The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

The Devil

But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

MATTHEW 5:28-30 (RSV)

I

A BRILLIANT CAREER AWAITED Evgeny Irtenev. He had everything it took. An excellent education at home, brilliantly completed studies in the law school of Petersburg University, connections with the highest society through his recently deceased father, and even a start at service in a ministry under the patronage of the minister. There was also a fortune, even a large fortune, but a dubious one. His father had lived abroad and in Petersburg, giving six thousand to each of his sons—Evgeny and the elder one, Andrei, who served in the horse guards—and he and the mother had run through quite a lot. He used to come to the estate only for two months in the summer, but did not concern himself with running it, leaving all that to the glutted manager, who also did not concern himself with the estate, but in whom he had full confidence.

After the father’s death, when the brothers started dividing things up, there turned out to be so many debts that their attorney even advised them to renounce the inheritance, keeping for themselves the grandmother’s estate, which was valued at a hundred thousand. But their neighbor on the estate, a landowner who had had dealings with the old Irtenev, that is, who had a promissory note from him and came to Petersburg on that account, said that, in spite of the debts, they could still straighten out their affairs and hold on to the large fortune. All that was needed was to sell the woodlot and some sections of waste land, and hold on to the main goldmine—the Semyonovskoe estate with its fifteen hundred acres of black earth, sugar factory, and seventy acres of water meadows—if one devoted oneself to the business, settled in the country, and managed things intelligently and economically.

And so Evgeny, having gone to the estates in spring (his father died during Lent) and examined everything, decided to go into retirement, settle in the country with his mother, and occupy himself with management, so as to hold on to the main estate. With his brother, with whom he was not on very friendly terms, he made the following bargain: he undertook to pay him four thousand a year or a lump sum of eighty thousand, for which his brother would renounce his share of the inheritance.

That was what he did, and, settling in the big house with his mother, he ardently, but at the same time prudently, took up the management of his estates.

It is commonly thought that the most usual conservatives are the old, and the innovators are young people. That is not quite correct. The most usual conservatives are young people. Young people who want to live, but who do not think and have no time to think about how one should live, and who therefore choose as a model for themselves the life that was.

So it was with Evgeny. Having settled now in the country, his dream and ideal was to resurrect the form of life that was, not under his father—his father had been a bad manager—but under his grandfather. And now, in the house, and in the garden, and in farming, with the changes proper to the time, of course, he tried to resurrect the general spirit of his grandfather’s life—all on the grandest footing, with prosperity for all around, and order, and good organization, and yet it took a lot to organize that life: it was necessary to satisfy the demands of creditors and banks, and for that he had to sell land and postpone payments; it was necessary to obtain money in order to continue, with hired workers or his own, carrying on the immense farm work in Semyonovskoe, with its fifteen hundred acres of plowland and its sugar factory; it was necessary to run the house and garden so that they did not look neglected and gone to seed.

There was much work, but Evgeny also had much strength—physical and spiritual. He was twenty-six, of medium height, strongly built, with muscles developed by gymnastics, a sanguine man with a bright flush all over his cheeks, with bright teeth and lips, and with not thick but soft and curly hair. His only physical flaw was nearsightedness, which he had developed in himself by wearing eyeglasses, and now he could no longer go without a pince-nez, which was already making little creases above the curve of his nose. That is how he was physically, while his spiritual image was such that, the more one knew him, the more one loved him. His mother had always loved him most of all, and now, after her husband’s death, she concentrated on him not only all her affection, but all her life. But it was not only his mother who loved him like that. His comrades at high school and the university had always felt not only love but also a particular respect for him. He always had the same effect on all strangers. It was impossible not to believe what he said, impossible to suspect any deceit or falseness given such an open, honest face and, above all, eyes.

In general his whole personality helped him greatly in his affairs. The creditor who would have refused someone else, trusted him. The clerk, the headman, the muzhik who would have done a nasty turn and deceived someone else, forgot all deceit under the pleasant impression of having to do with a kind, simple, and, above all, open man.

It was the end of May. Evgeny had somehow worked out an affair in town to do with freeing the waste land from mortgage so that he could sell it to a merchant, and had borrowed money from that same merchant to renew his stock—that is, horses, oxen, carts. And, above all, to begin the necessary construction of a farmstead. Things got going. Timber was transported, carpenters were already at work, and manure was brought in eighty carts, but so far it all hung by a thread.

II

IN THE MIDST of these cares a circumstance occurred which, though not important, tormented Evgeny a bit at the time. He had spent his youth as all young, healthy, unmarried men do, that is, he had had relations with various sorts of women. He was not a libertine, but neither was he, as he used to say to himself, a monk. He had given himself to it only insofar as it was necessary for his physical health and mental freedom, as he used to say. It had started when he was sixteen. And so far everything had gone well. Well in the sense that he had not given himself up to depravity, had not once been carried away, and had not once been sick. At first he had had a seamstress in Petersburg, but then she went bad, and he made other arrangements. And this side was so well provided for that it did not disturb him.

But here it was the second month that he had been living in the country, and he decidedly did not know what to do. His involuntary abstinence began to have a bad effect on him. Should he go to town for that? And where? How? This alone troubled Evgeny Ivanovich, and as he was convinced that it was necessary and that he needed it, it actually became a need for him, and he felt that he was not free and against his will he followed every young woman with his eyes.

He considered it wrong for him to take up with a woman or girl from his own village. He knew by hearsay that in this respect his father and grandfather had stood completely apart from other landowners of that time and had never started any intrigues with serf women at home, and he decided not to do that; but later, feeling himself more and more bound, and imagining with horror what might happen to him in a small town, and realizing that they were not serfs now, he decided it could be done even here. Only do it so that nobody knows, and not out of depravity, but only for the sake of health, as he said to himself. And once he had decided it, he found it still more disturbing; talking with the headman, with muzhiks, with the cabinetmaker, he involuntarily brought the conversation around to women, and if the conversation got on to women, he kept it there. At women themselves he looked more and more intently.

III

BUT TO RESOLVE the matter in himself was one thing, to carry it out was another. To approach a woman himself was impossible. Which one? Where? It had to be through someone, but to whom should he turn?

Once he happened to stop for a drink of water in a forest watch-house. The forester was his father’s former huntsman. Evgeny Ivanovich fell to talking with him, and the forester began telling oldtime stories about carousing during the hunt. And it occurred to Evgeny Ivanovich that it would be good to arrange it here, in the watch-house or in the forest. Only he did not know how, or whether old Danila would undertake it. “Maybe he’ll be horrified by such a suggestion, and I’ll be put to shame, or maybe he’ll quite simply agree.” So he was thinking as he listened to Danila’s stories. Danila was telling how they had stopped at the deacon’s wife’s place in an outlying field, and he had brought Pryanichnikov a peasant woman.

“I can,” thought Evgeny.

“Your father, may he rest in peace, wasn’t given to such foolishness.”

“I can’t,” thought Evgeny, but to explore further, he said:

“Then why did you do such bad things?”

“What’s so bad about it? She’s glad, and my Fyodor Zakharych is pleased as can be. It’s a rouble for me. Otherwise what’s he going to do? He’s got life in his bones, too. Bet he drinks wine.”

“Yes, I can say it,” thought Evgeny, and he set out at once.

“You know,” he felt himself flush crimson, “you know, Danila, it’s tormenting for me.” Danila smiled. “I’m not a monk after all—I’m used to it.”

He felt that everything he had said was stupid, but he was glad, because Danila approved of it.

“Why, you should have said so long ago. It can be done,” he said. “Only tell me which sort.”

“Oh, really, it’s all the same to me. Well, of course, so long as she’s healthy and not ugly.”

“Understood!” Danila clinched. He fell to thinking. “Ah, there’s a nice little piece,” he began. Evgeny blushed again. “A nice little piece. You see, sir, they married her off in the fall,” Danila began to whisper, “and he can’t do anything. To a fancier that’s worth something.”

Evgeny even winced from embarrassment.

“No, no,” he began. “That’s not at all what I want. On the contrary” (what could be the contrary?), “on the contrary, I want only that she be healthy and not much trouble—a soldier’s wife or the like.”

“I see. That means I put Stepanida at your disposal. Her husband’s away in town, she’s the same as a soldier’s wife. And she’s a nice, clean woman. You’ll be pleased. I even told her the other day—go on, but she …”

“Well, so when?”

“Oh, tomorrow even. I’ll be going for tobacco and I’ll stop by, and at dinnertime you come here or to the bathhouse behind the kitchen garden. There’s nobody around. Anyway, folk all sleep at dinnertime.”

“Well, all right.”

Terrible excitement seized Evgeny as he was going home. “What will it be like? What is a peasant woman? Something suddenly ugly, terrible. No, they’re beautiful,” he said to himself, remembering those he liked to look at. “But what will I say, what will I do?”

For the whole day he was not himself. At noon the next day he went to the watch-house. Danila was standing in the doorway and silently made a significant nod towards the woods. The blood rushed to Evgeny’s heart, he felt it, and he went to the kitchen garden. No one was there. He went to the bathhouse. No one. He looked in, came out, and suddenly heard the crack of a snapping twig. He turned to look—she was standing in a thicket across a little gully. He rushed across the gully. There were nettles there which he did not notice. He got stung and, the pince-nez having fallen off his nose, ran up the slope on the other side. In a white embroidered apron, a reddish-brown woolen skirt, and a bright red kerchief, barefoot, fresh, firm, beautiful, she stood there and smiled timidly.

“There’s a little path around here, you could’ve gone that way,” she said. “I came long ago. A good while.”

He went up to her, looked around, and touched her.

A quarter of an hour later they parted, he found his pince-nez and went to Danila’s, and in answer to his question, “Are you pleased, master?” gave him a rouble and went home.

