cry came from the yard:
‘‘He-e-elp!’’
It was a shrill woman’s voice, and as if wishing to imitate it, the wind in the chimney also howled in a shrill voice. About half a minute went by, and again I heard through the noise of the wind, but as if from the other end of the yard:
‘‘He-e-elp!’’
‘‘Misail, do you hear?’’ my wife asked softly. ‘‘Do you hear?’’
She came out to me from the bedroom in just her night-gown, her hair undone, and listened, looking at the dark window.
‘‘Somebody’s being strangled!’’ she said. ‘‘Just what we needed.’’
I took a gun and went out. It was very dark in the yard, a strong wind was blowing, so that it was hard to stand. I walked to the gate, listened: the trees rustled, the wind whistled, and in the orchard a dog howled lazily, probably the peasant simpleton’s. Beyond the gate it was pitch dark, not a single light on the tracks. And near the wing where the office was last year, there suddenly came a stifled cry:
‘‘He-e-elp!’’
‘‘Who’s there?’’ I called.
Two men were fighting. One was pushing the other out, but the other was resisting, and both were breathing heavily.
‘‘Let go!’’ said one, and I recognized Ivan Cheprakov; it was he who had cried in a shrill woman’s voice. ‘‘Let go, curse you, or I’ll bite your hands all over!’’
I recognized the other as Moisei. I pulled them apart and, with that, couldn’t help myself and hit Moisei twice in the face. He fell down, then got up, and I hit him once more.
‘‘He wanted to kill me,’’ he muttered. ‘‘He was getting at mother’s chest... I wish to lock him up in the wing for safety’s sake, sir...’
Cheprakov was drunk, didn’t recognize me, and kept taking deep breaths, as if gathering air in order to cry ‘‘help’’ again.
I left them and went back to the house; my wife was lying in bed, already dressed. I told her what had happened in the yard and did not even conceal that I had struck Moisei.
‘‘It’s frightening to live in the country,’’ she said. ‘‘And God in heaven, what a long night!’’
‘‘He-e-elp!’’ the cry came again a little later.
‘‘I’ll go and calm them down,’’ I said.
‘‘No, let them bite each other’s throats there,’’ she said with a squeamish air.
She was staring at the ceiling and listening, and I was sitting nearby, not daring to start talking with her, feeling as if it was my fault that they were shouting ‘‘help’’ in the yard and that the night was so long.
We were silent, and I waited impatiently for a glow of light in the windows. But Masha looked all the while as if she had just recovered consciousness and was surprised at how it was that she, so intelligent, educated, so neat, could have wound up in this pitiful provincial wasteland, in a gang of petty, worthless people, and how she could have forgotten herself so far that she had even been captivated by one of those people and, for over six months, had been his wife. It seemed to me that it now made no difference to her whether it was me, or Moisei, or Cheprakov; everything had merged for her into this wild, drunken ‘‘help’’—me, and our marriage, and our farming, and the bad autumn roads; and whenever she sighed or stirred in order to lie more comfortably, I read in her face: ‘‘Oh, if only morning would come sooner!’’
In the morning she left.
I stayed in Dubechnya for three more days, waiting for her, then put all our things in one room, locked it, and went to town. When I rang at the engineer’s, it was already evening, and the streetlamps were lit along our Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya. Pavel told me there was nobody home: Viktor Ivanych had left for Petersburg, and Marya Viktorovna was most likely rehearsing at the Azhogins’. I remember with what agitation I went to the Azhogins’, how my heart pounded and sank as I went up the stairs and stood for a long time on the upper landing, not daring to enter that temple of the muses! In the reception room, candles were burning on the little table, the grand piano, and the stage, three of them everywhere, and the first performance had been set for the thirteenth, and now the first rehearsal was on a Monday—a black day. The struggle against superstition! All the amateurs of the scenic art were gathered; the eldest, the middle, and the youngest walked about onstage, reading their roles from notebooks. Apart from them all, Radish stood motionless, his temple leaning against the wall, and gazed at the stage with adoration, waiting for the rehearsal to begin. Everything as it used to be!
I made for the hostess—I had to greet her, but suddenly everyone hissed and waved at me not to stamp my feet. Silence fell. The lid of the grand piano was opened, some lady sat down, narrowing her nearsighted eyes at the score, and my Masha went to the piano, decked out, beautiful, but beautiful in some special new way, not at all like the Masha who used to come to me at the mill in the spring. She began to sing:
‘‘Why do I love thee, radiant night?’’25
In all the period of our acquaintance, this was the first time I had heard her sing. She had a good, strong, juicy voice, and it seemed to me while she sang that I was eating a ripe, sweet, fragrant melon. Then she finished, there was applause, and she smiled, very pleased, flashing her eyes, leafing through the scores, straightening her dress like a bird that has escaped its cage at last and preens its feathers in freedom. Her hair was brushed over her ears, and her face had an unpleasant, defiant expression, as if she wanted to challenge us all, or yell at us as at horses: ‘‘Hey, you, my pretty ones!’’