The Devil (2 page)

“I know. It’s Stepanida I must bring you. Her husband is away in town, just the same as a soldier, and she is a fine woman, and clean. You will be satisfied. As it is I was saying to her the other day—you should go, but she …”

“Well then, when is it to be?”

“Tomorrow if you like. I shall be going to get some tobacco and I will call in, and at the dinner-hour come here, or to the bath-house behind the kitchen garden. There will be nobody about. Besides after dinner everybody takes a nap.”

“All right then.”

A terrible excitement seized Yevgeny as he rode home. “What will happen? What is a peasant woman like? Suppose it turns out that she is hideous, horrible? No, she is handsome,” he told himself, remembering some he had been noticing. “But what shall I say? What shall I do?”

He was not himself all that day. Next day at noon he went to the forester’s hut. Danila stood at the door and silently and significantly nodded towards the wood. The blood rushed to Yevgeny’s heart, he was conscious of it and went to the kitchen garden. No one was there. He went to the bath-house—there was no one about, he looked in, came out, and suddenly heard the crackling of a breaking twig. He looked round—and she was standing in the thicket beyond the little ravine. He rushed there across the ravine. There were nettles in it which he
had not noticed. They stung him and, losing the pince-nez from his nose, he ran up the slope on the farther side. She stood there, in a white embroidered apron, a red-brown skirt, and a bright red kerchief, barefoot, fresh, firm, and handsome, and smiling shyly.

“There is a path leading round—you should have gone round,” she said. “I came long ago, ever so long.”

He went up to her and, looking her over, touched her.

A quarter of an hour later they separated; he found his pince-nez, called in to see Danila, and in reply to his question: “Are you satisfied, master?” gave him a ruble and went home.

He was satisfied. Only at first had he felt ashamed, then it had passed off. And everything had gone well. The best thing was that he now felt at ease, tranquil and vigorous. As for her, he had not even seen her thoroughly. He remembered that she was clean, fresh, not bad-looking, and simple, without any pretence. “Whose wife is she?” said he to himself. “Pechnikov’s, Danila said. What Pechnikov is that? There are two households of that name. Probably she is old Mikhalya’s daughter-in-law. Yes, that must be it. His son does live in Moscow. I’ll ask Danila about it some time.”

From then onward that previously important drawback to country life—enforced self-restraint—was eliminated. Yevgeny’s freedom of mind was no longer disturbed and he was able to attend freely to his affairs.

And the matter Yevgeny had undertaken was far
from easy: before he had time to stop up one hole a new one would unexpectedly show itself, and it sometimes seemed to him that he would not be able to go through with it and that it would end in his having to sell the estate after all, which would mean that all his efforts would be wasted and that he had failed to accomplish what he had undertaken. That prospect disturbed him most of all.

All this time more and more debts of his father’s unexpectedly came to light. It was evident that towards the end of his life he had borrowed right and left. At the time of the settlement in May, Yevgeny had thought he at least knew everything, but in the middle of the summer he suddenly received a letter from which it appeared that there was still a debt of twelve thousand rubles to the widow Yesipova. There was no promissory note, but only an ordinary receipt which his lawyer told him could be disputed. But it did not enter Yevgeny’s head to refuse to pay a debt of his father’s merely because the document could be challenged. He only wanted to know for certain whether there had been such a debt.

“Mamma! who is Kaleriya Vladimirovna Yesipova?” he asked his mother when they met as usual for dinner.

“Yesipova? She was brought up by your grandfather. Why?”

Yevgeny told his mother about the letter.

“I wonder she is not ashamed to ask for it. Your father gave her so much!”

“But do we owe her this?”

“Well now, how shall I put it? It is not a debt. Papa, out of his unbounded kindness …”

“Yes, but did Papa consider it a debt?”

“I cannot say. I don’t know. I only know it is hard enough for you without that.”

Yevgeny saw that Marya Pavlovna did not know what to say, and was as it were sounding him.