He was pleased. There had been some shame only at the beginning. But then it went away. And it was all good. Above all, it was good in that he now felt light, calm, cheerful. As for her, he had not even made her out very well. He remembered that she was clean, fresh, not bad looking, and simple, without pulling faces. “What’s her family?” he said to himself. “Did he say Pechnikov? Which Pechnikov is it? There are two households. She must be old Mikhaila’s daughter-in-law. Yes, that must be it. His son lives in Moscow. Someday I’ll ask Danila.”

After that this formerly important unpleasantness of country life—involuntary abstinence—was removed. Evgeny’s freedom of thought was no longer disturbed, and he could freely occupy himself with his affairs.

And the affairs Evgeny had taken upon himself were far from easy: sometimes it seemed to him that he could not hold out and would end by putting the estate up for sale anyway, all his labors would be wasted, and, above all, it would show that he had not held out, had been unable to finish what he had taken upon himself. That troubled him most of all. He barely had time to plug one hole, before a new, unexpected one opened up.

During all this time more and more of his father’s debts, previously unknown, came to light. It was clear that in his later years his father had borrowed wherever he could. At the time of the division in May, Evgeny had thought he finally knew everything. But suddenly, in the middle of summer, he received a letter from which it followed that there was still a debt of twelve thousand to the widow Esipov. There was no promissory note, there was simply a receipt, which, according to his attorney, he could contest. But it would never have entered Evgeny’s head to refuse to pay a real debt of his father’s merely because the document could be contested. He only had to know for certain whether it was a real debt.

“Mama, who is this Kaleriya Vladimirovna Esipov?” he asked his mother when they met, as usual, at dinner.

“Esipov? She’s your grandfather’s ward. Why?”

Evgeny told his mother about the letter.

“I’m surprised she’s not ashamed. Your father gave her so much money.”

“But do we owe her?”

“Well, how shall I put it? There is no debt. Papa in his infinite kindness …”

“Yes, but papa considered it a debt.”

“I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I know how hard it is for you.”

Evgeny saw that Marya Pavlovna did not know what to say herself and was as if drawing him out.

“From that I can see it must be paid,” her son said. “I’ll go to her tomorrow and discuss the possibility of postponing it.”

“Ah, I’m so sorry for you. But, you know, it’s better that way. Tell her she’ll have to wait,” said Marya Pavlovna, obviously reassured and proud of her son’s decision.

Evgeny’s position was especially difficult, also, because his mother, who lived with him, had no understanding of his position. All her life she had been used to living so grandly that she was unable even to imagine the position her son was in, which was such that from one day to the next his affairs could turn out so that they would have nothing left, and her son would have to sell everything and live and support his mother by work alone, which in his position might bring him some two thousand roubles at most. She did not understand that they could be saved from that position only by cutting their expenses for everything, and therefore she could not understand why Evgeny was so pinched in trifles, in paying for gardeners, coachmen, servants, and even food. Besides that, as with most widows, her feeling of reverence for the memory of the deceased, so unlike the feelings she had had for him while he was alive, did not admit of the thought that anything the deceased had done or started could be bad or changed.

Evgeny maintained with great effort both the garden and the greenhouse with two gardeners and the stable with two coachmen. And Marya Pavlovna naïvely thought that by not complaining about the food prepared by the old cook, or that the paths in the park were not all being swept, or that instead of footmen there was just one boy, she was doing everything possible for a mother who was sacrificing herself for her son. And so in this new debt, in which Evgeny saw almost a fatal blow to all his undertakings, Marya Pavlovna saw only an occasion manifesting Evgeny’s nobility. Marya Pavlovna also did not worry much about Evgeny’s material situation, because she was sure he would find a brilliant match that would straighten everything out. He could indeed make a most brilliant match. She knew a dozen families who would be happy to give him their daughters in marriage. And she wished to arrange it as soon as possible.

IV

EVGENY WAS DREAMING of marriage himself, only not in the same way as his mother: the thought of making marriage a means of straightening out his affairs was repugnant to him. He wanted an honest marriage, out of love. He kept an eye on the girls he met and knew, tried to picture himself with them, but his fate would not get decided. Meanwhile his relations with Stepanida went on, which he had not expected at all, and even acquired the character of something established. Evgeny was so far from being dissolute, it was so hard for him to do this secret and—as he felt—wrong thing, that he made no sort of arrangements, and even after the first meeting hoped never to see Stepanida again; but it turned out that some time later the restlessness came over him again, which he attributed to the same cause. And this time the restlessness was no longer impersonal: he imagined precisely those dark, shining eyes, the same chesty voice saying “a good while,” the same smell of something fresh and strong, and the same high breast rising under the apron, and all that in the same grove of hazels and maples bathed in bright sunlight. Embarrassed as he was, he again turned to Danila. And again a meeting was arranged in the woods at noon. This time Evgeny looked her over more, and everything in her seemed attractive to him. He tried to talk with her, asked her about her husband. In fact, it was Mikhaila’s son, and he lived as a coachman in Moscow.

“Well, then, how is it …” Evgeny wanted to ask how it was that she betrayed him.

“How is what?” she asked. She was obviously intelligent and quickwitted.

“How is it that you come to me?”

“Go on,” she said gaily. “I suppose he’s running around there. So why not me?”

She was obviously affecting casualness, bravado. And Evgeny found that sweet. But all the same he did not fix a meeting with her himself. Even when she suggested that they get together without Danila, towards whom she was somehow ill-disposed, Evgeny did not agree. He hoped that this meeting was the last. He liked her. He thought that such relations were necessary for him and that there was nothing bad in it; but in the depths of his soul he had a more strict judge, who disapproved of it and hoped this would be the last time, or if he did not hope, then at least he did not want to participate in this affair and set it up for himself another time.

So the whole summer went by, in the course of which he saw her some ten times and each time through Danila. There was one time when it was impossible for her to come, because her husband was there, and Danila offered him another woman. Evgeny refused in disgust. Then her husband left, and the meetings went on as before, first through Danila, but later he simply fixed the time himself, and she came with the peasant woman Prokhorov, because it was impossible for a peasant woman to go about alone. Once, at the very time fixed for their meeting, a family came to see Marya Pavlovna with the girl she wanted Evgeny to marry, and Evgeny could not get away. As soon as he was able to leave, he made as if to go to the threshing floor and then took a roundabout path to the place of their meetings in the woods. She was not there. But in the usual place everything was broken as far as the arm could reach—bird cherry, hazels, even a young maple as thick as a stake. She had become upset and angry while she waited and, playfully, had left a reminder for him. He stood and stood, then went to Danila and asked him to invite her for the next day. She came and was the same as ever.

So the summer went by. The meetings were always set up in the woods and only once, towards fall, in the threshing barn in their backyard. It never entered Evgeny’s head that these relations had any meaning for him. About her he did not think at all. He gave her money and nothing more. He did not know and did not think that the whole village already knew about it and envied her, that at home they took the money from her and encouraged her, and that her notion of sin, under the influence of money and sympathy at home, had been totally obliterated. It seemed to her that, since people envied her, what she was doing was good.

“I simply need it for my health,” thought Evgeny. “Suppose it’s wrong and, though nobody says anything, everybody knows, or a lot do. The woman she comes with knows. And if she knows, she must have told others. But what to do then? I’m behaving badly,” thought Evgeny, “but what to do, it won’t be for long.”

The main thing that troubled Evgeny was the husband. At first he imagined for some reason that her husband must be a poor sort, and it was as if that partly justified him. But he saw the husband and was struck. He was a fine fellow and a dashing one, certainly no worse and probably better than himself. At the next meeting he told her that he had seen her husband and it was a pleasure to look at such a fine fellow.

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

That surprised Evgeny. Since then the thought of the husband had tormented him still more. He happened once to be at Danila’s, and Danila fell to talking and said to him straight out:

“The other day Mikhaila asked me whether it was true that the master was living with his son’s wife. I said I didn’t know. Then too, I said, better with the master than with some muzhik.”

“Well, and he?”

“Never mind, he said: just wait till I find out, I’ll give it to her.”

“Well, if the husband came back, I’d drop it,” thought Evgeny. But the husband lived in town, and for the time being the relations continued. “When need be, I’ll break it off, and there’ll be nothing left,” he thought.

And that seemed unquestionable to him, because in the course of the summer he was intensely occupied with many other things: the setting up of the new farmstead, and the harvest, and construction work, and, above all, paying off his debt and selling the waste land. These were all subjects which consumed him entirely, which he thought about going to bed and getting up in the morning. This was all real life. The relations—he did not even call it a bond—with Stepanida were something quite inconspicuous. True, when the desire to see her came over him, it was so strong that he could think of nothing else, but that did not last long; a meeting would be arranged, and he would forget her again for weeks, sometimes even for a month.

In the fall, Evgeny frequently went to town, and there became close to the Annensky family. The Annenskys had a daughter just out of boarding school. And here, to Marya Pavlovna’s great regret, it happened that Evgeny sold himself cheap, as she used to say, fell in love with Liza Annensky, and proposed.

From then on the relations with Stepanida ceased.

V

WHY EVGENY CHOSE Liza Annensky is impossible to explain, as it is always impossible to explain why a man chooses this rather than that woman. There were a multitude of reasons, both positive and negative. There was the reason that she was not a very rich bride, such as his mother had found for him, and that she was naïve and pathetic in her relations with her mother, and that she was not a beauty who attracted attention, and yet not bad-looking. But the main thing was that the closeness with her began at the moment when Evgeny was ripe for marriage. He fell in love because he knew he would marry.

At first Evgeny merely liked Liza Annensky, but when he decided that she would be his wife, he felt much stronger feelings for her, he felt that he was in love.

Liza was tall, slender, long. Everything about her was long: her face, her nose, not thrust out but down the face, her fingers, her feet. Her complexion was very delicate, white, yellowish with a delicate flush, her hair was long, light brown, soft and wavy, and she had beautiful, clear, trusting eyes. Those eyes especially struck Evgeny. And when he thought of Liza, he always saw before him those clear, meek, trusting eyes.

