University of Virginia Library

22.
CHAPTER XXII.

"ALL that day I did not speak to my wife. I
could not. Her proximity excited such hatred
that I feared myself. At the table she asked me,
in presence of the children, when I was to start
upon a journey. I was to go the following week
to an assembly of the Zemstvo, in a neighboring
locality. I named the date. She asked me if
I would need anything for the journey. I did
not answer. I sat silent at the table, and silently
I retired to my study. In those last days she
never entered my study, especially at that hour.

Suddenly I heard her steps, her walk, and then
a terribly base idea entered my head that, like
the wife of Uri, she wished to conceal a fault

already committed, and that it was for this rea-
son that she came to see me at this unseasonable
hour. 'Is it possible,' thought I, 'that she is
coming to see me?' On hearing her step as it
approached: 'If it is to see me that she is com-
ing, then I am right.'

"An inexpressible hatred invaded my soul.

The steps drew nearer, and nearer, and nearer
yet. Would she pass by and go on to the other
room? No, the hinges creaked, and at the door
her tall, graceful, languid figure appeared. In
her face, in her eyes, a timidity, an insinuating
expression, which she tried to hide, but which I
saw, and of which I understood the meaning. I
came near suffocating, such were my efforts to
hold my breath, and, continuing to look at her, I
took my cigarette, and lighted it.

"'What does this mean? One comes to talk
with you, and you go to smoking.'

"And she sat down beside me on the sofa,
resting against my shoulder. I recoiled, that I
might not touch her.

"'I see that you are displeased with what I
wish to play on Sunday,' said she.

"'I am not at all displeased,' said I.

"'Can I not see?'

"'Well, I congratulate you on your clairvoy-
ance. Only to you every baseness is agreeable,
and I abhor it.'

"'If you are going to swear like a trooper, I
am going away.'

"'Then go away. Only know that, if the
honor of the family is nothing to you, to me it
is dear. As for you, the devil take you!'

"'What! What is the matter?'

"'Go away, in the name of God.'

"But she did not go away. Was she pretend-
ing not to understand, or did she really not un-
derstand what I meant? But she was offended
and became angry.

"'You have become absolutely impossible,'
she began, or some such phrase as that regard-
ing my character, trying, as usual, to give me as
much pain as possible. 'After what you have
done to my sister (she referred to an incident
with her sister, in which, beside myself, I had
uttered brutalities; she knew that that tortured
me, and tried to touch me in that tender spot)
nothing will astonish me.'

"'Yes, offended, humiliated, and dishonored,

and after that to hold me still responsible,'
thought I, and suddenly a rage, such a hatred in-
vaded me as I do not remember to have ever felt
before. For the first time I desired to express
this hatred physically. I leaped upon her, but at
the same moment I understood my condition,
and I asked myself whether it would be well for
me to abandon myself to my fury. And I an-
swered myself that it would be well, that it
would frighten her, and, instead of resisting, I
lashed and spurred myself on, and was glad to
feel my anger boiling more and more fiercely.

"'Go away, or I will kill you!' I cried, pur-
posely, with a frightful voice, and I grasped her
by the arm,. She did not go away. Then I
twisted her arm, and pushed her away violently.

"'What is the matter with you? Come to
your senses!' she shrieked.

"'Go away,' roared I, louder than ever, rolling
my eyes wildly. 'It takes you to put me in such
a fury. I do not answer for myself! Go away!'

"In abandoning myself to my anger, I became
steeped in it, and I wanted to commit some vio-
lent act to show the force of my fury. I felt a
terrible desire to beat her, to kill her, but I real-

ized that that could not be, and I restrained my-
self. I drew back from her, rushed to the table,
grasped the paper-weight, and threw it on the
floor by her side. I took care to aim a little to
one side, and, before she disappeared (I did it so
that she could see it), I grasped a candlestick,
which I also hurled, and then took down the
barometer, continuing to shout:

"'Go away! I do not answer for myself!'

"She disappeared, and I immediately ceased
my demonstrations. An hour later the old ser-
vant came to me and said that my wife was in a
fit of hysterics. I went to see her. She sobbed
and laughed, incapable of expressing anything,
her whole body in a tremble. She was not sham-
ming, she was really sick. We sent for the
doctor, and all night long I cared for her. To-
ward daylight she grew calmer, and we became
reconciled under the influence of that feeling
which we called 'love.' The next morning, when,
after the reconciliation, I confessed to her that I
was jealous of Troukhatchevsky, she was not at
all embarrassed, and began to laugh in the most
natural way, so strange did the possibility of be-
ing led astray by such a man appear to her.

"'With such a man can an honest woman en-
tertain any feeling beyond the pleasure of enjoy-
ing music with him? But if you like, I am ready
to never see him again, even on Sunday, al-
though everybody has been invited. Write him
that I am indisposed, and that will end the mat-
ter. Only one thing annoys me,—that any one
could have thought him dangerous. I am too
proud not to detest such thoughts.'

"And she did not lie. She believed what she
said. She hoped by her words to provoke in
herself a contempt for him, and thereby to de-
fend herself. But she did not succeed. Every-
thing was directed against her, especially that
abominable music. So ended the quarrel, and
on Sunday our guests came, and Troukhatchev-
sky and my wife again played together.