“I see from what you say that it must be paid,” said he. “I will go to see her tomorrow and have a chat, and see if it cannot be deferred.”

“Ah, how sorry I am for you, but you know that will be best. Tell her she must wait,” said Marya Pavlovna, evidently tranquillized and proud of her son’s decision.

Yevgeny’s position was particularly hard because his mother, who was living with him, did not at all realize his position. She had been accustomed all her life long to live so extravagantly that she could not even imagine to herself the position her son was in, that is to say, that today or tomorrow matters might shape themselves so that they would have nothing left and he would have to sell everything and live and support his mother on what salary he could earn, which at the very most would be two thousand rubles. She did not understand that they could only save themselves from that position by cutting down expense in everything, and so she could not understand why Yevgeny was so careful about trifles, in expenditure on gardeners, coachmen, servants—even on
food. Also, like most widows, she nourished feelings of devotion to the memory of her departed spouse quite different from those she had felt for him while he lived, and she did not admit the thought that anything the departed had done or arranged could be wrong or could be altered.

Yevgeny by great efforts managed to keep up the garden and the conservatory with two gardeners, and the stables with two coachmen. And Marya Pavlovna naively thought that she was sacrificing herself for her son and doing all a mother could do, by not complaining of the food which the old man-cook prepared, of the fact that the paths in the park were not all swept clean, and that instead of footmen they had only a boy.

So, too, concerning this new debt, in which Yevgeny saw an almost crushing blow to all his undertakings, Marya Pavlovna only saw an incident displaying Yevgeny’s noble nature. Moreover she did not feel much anxiety about Yevgeny’s position, because she was confident that he would make a brilliant marriage which would put everything right. And he could make a very brilliant marriage: she knew a dozen families who would be glad to give their daughters to him. And she wished to arrange the matter as soon as possible.

Yevgeny himself dreamt of marriage, but not in the same way as his mother. The idea of using marriage as a means of putting his affairs in order was repulsive to him. He wished to marry honourably, for love. He observed the girls whom he met and those he knew, and compared himself with them, but no decision had yet been taken. Meanwhile, contrary to his expectations, his relations with Stepanida continued, and even acquired the character of a settled affair. Yevgeny was so far from debauchery, it was so hard for him secretly to do this thing which he felt to be bad, that he could not arrange these meetings himself and even after the first one hoped not to see Stepanida again; but it turned out that after some time the same restlessness (due he believed to that cause) again overcame him. And his restlessness this time was no longer impersonal, but suggested just those same bright, black eyes, and that deep voice, saying, “ever so long,” that same scent of something fresh and strong, and that same full breast lifting the bib of her apron, and all this in that hazel and maple thicket, bathed in bright sunlight.

Though he felt ashamed he again approached Danila. And again a rendezvous was fixed for midday in the wood. This time Yevgeny looked her over more carefully and everything about her seemed attractive. He tried talking to her and asked about her husband. He really was Mikhalya’s son and lived as a coachman in Moscow.

“Well, then, how is it you …” Yevgeny wanted to ask how it was she was untrue to him.

“What about ‘how is it’?” asked she. Evidently she was clever and quick-witted.

“Well, how is it you come to me?”

“There now,” said she merrily. “I bet he goes on the spree there. Why shouldn’t I?”

Evidently she was putting on an air of sauciness and assurance, and this seemed charming to Yevgeny. But all the same he did not himself fix a rendezvous with her. Even when she proposed that they should meet without the aid of Danila, to whom she seemed not very well disposed, he did not consent. He hoped that this meeting would be the last. He thought such contact was necessary for him and that there was nothing bad about it, but in the depth of his soul there was a stricter judge who did not approve of it and hoped that this would be the last time, or if he did not hope that, at any rate did not wish to participate in arrangements to repeat it another time.

So the whole summer passed, during which they met a dozen times and always by Danila’s help. It happened once that she could not be there because her husband had come home, and Danila proposed another woman, but Yevgeny refused with disgust. Then the husband went away and the meetings continued as before, at first through Danila, but afterwards he simply fixed the time and she came with another woman, Prokhorova—as it
would not do for a peasant-woman to go about alone.