So she was physically; spiritually he knew nothing about her, but only saw those eyes. And those eyes seemed to tell him everything he needed to know. The meaning of those eyes was the following.

While still at boarding school, from the age of fifteen, Liza had constantly fallen in love with all attractive men, and was animated and happy only when she was in love. Having left boarding school, she fell in love in the same way with all the young men she met, and naturally fell in love with Evgeny as soon as she made his acquaintance. It was this lovingness that gave her eyes that special expression which so captivated Evgeny.

That winter she had already been in love with two young men at the same time, and she blushed and became agitated not only when they entered the room, but when their names were spoken. But later, when her mother hinted that Irtenev seemed to have serious intentions, her love for Irtenev intensified so much that she became almost indifferent to the two earlier ones, and when Irtenev began to call on them, or at a ball or a gathering he danced with her more than with others, and obviously wished to know only whether she loved him, then her love for Irtenev became something morbid, she saw him in her sleep and awake in a dark room, and all the others disappeared for her. And when he proposed and they were given the parental blessing, when they kissed and became engaged, then she had no other thoughts than him, no other desires than to be with him, to love him and be loved by him. She was proud of him, she was moved by him and by herself and their love, she swooned and melted all over for love of him. The more he came to know her, the more he loved her. He had never expected to meet with such love, and that love intensified his feeling still more.

VI

BEFORE SPRING he came to Semyonovskoe to look things over and give orders about the farming, and above all about the house, which was being decorated for the newlyweds.

Marya Pavlovna was displeased with her son’s choice, but only because the match was not as brilliant as it might have been, and because she did not like Varvara Alexeevna, the future mother-in-law. Whether she was good or wicked she did not know or decide, but that she was not a respectable woman, not comme il faut, not a lady, as Marya Pavlovna said to herself—that she had seen from their first acquaintance, and it had distressed her. Distressed her because she valued this respectability out of habit, knew that Evgeny was very sensitive to it, and foresaw much distress for him on account of it. But she liked the girl. She liked her mainly because Evgeny liked her. She had to love her. And Marya Pavlovna was prepared for that, and quite sincerely.

Evgeny found his mother joyful, content. She was arranging everything in the house and getting ready to leave herself as soon as he brought his young wife. Evgeny tried to talk her into staying. And the question remained unresolved. In the evening, after tea, Marya Pavlovna was playing patience as usual. Evgeny sat helping her. This was the time of the most intimate talks. Having finished one game and not yet started a new one, Marya Pavlovna glanced at Evgeny and, somewhat hesitantly, began thus:

“I wanted to tell you, Zhenya. Of course, I don’t know, but generally I wanted to advise you that before marrying you absolutely must put an end to all your bachelor affairs, so that nothing can trouble you or, God forbid, your wife. Do you understand me?”

And indeed Evgeny understood at once that Marya Pavlovna was alluding to his relations with Stepanida, which had ceased since the fall, and, as solitary women always do, ascribed to them a much greater significance than they had. Evgeny blushed, not so much from shame as from vexation that the kindly Marya Pavlovna was meddling—out of love, true—but meddling all the same where she should not and in what she did not and could not understand. He said that he had nothing that needed to be concealed, and that he had always behaved himself in precisely such a way that nothing could interfere with his marriage.

“Well, that’s splendid, my dear. Don’t be offended with me, Zhenya,” Marya Pavlovna said abashedly.

But Evgeny saw that she had not finished and had not said what she wanted to. And so it turned out. A little later she began telling him how, in his absence, she had been asked to stand godmother by … the Pchelnikovs.¹

Now Evgeny blushed, not from vexation and not even from shame, but from some strange sense of awareness of the importance of what he was about to be told, an awareness that was involuntary, in total disagreement with his reason. And it turned out as he expected. Marya Pavlovna, as if she had no other purpose than conversation, said that only boys had been born that year, a sign of war.² At the Vasins and the Pchelnikovs, the young women’s firstborn were both boys. Marya Pavlovna wanted to tell it inconspicuously, but she became embarrassed herself when she saw the color on her son’s face and him nervously taking off, clicking, and putting back on his pince-nez and quickly lighting a cigarette. She fell silent. He was also silent and could not think up any way to break the silence. So they both understood that they had understood each other.

“Yes, above all, in the country there must be fairness, so that there are no favorites, as at your uncle’s.”

“Mama,” Evgeny said suddenly, “I know what you’re getting at. You needn’t worry. My future family life is so sacred a thing for me that I wouldn’t violate it under any circumstances. And what there was in my bachelor life is all quite finished. And I’ve never entered any sort of bonds, and nobody has any rights over me.”

“Well, I’m glad,” said his mother. “I know your noble thoughts.”

Evgeny took these words of his mother’s as his due and said nothing.

The next morning he went to town thinking about his bride, about anything in the world except Stepanida. But, as if on purpose to remind him, as he drove near the church, he began to meet people walking or driving from there. He met old Matvei and Semyon, some children, some young girls, and here are two women, one older and one dressed up, wearing a bright red kerchief, and somewhat familiar. The woman is walking lightly, briskly, a baby on her arm. He came even with them, the older woman stopped and made an old-fashioned bow, but the young one with the baby only inclined her head, and familiar, smiling, merry eyes flashed from under the kerchief.

“Yes, that’s her, but it’s all over, and there’s no point in looking at her. And the baby may be mine,” it occurred to him. “No, what nonsense! The husband was here, she went to see him.” He did not even start calculating. He had made the decision that it was necessary for his health, he had paid money, and nothing more; there neither was, nor had been, nor could be, nor should be any sort of bond between them. He was not suppressing the voice of his conscience, no, his conscience simply said nothing to him. And he did not recall her once after the talk with his mother and that meeting. And not once did he meet her after that.

On the Sunday after Easter Evgeny was married in town and immediately left for the country with his young wife. The house had been set up as is usual for a young couple. Marya Pavlovna wanted to leave, but Evgeny, and above all Liza, persuaded her to stay. She only moved to the wing.

And so a new life began for Evgeny.

VII

THE FIRST YEAR of family life was a difficult year for Evgeny. It was difficult in that affairs he kept putting off somehow during the time of his engagement, now, after his marriage, all suddenly fell on him.

To extricate himself from debt proved impossible. The summer house was sold, the most crying debts were covered, but more debts remained, and there was no money. The estate brought good income, but he had to send some to his brother and pay for the wedding, so that there was no money, and the factory could not go on and had to be stopped. The only way to disentangle himself was to use his wife’s money. Liza, having understood her husband’s position, demanded it herself. Evgeny agreed, but only on condition that half of the deed for the estate be made out in his wife’s name. And so he did. Not for his wife, of course, who was offended by it, but for his mother-in-law.

These affairs, with various changes, some successful, some unsuccessful, were one thing that poisoned Evgeny’s life in that first year. Another was his wife’s poor health. In the autumn of that first year, seven months after their marriage, a misfortune befell Liza. She went in a charabanc to meet her husband, who was returning from town, the quiet horse acted up, Liza became frightened and jumped out. The jump was rather fortunate—she could have been caught by a wheel—but she was already pregnant, and that same night she began to feel pain and had a miscarriage, and for a long time she could not recover. The loss of the hoped-for child, the wife’s illness, the disruption of life caused by it, and, above all, the presence of his mother-in-law, who came as soon as Liza fell ill—all this made that year still more difficult for Evgeny.

But, despite these difficult circumstances, towards the end of the first year Evgeny felt very well. First, his heartfelt intention to restore his declining fortune, to renew his grandfather’s life in new forms, was, though slowly and with effort, being realized. Now there could be no talk of selling the entire estate for debt. The main estate, though transferred to his wife’s name, was saved, and, if only the beet crop turned out well and the price was good, by the next year the situation of want and strain could be replaced by complete well-being. That was one thing.

The other was that, however much he had expected from his wife, he had never expected to find in her what he did find: it was not what he had expected, it was something much better. The moving scenes, the loving raptures, though he tried to set them up, did not come off, or came off very feebly; but something quite different did come off, so that life became not only more cheerful and pleasant, but also easier. He did not know why it happened, but it was so.

It happened because she decided right after their betrothal that of all the people in the world there was only one Evgeny Irtenev, who was higher, cleverer, purer, nobler than all, and therefore it was the duty of all people to serve this Irtenev and do his pleasure. But since it was impossible to make them all do it, she had to do it herself as far as she could. And so she did, and therefore all her inner forces were always directed at finding out, at guessing what he liked, and then doing that very thing, whatever it was and however difficult it might be.

And there was that in her which constitutes the chief delight of relations with a loving woman, there was in her, owing to her love for her husband, a second sight into his soul. She sensed—often, it seemed to him, better than he himself—every state of his soul, every shade of his feelings, and acted correspondingly, and so she never offended his feelings, but always soothed the painful feelings and strengthened the joyful. But not only his feelings, she also understood his thoughts. The subjects of agriculture, the factory, the appraisement of people, foreign as they were to her, she understood at once, and could be not only his interlocutor, but often, as he himself told her, a useful, irreplaceable adviser. She looked at things, at people, at everything in the world only with his eyes. She loved her mother, but, seeing that Evgeny was displeased with his mother-in-law’s interference in their life, she at once took her husband’s side, and with such resoluteness that he had to restrain her.

On top of all that, there was in her no end of taste, tact, and, above all, tranquillity. Everything she did, she did inconspicuously, conspicuous were only the results of what she did, that is, cleanliness, order, and elegance in all things. Liza understood at once what her husband’s ideal of life was and tried to achieve and succeeded in achieving in the arrangement and order of their house the very things he wished. They had no children, but there was hope for that as well. In winter they went to an accoucheur in Petersburg, and he assured them that she was quite healthy and could have children.

And this wish was realized. By the end of the year she was pregnant again.

One thing that did not so much poison as threaten their happiness was her jealousy—a jealousy which she restrained and did not show, but which often made her suffer. Not only could Evgeny not love anyone, because there were no women in the world worthy of him (whether she was worthy of him or not, she never asked herself), but therefore neither could any woman dare to love him.

VIII

THEY LIVED like this: he got up early, as always, and went to the farm, to the factory, where work was going on, or sometimes to the fields. By ten he came home for coffee. Coffee was taken on the terrace by Marya Pavlovna, an uncle who lived with them, and Liza. After conversation, often very animated, over coffee, they dispersed until dinner. They dined at two. After that they went for a walk or a ride. In the evening, when he came from the office, they had late tea, and he sometimes read aloud, she worked, or they played music or talked when there were guests. When he went away on business, he wrote and received letters from her every day. Occasionally she accompanied him, and that was especially merry. On his and her name days, guests assembled, and it pleased him to see how she was able to organize everything so that they all felt good. He saw, and also heard, how everyone admired her, the sweet young hostess, and he loved her still more for that. Everything went splendidly. She bore her pregnancy easily, and the two of them, still timorously, began to plan how they would bring up their child. The way of upbringing, the methods, were all decided by Evgeny, and she only wished obediently to do his will. Evgeny had read himself up on medical books and intended to bring up the child by all the rules of science. She naturally agreed to everything and, in preparation, sewed sleeping sacks, both warm and light, and prepared the cradle. So came the second year of their marriage and the second spring.

IX

IT WAS the eve of Pentecost.³ Liza was in her fifth month and, though careful, she was cheerful and active. Both mothers, hers and his, were living in the house on the pretext of looking after and protecting her, and only bothered her with their bickering. Evgeny was taken up especially ardently with farming, a new method of processing beets on a large scale.

On the eve of Pentecost, Liza decided that the house needed a thorough cleaning, which had not been done since Holy Week,⁴ and to help the servants she summoned two peasant women as day laborers to wash the floors and windows, beat the furniture and rugs, and put on slipcovers. These women came early in the morning, heated kettles of water, and set to work. One of the women was Stepanida, who had only just weaned her boy, and through the clerk, whom she now ran around with, had offered herself as a floor scrubber. She wanted to have a good look at the new mistress. Stepanida lived alone as before, without her husband, and carried on, as she had before with old Danila, who had caught her taking firewood, then with the master, now with a young fellow—the office clerk. Of the master she did not think at all. “He’s got a wife now,” she thought. “But I’d be pleased to have a look at the mistress and how she runs things. They say it’s done up nicely.”

Evgeny had not seen her since he met her with the baby. She did not go to do day labor, because she had a baby, and he rarely passed through the village. That morning, on the eve of Pentecost, Evgeny got up early, before five o’clock, and left for the fallow field, where phosphorites were to be spread, and he left the house before the women, who were busy with the kettles at the stove, came in.

Cheerful, content, and hungry, Evgeny came back for breakfast. He got off his horse by the gate and, handing it over to a passing gardener, walked to the house, lashing the tall grass with his whip and repeating, as often happened, a just-uttered phrase. The phrase he kept repeating was: “Phosphorites will justify”—what, to whom?—he did not know and did not think.

On the lawn they were beating a rug. The furniture had been brought out.

“Good heavens, what a cleaning Liza’s begun! Phosphorites will justify. See what a housewife. A dear little housewife! Yes, a dear little housewife,” he said to himself, vividly picturing her in her white housecoat, her face beaming with joy, as it almost always did when he looked at her. “Yes, I must change my boots, otherwise phosphorites will justify, that is, smell of dung, and my dear little housewife is in a certain condition. Why in a certain condition? Yes, a new little Irtenev is growing inside her,” he thought. “Yes, phosphorites will justify.” And, smiling at his thoughts, he put his hand to the door of his room.

But before he had time to push on the door, it opened of itself, and he ran smack into a peasant woman coming out with a bucket, barefoot, her skirt tucked up, her sleeves rolled high. He stepped aside to let her pass, she also stepped aside, straightening with a wet upper arm the kerchief that had slipped to one side.

“Go on, go on, I’ll leave if you …” Evgeny began and, recognizing her, suddenly stopped.

She, smiling with her eyes, glanced at him gaily. And, straightening her skirt, she went out the door.

“What’s this nonsense? … What is it? … It can’t be,” Evgeny said, scowling and waving his hand as at a fly, displeased that he had noticed her. He was displeased that he had noticed her, and yet he could not tear his eyes from her body, swayed by the strong, agile gait of her bare feet, from her arms, her shoulders, the beautiful folds of her blouse, and the red skirt tucked up high over her white calves.

“What am I staring at?” he said to himself, lowering his eyes so as not to see her. “Yes, anyhow I’ve got to go in and take another pair of boots.” And he turned back to his room, but, before he went five steps, himself not knowing why and on whose order, he glanced around again, so as to see her one more time. She was turning the corner and at that moment also glanced back at him.

“Ah, what am I doing?” he cried in his soul. “She might think something. It’s even certain she already does.”

He went into his wet room. Another woman, old, skinny, was there and still scrubbing. Evgeny tiptoed over the dirty puddles to the wall where his boots stood and was about to leave when that woman also left.

“She’s gone and the other one, Stepanida, will come—alone,” someone suddenly started reasoning within him.

“My God! What am I thinking, what am I doing!” He seized the boots and ran with them to the front hall, put them on there, brushed himself off, and went out to the terrace, where the two mothers were already sitting over coffee. Liza was obviously waiting for him and came to the terrace through the other door at the same time he did.

“My God, if she, thinking me so honest, pure, innocent, if she knew!” he thought.

Liza, as always, met him with a beaming face. But that day she seemed to him especially pale, yellow, long, and weak.

X

OVER COFFEE, as often happened, that particular sort of ladies’ conversation was going on, in which there was no logical connection, but which was obviously connected in some way, since it went on without interruption.

The two ladies bickered, and Liza skillfully maneuvered between them.

“I’m so vexed that they didn’t manage to have your room scrubbed before your return,” she said to her husband. “But I did so want to tidy things up.”

“Well, how are you, did you sleep after I left?”

“Yes, I did, I’m fine.”

“How can a woman in her condition feel fine in this unbearable heat, when her windows are all on the sunny side,” said Varvara Alexeevna, her mother. “And without blinds or awnings. I’ve always had awnings.”

“Why, it’s shady here by ten o’clock,” said Marya Pavlovna.

“And you get fever from that. From the dampness,” said Varvara Alexeevna, without noticing that she was saying the exact opposite of what she had just said. “My doctor always said it’s never possible to determine the illness without knowing the character of the sick woman. And he knows, because he’s a leading doctor and we pay him a hundred roubles. My late husband did not believe in doctors, but to me he never grudged anything.”

“How can a man grudge anything to a woman, when her life and the baby’s may depend on it …”

“Yes, when the means are there, then the wife need not depend on her husband. A good wife is obedient to her husband,” said Varvara Alexeevna, “only Liza is still too weak after her illness.”

“Not at all, mama, I feel perfectly well. Why didn’t they serve you boiled cream?”

“There’s no need. I can do with fresh.”

“I asked Varvara Alexeevna. She declined,” said Marya Pavlovna, as if to vindicate herself.

“No, I don’t want any today.” And, as if to stop the unpleasant conversation and yield magnanimously, Varvara Alexeevna turned to Evgeny. “Well, did you spread your phosphorites?”

Liza ran to fetch the cream.

“But I don’t want it, I don’t want it.”

“Liza! Liza! Slowly!” said Marya Pavlovna. “These quick movements are harmful for her.”

“Nothing’s harmful if there’s inner peace,” said Varvara Alexeevna, as if hinting at something, though she herself knew that her words could not hint at anything.

Liza came back with the cream. Evgeny was drinking his coffee and listening sullenly. He was used to such conversation, but that day he was particularly annoyed by its meaninglessness. He would have liked to think over what had happened to him, but this chatter hindered him. Having finished her coffee, Varvara Alexeevna left in an ill humor. Liza, Evgeny, and Marya Pavlovna remained alone. And the conversation was simple and pleasant. But Liza, made sensitive by love, noticed at once that something was tormenting Evgeny and asked him whether anything unpleasant had happened. He was not prepared for this question and hesitated slightly as he said there was nothing. And this answer made Liza ponder still more. That something was tormenting him, and tormenting him very much, was as obvious to her as a fly in the milk, but he would not tell her what it was.

XI

AFTER BREAKFAST they all went to their rooms. Evgeny, following the usual order, went to his study. He did not start reading, did not write letters, but sat and began to smoke one cigarette after another, thinking. He was terribly surprised and upset by this nasty feeling that had unexpectedly appeared in him, from which he had considered himself free ever since he married. Since then he had never once experienced that feeling either for her, the woman he had known, or for any other woman except his wife. In his soul he had rejoiced many times at this liberation, and here suddenly this incident, seemingly so insignificant, revealed to him that he was not free. He suffered now, not because he was again subject to that feeling, because he desired her—that he did not even want to think of—but because that feeling was alive in him and he had to guard against it. There was no doubt in his soul that he would suppress that feeling.

He had one unanswered letter and a paper that had to be composed. He sat down at his desk and began to work. Having finished, and forgetting entirely about what had alarmed him, he left to go to the stables. And again, as ill luck would have it, whether accidentally or on purpose, the moment he stepped out to the porch, the red skirt and red kerchief came from around the corner and, arms swinging and hips swaying, walked past him. Not that she merely walked, she ran past him, as if frolicking, and caught up with her companion.

Again the bright noonday, the nettles, the back of Danila’s watch-house, and in the shade of the maples her smiling face, nibbling some leaves, arose in his imagination.