Once at the very time fixed for the rendezvous a family came to call on Marya Pavlovna, with the very girl she wished Yevgeny to marry, and it was impossible for Yevgeny to get away. As soon as he could do so, he went out as though to the threshing floor, and round by the path to their meeting place in the wood. She was not there, but at the accustomed spot everything within reach had been broken—the black alder, the hazel-twigs, and even a young maple the thickness of a stake. She had waited, had become excited and angry, and had skittishly left him a remembrance. He waited and waited, and then went to Danila to ask him to call her for tomorrow. She came and was just as usual.

So the summer passed. The meetings were always arranged in the wood, and only once, when it grew towards autumn, in the shed that stood in her backyard.

It did not enter Yevgeny’s head that these relations of his had any importance for him. About her he did not even think. He gave her money and nothing more. At first he did not know and did not think that the affair was known and that she was envied throughout the village, or that her relations took money from her and encouraged her, and that her conception of any sin in the matter had been quite obliterated by the influence of the money and her family’s approval. It seemed to her that if people envied her, then what she was doing was good.

“It is simply necessary for my health,” thought
Yevgeny. “I grant it is not right, and though no one says anything, everybody, or many people, know of it. The woman who comes with her knows. And once she knows she is sure to have told others. But what’s to be done? I am acting badly,” thought Yevgeny, “but what’s one to do? Anyhow it is not for long.”

What chiefly disturbed Yevgeny was the thought of the husband. At first for some reason it seemed to him that the husband must be a poor sort, and this as it were partly justified his conduct. But he saw the husband and was struck by his appearance: he was a fine fellow and smartly dressed, in no way a worse man than himself, but surely better. At their next meeting he told her he had seen her husband and had been surprised to see that he was such a fine fellow.

“There’s not another man like him in the village,” said she proudly.

This surprised Yevgeny, and the thought of the husband tormented him still more after that. He happened to be at Danila’s one day and Danila, having begun chatting said to him quite openly:

“And Mikhalya asked me the other day: ‘Is it true that the master is living with my wife?’ I said I did not know. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘better with the master than with a peasant.’ ”

“Well, and what did he say?”

“He said: ‘Wait a bit. I’ll get to know and I’ll give it her all the same.’ ”

Yes, if the husband returned to live here I would give her up
, thought Yevgeny.

But the husband lived in town and for the present their relations continued.

“When necessary I will break it off, and there will be nothing left of it,” thought he.

And this seemed to him certain, especially as during the whole summer many different things occupied him very fully: the erection of the new farm-house, and the harvest and building, and above all meeting the debts and selling the wasteland. All these were affairs that completely absorbed him and on which he spent his thoughts when he lay down and when he got up. All that was real life. His relations—he did not even call it connection—with Stepanida he paid no attention to. It is true that when the wish to see her arose it came with such strength that he could think of nothing else. But this did not last long. A meeting was arranged, and he again forgot her for a week or even for a month.

In autumn Yevgeny often rode to town, and there became friendly with the Annenskys. They had a daughter who had just finished the Institute. And then, to Marya Pavlovna’s great grief, it happened that Yevgeny “cheapened himself,” as she expressed it, by falling in love with Liza Annenskaya and proposing to her.

From that time his relations with Stepanida ceased.

It is impossible to explain why Yevgeny chose Liza Annenskaya, as it is always impossible to explain why a man chooses this and not that woman. There were many reasons—positive and negative. One reason was that she was not a very rich heiress such as his mother sought for him, another that she was naive and to be pitied in her relations with her mother, another that she was not a beauty who attracted general attention to herself, and yet she was not bad-looking. But the chief reason was that his acquaintance with her began at the time when he was ripe for marriage. He fell in love because he knew that he would marry.

Liza Annenskaya was at first merely pleasing to Yevgeny, but when he decided to make her his wife his feelings for her became much stronger. He felt that he was in love.