“No, it can’t be left like this,” he said to himself and, waiting until the women disappeared from sight, went to his office. It was just dinnertime, and he hoped to find the steward still there. And so it happened. The steward had just woken up. He stood in the office, stretching, yawning, and looking at a herdsman, who was telling him something.

“Vassily Nikolaevich!”

“At your service.”

“I’d like a word with you.”

“At your service.”

“Finish with him first.”

“So you won’t bring it in?” Vassily Nikolaevich said to the herdsman.

“It’s heavy, Vassily Nikolaevich.”

“What is it?”

“A cow has calved in the meadow. Well, all right, I’ll order a horse hitched at once. Tell Nikolai to hitch up Lysukha, to the dray maybe.”

The herdsman left.

“You see,” Evgeny began, blushing and aware of it. “You see, Vassily Nikolaevich. When I was a bachelor, I had some sins here … Maybe you’ve heard …”

Vassily Nikolaevich smiled with his eyes and, evidently feeling sorry for his master, said:

“It’s about Stepashka?”

“Well, yes. So here’s the thing. Please, please, don’t send her to do work in the house … You understand, it’s very unpleasant for me …”

“Yes, it must be the clerk Vanya arranged it.”

“So please … Well, what, are they going to spread the rest?” said Evgeny, to conceal his embarrassment.

“I’ll go right away.”

And so it ended. And Evgeny calmed down, hoping that, as he had lived through a year without seeing her, it would be the same now. “Besides, Vassily will tell the clerk Ivan, Ivan will tell her, and she will understand that I don’t want it,” Evgeny said to himself, and rejoiced that he had taken it upon himself and told Vassily, hard as it had been for him. “Yes, anything’s better, anything’s better than this doubt, this shame.” He shuddered at the mere memory of this mental crime.

XII

THE MORAL EFFORT he had made to overcome his shame and tell Vassily Nikolaevich calmed Evgeny. It seemed to him that it was all over now. And Liza noticed at once that he was completely calm and even more joyful than usual. “Surely he was upset by this bickering between our mothers. In fact, it is painful, especially for him with his sensitivity and nobility, to keep hearing these unfriendly and bad-toned hints at something,” thought Liza.

The next day was Pentecost. The weather was splendid, and the peasant women, going to the woods as usual to make wreaths, came to the manor house and started to sing and dance. Marya Pavlovna and Varvara Alexeevna came out to the porch in smart dresses and with parasols and went to the round dance. Evgeny’s uncle, who was living with them that summer, a flabby profligate and drunkard, came out with them in his Chinese jacket.

As always, there was one multicolored, bright ring of young women and girls in the center, and around it, from different sides, like broken-away planets and satellites circling them, were young girls holding hands, the new calico of their sarafans rustling, and little boys snorting at something and running up and down after each other, and bigger boys in blue or black jackets and peaked caps and red shirts, constantly spitting sunflower-seed shells, and the household servants, and strangers looking at the round dance from a distance. The two ladies went right up to the ring, followed by Liza in a light blue dress and ribbons of the same color in her hair, with wide sleeves from which her long, white arms with their angular elbows appeared.

Evgeny did not want to go out, but it was ridiculous to hide. He also came out to the porch with a cigarette, greeted the boys and muzhiks, and got to talking with one of them. The women were bawling a dance song with all their might and snapped their fingers and clapped along as they danced.

“The lady’s calling,” a lad said, coming up to Evgeny, who had not heard his wife’s call. Liza called him to look at the dancing, and at one of the dancing women whom she liked most of all. It was Stepasha. She was wearing a yellow sarafan, a velveteen vest, and a silk kerchief—a broad, energetic, ruddy, merry woman. She must have danced very well. He saw nothing.

“Yes, yes,” he said, taking off and putting on his pince-nez. “Yes, yes,” he said. “So it’s impossible for me to get rid of her,” he thought.

He was not looking at her, because he feared her attractiveness, and for that very reason what he saw fleetingly seemed especially attractive to him. Besides, he saw from the glance she flashed at him that she saw him and saw that he admired her. He stood there as long as was necessary for propriety, and, seeing that Varvara Alexeevna had called her over and had said something awkward and false to her, calling her “sweetie,” he turned and walked away. He walked away and went back to the house. He left so as not to see her, but, going upstairs, not knowing how and why himself, he went to the window, and all the while the peasant women were by the porch, he stood at the window looking, looking at her, reveling in her.

He ran downstairs while no one could see him and went slowly to the balcony, and on the balcony lit a cigarette, and went to the garden, as if for a stroll, in the direction in which she had gone. He had not gone two steps down the alley before a velveteen vest over a yellow sarafan and a red kerchief flashed behind the trees. She was going somewhere with another woman. “Where are they going?”

And suddenly passionate lust seared him, clutching his heart like a hand. As if by someone else’s alien will, Evgeny glanced around and went after them.

“Evgeny Ivanych, Evgeny Ivanych! I’d like to talk with Your Honor,” a voice spoke behind him, and Evgeny, seeing old Samokhin, who was digging a well for him, came to his senses, turned quickly, and went towards Samokhin. While talking with him, he turned sideways and saw the two women walk down, evidently to the well or on the pretext of the well, and then, after lingering there for a while, run off to the round dance.

XIII

AFTER TALKING with Samokhin, Evgeny went back home crushed, as if he had committed a crime. First of all, she understood him, she thought he wanted to see her, and she wished it, too. Second of all, this other woman—this Anna Prokhorov—obviously knew about it.

The main thing was that he felt defeated, that he had no will of his own, and there was another force that moved him; that today he had been saved by a lucky chance, but if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, he would perish all the same.

“Yes, perish”—he understood it no other way—to betray his young, loving wife, on the estate, with a peasant woman, for everyone to see, was that not really perdition, a terrible perdition, after which it was no longer possible to live? “No, I must, I must take measures.”

“My God, my God! What am I to do? Can it be that I’ll perish like that?” he said to himself. “Is it really impossible to take measures? I must do something. Do not think about her,” he ordered himself. “Do not think!”—and at once he began to think, and saw her before him, and saw the shade of the maples.

He remembered having read about an old monk who, tempted by a woman he had to lay hands on in order to heal her, put his other hand in a brazier and burned his fingers. He remembered that. “Yes, I’m ready to burn my fingers rather than perish.” And, looking around to see that there was no one in the room, he lit a match and put his finger in the flame. “Well, think about her now,” he addressed himself ironically. He felt pain, withdrew the sooty finger, dropped the match, and laughed at himself. “What nonsense. That’s not what needs to be done. I must take measures so as not to see her—go away myself or send her away! Yes, send her away! Offer her husband money so that he’ll move to town or to some other village. People will find out, they’ll talk about it. Well, it’s still better than this danger. Yes, I must do it,” he said to himself and went on looking at her without taking his eyes away. “Where is she going?” he suddenly asked himself. It seemed to him that she had seen him at the window and now, glancing at him, had joined arms with some woman and was going towards the garden, briskly swinging her arm. Not knowing why or what for himself, all because of his thoughts, he went to the office.

Vassily Nikolaevich, in a dapper frock coat, pomaded, was sitting over tea with his wife and a guest in a paisley shawl.

“Might we have a talk, Vassily Nikolaevich?”

“It’s possible. If you please. We’ve had our tea.”

“No, better that you come with me.”

“Just a moment, let me take my cap. You, Tanya, cover the samovar,” said Vassily Nikolaevich, coming out cheerfully.

It seemed to Evgeny that he was a bit drunk, but there was nothing to be done; maybe it was for the better, he would be more sympathetic with his situation.

“It’s about the same thing again, Vassily Nikolaevich,” said Evgeny, “about that woman.”

“What about it? I told them not to bring her.”

“No, here’s generally what I thought and what I wanted to consult you about. Couldn’t they be sent away, the whole family?”

“But sent away where?” Vassily said, with displeasure and mockery, as it seemed to Evgeny.

“What I thought was to give them money or even some land in Koltovskoe, only so that she’s not here.”

“How can you send them away? His roots are here—where will he go? And what is it to you? Is she in your way?”

“Ah, Vassily Nikolaevich, you understand, it would be terrible for my wife to find out.”

“But who’s going to tell her?”

“But how can I live under this fear? And generally it’s painful.”

“What are you worried about, really? Let bygones be bygones. Who’s sinless before God or guiltless before the tsar?”

“Even so, it would be better to send them away. Couldn’t you talk with the husband?”

“There’s no point talking. Eh, Evgeny Ivanovich, what is it to you? It’s all past and forgotten. What doesn’t happen? And who’s going to say anything bad about you now? Everybody sees how you are.”

“But tell him even so.”

“All right, I’ll have a talk with him.”

Though he knew beforehand that nothing would come of it, this conversation calmed Evgeny somewhat. Above all, he felt that in his anxiety he had exaggerated the danger.

Had he really gone in order to meet with her? That was impossible. He had simply taken a stroll in the garden, and she had just happened to run out there, too.

XIV

ON THAT SAME DAY of Pentecost, after dinner, while walking in the garden and going from there to the meadow, where her husband took her to show her the clover, Liza stumbled and fell as she was stepping over a small ditch. She fell softly on her side, but she gasped, and in her face her husband saw not only fear but pain. He wanted to lift her up, but she pushed his hand away.

“No, Evgeny, wait a little,” she said, smiling weakly and looking at him from below somehow guiltily, as it seemed to Evgeny. “My foot just slipped.”

“That’s what I always say,” Varvara Alexeevna began. “How can someone in your condition jump over ditches?”

“But it’s nothing, mama. I’ll get up right now.”

She got up with her husband’s help, but at the same moment she turned pale and her face showed fear.

“Yes, I’m not well,” and she whispered something to her mother.

“Ah, my God, what have we done! I told you not to go,” Varvara Alexeevna shouted. “Wait, I’ll bring servants. She mustn’t walk. She must be carried.”

“You’re not afraid, Liza? I’ll carry you,” said Evgeny, putting his left arm around her. “Hold me by the neck. There.”

He bent down, took her under the legs with his right arm, and lifted her up. Never afterwards could he forget the suffering and at the same time blissful expression on her face.

“I’m heavy for you, dear!” she said, smiling. “Mama’s run off, tell her!”

And she leaned towards him and kissed him. She obviously wanted her mother to see how he carried her.

Evgeny called out to Varvara Alexeevna not to hurry, because he would carry Liza. Varvara Alexeevna stopped and began shouting still more.

“You’ll drop her, you’re sure to drop her. You want to destroy her. You have no conscience.”

“I’m carrying her splendidly.”

“I won’t, I can’t watch how you kill my daughter.” And she ran around the corner of the alley.

“Never mind, it will pass,” Liza said, smiling.

“If only there are no consequences, like last time.”

“No, I don’t mean that. That’s nothing. I mean mama. You’re tired, rest a little.”

But though she was heavy, Evgeny carried his burden with proud joy to the house and did not hand her over to the maid and the cook, whom Varvara Alexeevna had found and sent to meet them. He carried her to her bedroom and put her on the bed.

“Well, go now,” she said, and, pulling his hand to her, she kissed it. “I’ll manage with Annushka.”

Marya Pavlovna also came running from the wing. Liza was undressed and put to bed. Evgeny sat in the drawing room with a book in his hand, waiting. Varvara Alexeevna walked past him with such a reproachfully gloomy look that it frightened him.

“Well, so?” he asked.

“So? Why ask? The very thing you wanted when you made your wife jump over moats.”

“Varvara Alexeevna!” he cried. “This is unbearable. If you wish to torment people and poison their life”—he was about to say, “then take yourself somewhere else,” but he restrained himself. “Isn’t it painful for you?”

“It’s too late now.”

And, tossing her bonnet triumphantly, she walked through the door.

The fall had indeed been a bad one. Her foot had slipped awkwardly, and there was a danger of miscarriage. Everyone knew that it was impossible to do anything, that it was only neccesary to lie quietly, but even so they decided to send for the doctor.

“Much-esteemed Nikolai Semyonovich,” Evgeny wrote to the doctor, “you have always been so kind to us that I hope you will not refuse to come and help my wife. She is in …” and so on. Having written the letter, he went to the stables to give orders about the horses and carriage. They had to prepare horses to bring the doctor, and others to take him back. Where the management was not on a grand footing, that could not be arranged all at once, but had to be thought out. Having seen to it all personally and sent the coachman off, he returned home past nine o’clock. His wife was lying down and said she was fine and nothing hurt; but Varvara Alexeevna sat by a lamp shielded from Liza by a musical score, knitting a big red blanket with a look which said clearly that after what had happened there could be no peace. “And whatever anybody else may do, I at least fulfill my duty.”

Evgeny saw it, but, to make it look as if he had not noticed, tried to assume a cheerful, carefree look, and told how he had prepared the horses and how the mare Kavushka went very well in the left trace.

“Yes, of course, it’s just the time to break in horses, when help is needed. The doctor will probably also get thrown into a ditch,” said Varvara Alexeevna, looking at her knitting from under her pince-nez as she brought it close to the lamp.

“But somebody had to be sent. And I did what seemed best.”

“Yes, I remember very well how your horses drove me straight under a train.”

This was her long-standing fiction, and now Evgeny committed the imprudence of saying that that was not quite how it was.

“Not for nothing have I always said, and I said it so many times to the prince, that the hardest thing is to live with untruthful, insincere people. I’ll put up with anything but that.”

“But if there’s anyone it’s most painful for, then surely it’s me,” said Evgeny.

“That’s obvious.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m counting stitches.”

Evgeny was standing by the bed just then, and Liza looked at him, and one of her moist hands, lying on top of the blanket, caught his and pressed it. “Bear with her for my sake. She won’t keep us from loving each other,” said her gaze.

“No more. You’re right,” he whispered and kissed her long, moist hand and then her dear eyes, which closed while he kissed them.

“Can it be the same thing again?” he said. “What’s your feeling?”

“I’m afraid to say, for fear of being mistaken, but my feeling is that he’s alive and will live,” she said, looking at her stomach.

“Ah, it’s frightening, frightening just to think of it.”

Despite Liza’s insistence that he leave, Evgeny spent the night with her, sleeping with one eye open and ready to serve her. But she spent the night well and, if they had not sent for the doctor, might even have gotten up.

By dinnertime the doctor arrived and, naturally, said that, though the repeated phenomenon might be cause for apprehension, strictly speaking there was no positive indication, but as there was no counter-indication either, one could on the one hand suppose, and on the other hand also suppose. And therefore she must stay in bed, and though I don’t like prescribing things, take this all the same and stay in bed. Besides that, the doctor read Varvara Alexeevna a lecture on female anatomy, during which Varvara Alexeevna nodded her head significantly. Having received his fee, as usual, in the very back of his palm, the doctor left, and the patient stayed in bed for a week.

XV

EVGENY SPENT most of the time at his wife’s bedside, waited on her, talked to her, read to her, and, what was hardest of all, endured without murmur Varvara Alexeevna’s attacks, and was even able to make those attacks into a subject of jokes.

But he could not just sit at home. First, his wife kept sending him away, saying that he would fall ill if he stayed with her all the time, and second, the farming demanded his presence at every step. He could not sit at home, and was in the fields, the woods, the garden, at the threshing floor, and in all those places not only the thought but the living image of Stepanida pursued him, so that he only rarely forgot her. But that would have been nothing; he might have been able to overcome that feeling, but worst of all was that formerly he had lived for months without seeing her, while now he saw her and met her constantly. She obviously realized that he wanted to renew his relations with her and tried to cross his path. Neither he nor she said anything, and therefore neither he nor she went directly to the meeting place, but only tried to come together.

One place where they could come together was the woods, where the peasant women went with sacks to fetch grass for the cows. And Evgeny knew it, and therefore he went past that woods every day. Every day he said to himself that he would not go, and every day it ended with his heading towards the woods and, hearing the sound of voices, stopping behind a bush, looking with a sinking heart to see if it was she.

Why did he need to know if it was she? He did not know. If it was she and alone, he would not have gone to her—so he thought—he would have run away; but he needed to see her. Once he met her: as he was entering the woods, she was coming out of it with two other women and a heavy sack of grass on her back. A little earlier he might have run into her in the woods. Now, however, it was impossible, in the sight of the other women, for her to go back to him in the woods. But, despite his awareness of this impossibility, he stood for a long time behind a hazel bush, at the risk of attracting the attention of the other women. Of course, she did not turn back, but he stood there for a long time. And, my God, with such a lovely picture of her in his imagination! And this happened not once, but five or six times. And grew stronger and stronger. She had never seemed so attractive to him. And not merely attractive: she had never possessed him so fully.

He felt that he was losing his own will, was becoming almost insane. His severity towards himself did not diminish by a hair’s breadth; on the contrary, he saw all the vileness of his desires, even of his actions, because his walking in the woods was an action. He knew that he needed only to run into her somewhere close, in the dark, where it was possible to touch her, and he would give way to his feeling. He knew that only shame before people, before her, and before himself held him back. And he knew that he was seeking conditions in which that shame would not be noticed—darkness, or a contact in which that shame would be stifled by animal passion. And therefore he knew that he was a vile criminal, and he despised and hated himself with all the powers of his soul. He hated himself because he still would not give up. Every day he prayed to God to strengthen him, to save him from perdition; every day he resolved that from then on he would not make a single step, would not look at her, would forget her. Every day he thought up ways to rid himself of this obsession, and every day he put those ways to use.

But it was all in vain.

One of those ways was to be constantly occupied; another was strenuous physical work and fasting; a third was to picture clearly the shame that would fall on his head when everyone knew of it—his wife, his mother-in-law, other people. He did it all, and it seemed to him that he was winning, but the time came, noonday, the time of their former meetings, and the time when he had met her with the grass, and he would go to the woods.

So five tormenting days went by. He saw her only from a distance, but never once came together with her.

XVI

LIZA WAS GRADUALLY RECOVERING, walked around, and worried about the change which had taken place in her husband and which she did not understand.

Varvara Alexeevna left for a while, and of outsiders only the uncle remained. Marya Pavlovna was at home as usual.

Evgeny was in that half-mad state when, as often happens after the June thunderstorms, the June downpours came, lasting for two days. The rain put a stop to all work. Wetness and mud even prevented the carting of dung. People sat at home. The herdsmen suffered with their cattle and finally drove them home. Cows and sheep walked about the common and strayed into yards. Village women, barefoot and wrapped in kerchiefs, splashing through the mud, rushed to look for the scattered cows. Everywhere streams ran down the roads, the leaves and grass were all waterlogged, streams, never still, poured from gutters into bubbling puddles. Evgeny sat at home with his wife, who was especially dull that day. She questioned Evgeny several times about the reason for his displeasure; he replied vexedly that it was nothing. And she stopped asking, but became upset.

They were sitting in the drawing room after breakfast. The uncle was telling for the hundredth time his fictions about his high-society acquaintances. Liza was knitting a little jacket and sighed, complaining about the weather and the pain in her back. The uncle advised her to lie down and asked for some wine for himself. Evgeny was terribly bored in the house. Everything was bland, boring. He was reading a book and smoking, but did not understand anything.

“Yes, I must go and look at the graters, they came yesterday,” he said. He got up and went out.

“Take an umbrella.”

“No, I’ll wear a leather jacket. And it’s only as far as the vats.”

He put on his boots, his leather jacket, and went to the factory; but he had not gone twenty steps when he met her with her skirt tucked up high above her white calves. She was walking, her hands holding the shawl that was wrapped around her head and shoulders.

“What are you doing?” he asked, not recognizing her in the first moment. When he did, it was already too late. She stopped and, smiling, gazed at him for a long time.

“I’m looking for a calf. And where might you be going in such weather?” she said, as if she saw him every day.

“Come to the hut,” he said suddenly, not knowing how himself. It was as if someone else inside him had said these words.

She bit at the kerchief, nodded with her eyes, and ran off where she had been going—to the hut in the garden—while he continued on his way, intending to turn behind the lilac bush and go to the same place.

“Master,” a voice came from behind him. “The lady’s calling you. She asks you to come back for a moment.”

It was Misha, their servant.

“My God, this is the second time You have saved me,” Evgeny thought and went back at once. His wife reminded him that he had promised to take medicine to a sick woman at dinnertime, and so she asked him to take it.

While the medicine was being prepared, some five minutes went by. Then, leaving with the medicine, he did not dare to go to the hut for fear of being seen from the house. But as soon as he was out of sight, he turned at once and went to the hut. In his imagination he already saw her in the middle of the hut, smiling gaily; but she was not there, and there was nothing in the hut to prove that she had been there. He was already thinking that she had not come, and had not heard or understood his words. He had muttered them under his breath, as if afraid she would hear him. “Or maybe she didn’t want to come? What made me think she’d just rush to me? She has her own husband; only I alone am such a scoundrel that I have a wife, and a good one, and go running after another man’s.” So he thought, sitting in the hut, which had a leak in one place and dripped from its thatch. “And what happiness it would be if she came. Alone here in this rain. To embrace her again, if only once, and then let come what may. Ah, yes,” he remembered, “if she was here, I can find her tracks.” He looked at the dirt of the path beaten to the hut and not overgrown with grass, and on it there were the fresh tracks of bare, slipping feet. “Yes, she was here. That’s it now. Wherever I see her, I’ll go straight to her. I’ll go to her at night.” He sat in the hut for a long time and left it exhausted and crushed. He delivered the medicine, returned home, and lay down in his room, waiting for dinner.

XVII

BEFORE DINNER Liza came to him and, still wondering what could be the cause of his discontent, began telling him that she was afraid he did not like it that they wanted to take her to Moscow to give birth, and that she had decided to stay here. And wouldn’t go to Moscow for anything. He knew how afraid she was both of the delivery itself and of giving birth to an unhealthy baby, and therefore he could not help being touched to see how easily she sacrificed everything out of love for him. Everything was so good, joyful, and pure in the house; but in his soul it was dirty, vile, terrible. Evgeny suffered the whole evening, because he knew that despite his sincere revulsion at his weakness, despite his firm intention to break it off, tomorrow would be the same.

“No, this is impossible,” he said to himself as he paced up and down his room. “There must be some remedy for it. My God, what am I to do?”

Someone knocked on the door in a foreign manner. He knew it was the uncle.

“Come in,” he said.

The uncle came as a self-appointed ambassador from his wife.

“You know, I do in fact notice a change in you,” he said, “and I understand how it torments Liza. I understand that it’s hard for you to leave all this excellent business you’ve got started, but what do you want, que veux-tu? I’d advise you to go away. It’ll be easier for you and for her. And you know, my advice is to go to the Crimea. Climate is an excellent accoucheur, and you’ll come right in the middle of the grape season.”

“Uncle,” Evgeny suddenly began, “can you keep my secret, a terrible secret for me, a shameful secret?”

“Good heavens, how can you doubt me?”

“Uncle, you can help me! Not so much help as save me,” said Evgeny. And the thought of revealing his secret to the uncle, for whom he had no respect, the thought of appearing before him in the most unfavorable light, of humiliating himself before him, was pleasing to him. He felt himself vile, guilty, and he wanted to punish himself.

“Speak, my friend, you know how I’ve come to love you,” said the uncle, clearly very content that there was a secret, and that the secret was shameful, and that this secret would be told to him, and that he might be useful.

“First of all, I must tell you that I’m a vile creature, and a villain, a scoundrel, precisely a scoundrel.”

“No, really,” the uncle began, puffing out his throat.

“How can I not be a scoundrel, when I, Liza’s husband, Liza’s!—you must know her purity, her love—when I, her husband, want to betray her with a peasant wench!”

“How do you mean you want to? So you haven’t betrayed her?”

“No, but it’s the same as if I’ve betrayed her, because it didn’t depend on me. I was ready. Someone prevented me, otherwise now I … now I … I don’t know what I’d have done.”

“Excuse me, but can you explain …”

“Well, here’s the thing. When I was a bachelor, I was foolish enough to have relations with a woman here, from our village. That is, I’d meet her in the woods, in the field …”

“A pretty little thing?” asked the uncle.

Evgeny winced at the question, but he was so much in need of outside help that he pretended not to hear and went on:

“Well, I thought it was just so, that I’d break it off and it would be over. And I did break it off before my marriage, and didn’t see her or think of her for almost a year.” Evgeny found it strange to hear himself, to hear the description of his own state. “Then suddenly, I don’t know why—truly, one can sometimes believe in sorcery—I saw her and a worm got into my heart—it gnaws at me. I reproach myself, I understand all the horror of my action, that is, of what I might do at any moment, and I go to it myself, and if I haven’t done it yet, only God has saved me. Yesterday I was going to her when Liza called me.”

“What, in the rain?”

“Yes, I’m tormented, uncle, and I’ve decided to reveal it to you and ask for your help.”

“Yes, of course, on your own estate it’s not good. People will find out. I understand that Liza’s weak, she must be spared, but why on your own estate?”

Again Evgeny tried not to hear what the uncle was saying and hastened to get to the essence of the matter.

“Yes, save me from myself. That’s what I ask you to do. Today someone prevented me by chance, but tomorrow, some other time, no one will prevent me. And she knows now. Don’t let me go out alone.”

“Yes, I suppose,” said the uncle. “But can you really be so in love?”

“Oh, it’s not that at all. It’s not that, it’s some sort of force that has seized me and holds me. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’ll get stronger, and then …”

“Well, so it turns out my way,” said the uncle. “Let’s go to the Crimea.”

“Yes, yes, let’s go, and meanwhile I’ll be with you, I’ll talk to you.”

XVIII

THE FACT that Evgeny had confided his secret to his uncle and, above all, the pangs of conscience and shame he lived through after that rainy day, sobered him. It was decided to make the trip to Yalta in a week. During that week, Evgeny went to town to get money for the trip, gave orders about the farmwork from the house and the office, became cheerful and close to his wife again, and began to revive morally.

So, without having once seen Stepanida after that rainy day, he left with his wife for the Crimea. In the Crimea they spent two wonderful months. Evgeny had so many new impressions that all the former things seemed to have been erased completely from his memory. In the Crimea they met former acquaintances and became especially close with them; besides that, they made new acquaintances. Life in the Crimea was a permanent feast for Evgeny and, besides that, was also instructive and useful for him. They became close with the former provincial marshal⁵ of their own province, an intelligent, liberal-minded man, who came to love Evgeny, and formed him, and drew him to his side. At the end of August, Liza gave birth to a beautiful, healthy girl, and the delivery was unexpectedly easy.

In September the Irtenevs went home, now four of them, with the baby and the wet nurse, because Liza was unable to nurse. Completely free of his former terrors, Evgeny returned home quite a new and happy man. Having lived through what a husband lives through during childbirth, he loved his wife still more strongly. His feeling for the baby, when he took her in his arms, was a funny, new, very pleasant, almost tickling feeling. Another new thing in his life was that, owing to his closeness with Dumchin (the former marshal), there emerged in his soul, besides farming, a new interest in zemstvo work,⁶ partly out of ambition, partly out of an awareness of his own duty. In October an extraordinary meeting was to take place, at which he was to be elected. On returning home, he went to town once, and another time to see Dumchin.

He even forgot to think about his torments of temptation and struggle, and could hardly revive them in his imagination. It all appeared to him as some sort of fit of madness that he had been subjected to.

He now felt himself free to such an extent that he was even not afraid to make inquiries of the steward, at the first opportunity, when they were alone together. Since they had already talked about it, he was not ashamed to ask.

“Well, and is Sidor Pchelnikov still not living at home?” he asked.

“No, he’s still in town.”

“And his woman?”

“A frivolous wench! She’s carrying on with Zinovy now. Completely on the loose.”

“Well, splendid,” thought Evgeny. “Amazing how little I care and how changed I am.”

XIX

ALL THAT Evgeny wished for was accomplished. The estate remained his, the factory was running, the beet harvest was excellent, and a large profit was expected; his wife’s delivery had gone well, and his mother-in-law had left, and he had been elected unanimously.

Evgeny was coming home from town after the election. He had been congratulated; he had had to return thanks. And he had had dinner and drunk five glasses of champagne. Quite new plans for life now presented themselves to him. He was driving home and thinking about them. It was Indian summer. An excellent road, bright sun. Nearing the house, Evgeny was thinking of how, as the result of this election, he could occupy among the people precisely the position he had always dreamed of, that is, one in which he would be able to serve them not only by production, which provides work, but by direct influence. He imagined how his own and other peasants would regard him in three years. “And this one, too,” he thought, driving through his village just then and looking at a muzhik and a woman who were crossing the road in front of him with a full tub. They stopped to let the tarantass go by. The man was old Pchelnikov, the woman was Stepanida. Evgeny looked at her, recognized her, and felt with joy that he remained perfectly calm. She was still as comely, but that did not touch him in the least. He drove home. His wife met him on the porch. It was a wonderful evening.

“Well, so can we congratulate you?” asked the uncle.

“Yes, I’ve been elected.”

“Well, splendid. We must wet it.”

The next morning Evgeny went to look over the farming, which he had been neglecting. At the farmstead a new thresher was at work. Looking it over as it worked, Evgeny moved among the women, trying not to notice them, but, try as he might, a couple of times he noticed the dark eyes and red kerchief of Stepanida, who was carrying straw. A couple of times he glanced sidelong at her and felt that there was again something, though he could not account for it to himself. Only the next day, when he again went to the threshing floor of the farmstead and spent two hours there, for which there was no need at all, never ceasing to caress with his eyes the familiar, beautiful form of the young woman, did he feel that he was lost, completely, irretrievably lost. Again those torments, again all that horror and fear. And no salvation.

• • •

WHAT HE EXPECTED did happen to him. The next evening, not knowing how, he found himself in her backyard, across from her hay barn, where they had met once in the autumn. As if out for a stroll, he stopped there and lit a cigarette. A neighbor woman saw him and, as he was going back, he heard her say to someone:

“Go, he’s waiting, strike me dead, he’s standing there. Go, you fool!”

He saw a woman—her—run to the barn, but it was no longer possible for him to turn back, because he had met a muzhik, and so he went home.

XX

WHEN HE CAME to the drawing room, everything seemed wild and unnatural to him. In the morning he had gotten up still cheerful, with the decision to drop it, forget it, not let himself think. But, not noticing how himself, all morning he not only took no interest in his affairs, but tried to free himself of them. That which formerly had been important, had given him joy, was now worthless. He unconsciously tried to free himself from business. It seemed to him that he had to free himself from it in order to reason, to think. And he freed himself and was left alone. But as soon as he was left alone, he went to wander in the garden, in the woods. And all those places were befouled by memories, memories that gripped him. And he felt he was walking in the garden and saying to himself that he was thinking something over, but he was not thinking anything over, he was insanely, groundlessly waiting for her, waiting for her to understand, by some miracle, how he desired her and come there or somewhere where no one could see, or at night, when there would be no moon, and no one, not even herself, would see, on such a night she would come and he would touch her body …

“Yes, see how I broke it off when I wanted to,” he said to himself. “Yes, see how for the sake of health I came together with a clean, healthy woman! No, clearly it was impossible to play with her like that. I thought I was taking her, but it was she who took me, took me and wouldn’t let me go. I thought I was free, but I wasn’t free. I was deceiving myself when I married. It was all nonsense, deceit. Once I came together with her, I experienced a new feeling, the real feeling of a husband. Yes, I should have lived with her.

“Yes, two lives are possible for me; one is the life I began with Liza: service, farming, the child, people’s respect. If it’s that life, then there must be no Stepanida. She must be sent away, as I said, or destroyed, so that she’s no more. And the other life is right here. To take her from her husband, give him money, forget the shame and disgrace, and live with her. But then there must be no Liza and Mimi (the child). No, why, the child’s no hindrance, but there must be no Liza, she must go away. Let her find out, curse me, and go away. Find out that I exchanged her for a peasant wench, that I’m a deceiver, a scoundrel. No, that’s too terrible. That can’t be done. Yes, but it might happen that Liza falls sick and dies. She dies, and then everything will be splendid.

“Splendid. Oh, villain! No, if anyone is to die, it’s her. If she died, Stepanida, how good it would be.

“Yes, that’s how men poison or murder their wives or mistresses. Take a revolver, go and call her out, and, instead of embraces—in the breast. Finished.

“She’s a devil. An outright devil. She’s taken possession of me against my will. Kill? yes. Only two ways out: kill my wife or her. Because to live like this is impossible.* Impossible. I must think and foresee. If it stays as it is, what will happen?

“It will happen that I again say to myself that I don’t want it, that I’ll drop it, but I’ll only say it, and in the evening I’ll be in her backyard, and she knows it, and she’ll come. Either people will find out and tell my wife, or I’ll tell her myself, because I can’t lie, I can’t live like this, I can’t. It will be known. Everybody will know, Parasha, and the blacksmith … Well, is it possible to live like this?

“No, it’s not. Only two ways out: kill my wife or her. Or else …

“Ah, yes, there’s a third way: myself,” he said aloud, in a low voice, and a chill suddenly ran over him. “Yes, myself, then there’s no need to kill them.” He became frightened precisely because he felt that this was the only possible way out. “I have a revolver. Can it be that I’ll kill myself? That’s something I never thought of. How strange it will be.”

He went back to his room and at once opened the cupboard where the revolver was. But he had only just opened it when his wife came in.

XXI

HE QUICKLY THREW a newspaper over the revolver.

“Again the same thing,” she said in fear, looking at him.

“What same thing?”

“The same terrible expression as before, when you didn’t want to tell me. Zhenya, darling, tell me. I can see you’re suffering. Tell me, you’ll feel better. Whatever it is, it will be better than this suffering. I know there’s nothing bad.”

“You know? Not yet.”

“Tell me, tell me. I won’t let you go.”

He smiled a pathetic smile.

“Tell her? No, it’s impossible. And there’s nothing to tell.”

Maybe he would have told her, but at that moment the wet nurse came in to ask if she could take the baby for a walk. Liza went to dress the baby.

“So you’ll tell me. I’ll be right back.”

“Yes, maybe …”

She could never forget the suffering smile with which he said it. She left.

Hurriedly, stealthily, like a thief, he seized the revolver and took it out of the case. “It’s loaded, yes, long ago, and there’s one cartridge missing. Well, come what may.”

He put it to his temple, hesitated, but as soon as he remembered Stepanida, his decision not to see her, the struggle, the temptation, the fall, the struggle again, he shuddered with horror. “No, better this.” And he pulled the trigger.

When Liza came running into the room—she had only just had time to step down from the balcony—he was lying facedown on the floor, dark, warm blood was gushing from the wound, and his body was still twitching.

There was an inquest. No one could understand or explain the cause of the suicide. It never even once occurred to the uncle that the cause had anything to do with the confession Evgeny had made to him two months earlier.

Varvara Alexeevna insisted that she had always predicted it. It was clear when he argued. Liza and Marya Pavlovna could never understand why it had happened, and all the same did not believe what the doctors said, that he was mentally ill. They simply could not agree with that, because they knew he was far more sound-minded than hundreds of people they knew.

And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and the most mentally ill are undoubtedly those who see signs of madness in others that they do not see in themselves.

ALTERNATIVE ENDING TO The Devil

… he said to himself and, going to the table, he took out the revolver and, looking it over—one of the cartridges was missing—put it in his trouser pocket.

“My God! what am I doing?” he cried suddenly and, clasping his hands, he began to pray. “Lord, help me, deliver me. You know I do not want to do anything bad, but I am powerless alone. Help me,” he said, crossing himself before an icon.

“But I can control myself. I’ll go out for a walk and think it over.”

He went to the front hall, put on a warm jacket, galoshes, and went out to the porch. Not noticing it, he directed his steps past the garden down the field road to the farmstead. There the noise of the thresher and the shouts of the driver lads were still heard. He went into the barn. She was there. He saw her at once. She was raking up the ears and, seeing him, laughing with her eyes, brisk, merry, she trotted over the scattered ears, deftly moving them together. Evgeny did not want to look at her, but could not help it. He came to his senses only when she went out of his sight. The steward told him that they were almost done threshing the compacted sheaves, and that took longer and yielded less. Evgeny went to the drum, which occasionally made a knock as it skipped over the poorly spread sheaves, and asked the steward if there were many such compacted sheaves.

“About five cartloads.”

“So that’s what …” Evgeny began and did not finish. She came up close to the drum to rake some ears from under it, and seared him with her laughing gaze.

That gaze spoke of the merry, carefree love between them, and of her knowing that he desired her, that he had come to her shed, and that she was ready, as always, to live and make merry with him, not thinking of any circumstances or consequences. Evgeny felt he was in her power, but he did not want to give in.

He remembered his prayer and tried to repeat it. He began to say it to himself, but felt at once that it was useless.

One thought now absorbed him entirely: how to set up a meeting with her unnoticed by the others?

“If we finish today, will you have us start on a new stack or wait until tomorrow?” asked the steward.

“Yes, yes,” replied Evgeny, involuntarily making after her towards the heap of ears she was raking up along with another woman.

“Can I really not control myself?” he said to himself. “Can I really be lost? Lord! But there isn’t any God. There is the devil. And it’s she. The devil has possessed me. And I don’t want it, I don’t want it. The devil, yes, the devil.”

He went up close to her, took the revolver from his pocket, and shot her once, twice, three times in the back. She ran and fell onto the heap.

“Saints alive! darling dears! what is it?” cried the women.

“No, it’s not an accident. I killed her on purpose,” cried Evgeny. “Send for the police.”

He came home and, saying nothing to his wife, went to his room and locked himself in.

“Don’t come to me,” he cried to his wife through the door, “you’ll learn everything.”

An hour later he rang for the footman, and when he came, said:

“Go and find out if Stepanida’s alive.”

The footman already knew everything and said she had died about an hour ago.

“Well, splendid. Leave me now. When the police officer or the investigator comes, tell me.”

The police officer and the investigator came the next morning, and Evgeny, after saying good-bye to his wife and baby, was taken to prison.

He was tried. This was in the early days of jury trials.⁷ And he was found to have been temporarily insane and sentenced only to a church penance.

He spent nine months in prison and one month in a monastery.

He began to drink while still in prison, went on in the monastery, and returned home an enfeebled, irresponsible alcoholic.

Varvara Alexeevna insisted that she had always predicted it. It was clear when he argued. Liza and Marya Pavlovna simply could not understand why it had happened, and all the same did not believe what the doctors said, that he was mentally ill, a psychopath. They simply could not agree with that, because they knew he was far more sound-minded than hundreds of people they knew.

And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill when he committed his crime, then all people are just as mentally ill, and the most mentally ill are undoubtedly those who see signs of madness in others that they do not see in themselves.

1889

* What follows is the first version of the ending. The alternative ending begins at this link.