Part + 

I + 

The Three Sisters + 

I + 

And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book. It is the classic way of treating life. For my ineffectual return to Vladivostok is the effectual conclusion of my theme. And the harbour has been strangely, knowingly responsive. It has sounded the note of departure, and the tall stone houses of the port seem to brood as I walk below, and “set the tone.” And because of this and the sense that I am marking time till the big steamer comes and bears me home to England I am eagerly retrospective.⁠ ⁠… + 

When the Simbirsk, of the Russian Volunteer Fleet, had at last completely vanished, carrying away the three sisters to Shanghai, I came back to my room at the hotel. I had just moved in there. It was a bare and dingy room in a small and shabby hostel. A bed was eventually provided, but in lieu of bedsheets I was to lie on a dirty tablecloth which was to serve again as tablecloth next morning when I had my breakfast. + 

“Is this sheet clean?” I asked. + 

“Yes,” said the boy-attendant. + 

“Quite clean?” + 

“Quite.” + 

“Sure nobody slept on it?” + 

“Nobody. Only the boss.” + 

Big drops like tears fell on the windowpane and instantly made room for others. A ruined writing-table stood in the corner. I sat down. I fingered a typically Russian pen with a no less typically Russian nib, such as one is likely to encounter in almost any Russian government department, and dipping it repeatedly into ink that was like syrup, I made a bold beginning. + 

When night came I lay there on the tablecloth, hungry and worried by enormous hungry bugs that bit like dogs, and thought of Nina, Sonia, Vera, Nikolai Vasilievich and his unconventional family. In the morning the rain ceased. + 

I paced the country, now in the embrace of autumn. I wandered in remote places by the sea, in the abandoned park that used to be a park essentially for lovers, and thought of them. Here the foliage was more dense, the corners more secluded, the disorder more magnificent. I sat on an old bench that had names and initials cut out with a penknife, under the trees turning gold and auburn, and shivered in the sharp autumn wind that sent the fallen yellow leaves whirling down the alley. And the vast sea of Russian life seemed to be closing over me.⁠ ⁠… + 

II + 

It was somewhat in the manner of an Ibsen drama with retrospective revelations that I was initiated into the complicated affairs of the Bursanov family. I had been asked to call by the three sisters, all speaking simultaneously⁠—a charming bouquet, the queen among whom I recognized only too well, and I called on them one evening in midsummer at their dacha, at a seaside place ten versts from Petersburg, a little bashful perhaps for I had not been invited by their elders; and I was met by the “bouquet” in the hall of the little wooden structure that hung out above the sea. They sprang out to me successively, introducing themselves in order of age. + 

“Sonia!” + 

“Nina!” + 

“Vera!” + 

They were then sixteen, fifteen and fourteen. I think I had told them that day when I had first spoken to them that I could not for the life of me distinguish one from the other, and had deliberately mixed up their names. It was, of course, poor fun, but they, then almost children, had seemed grateful for it and giggled, possibly for want of anything better. + 

I was led into a room full of people whose relationship I did not yet comprehend. By the presiding posture over the samovar I thought that I could recognize the mother, and I walked up to her, and she put me at my ease, talking Russian, I noticed, with an unmistakably German accent. + 

“You don’t any of you resemble your mother very much,” I told Nina afterwards. + 

“She is not our mother,” Nina said. “She is⁠ ⁠… Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

I should not have thought that that youngish-looking, rather short but handsome man, well dressed but somewhat sluggish in his bearing, was their father, by the negligent, almost contemptuous manner in which his daughters treated him. But Nina called out “Papa!” and he turned round, and then I saw that she had his eyes, those steel-grey eyes softened by a charming, disquieting, sidelong look that was hers to give; and every now and then she would look straight into your eyes⁠—anybody’s eyes⁠—down into your very soul, bathing her soul in your soul, causing you to feel as though you were indeed “the only man who really mattered in the world.” + 

And Fanny Ivanovna pestered the life out of Nikolai Vasilievich (that was their father) by always asking silly questions, and Nikolai Vasilievich would look bored and sullen and would wave his hand at her as if she were a pestering fly and say: + 

“Drop it!” + 

Or he would imitate in an unkindly manner the preposterous way in which Fanny Ivanovna talked Russian. “Elektrichno! How often have I told you that it’s elektrichestvo?” + 

“It’s all the same,” said she. + 

Then the three sisters insisted on dancing the one-step and the hesitation-waltz, at that time just coming into vogue abroad, while Nikolai Vasilievich was ordered to play some wretched tune on the piano over and over again. And I thought to myself: What a bouquet! + 

The ravishing experiment over, it was suggested at dinner that we should all go to the local theatre to see Chekhov’s Three Sisters. + 

“Very well,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “but Nikolai Vasilievich must come with us. That is the condition.” + 

Nikolai Vasilievich frowned. + 

“You’ll be too many in the box as it is.” + 

“We can take two boxes,” I suggested. + 

“There is no excuse, Nikolai,” cried Fanny Ivanovna. And a dark shadow flitted across the handsome face of Nikolai Vasilievich. But still I did not understand. + 

It was not till the end of the second act of the Three Sisters that I had an inkling, my first intuition, that all was not well with the Bursanov family. + 

You know the manner of Chekhov’s writing. You know the people in his plays. It seems as though they had all been born on the line of demarcation between comedy and tragedy⁠—in a kind of No Man’s Land. Fanny Ivanovna and the three sisters watched the play with intense interest, as if the Three Sisters were indeed their own particular tragedy. I sat behind Nina, and watched with that stupid scepticism that comes from too much happiness. To me, buoyant and impatient, the people in the play appeared preposterous. They annoyed me. They distressed me intensely. Their black melancholy, their incredible inefficiency, their paralysing inertia, crept over me. How different, I thought, were those three lovable creatures who sat in our box. How careless and free they were in their own happy home. The people in the play were hopeless. + 

“Good God!” I cried and grasped Nikolai Vasilievich by the arm as the curtain fell upon the second act. “How can there be such people, Nikolai Vasilievich? Think of it! They can’t do what they want. They can’t get where they want. They don’t even know what they want. They talk, talk, talk, and then go off and commit suicide or something. It is a hysterical cry for greater efforts, for higher aims⁠—which to themselves, mind you, are vague and unintelligible⁠—and a perpetual standstill. It’s like Faust in Gounod’s opera who takes the hand of Marguerite in prison and cries, ‘We flee! We flee!’ while making no visible effort to quit the middle of the stage. Why can’t people know what they want in life and get it? Why can’t they, Nikolai Vasilievich?” + 

Nikolai Vasilievich sat still and silent and very sad. He shook his head gravely and his face darkened. + 

“It’s all very well,” he said slowly, “to talk. Life is not so simple. There are complications, so to speak, entanglements. It cuts all ways, till⁠ ⁠… till you don’t know where you are. Yes, Andrei Andreiech.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He sighed and paused before he spoke again. + 

“Chekhov,” he said at last, “is a great artist.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I walked home with them to their dacha along the dark and muddy road⁠—it had been raining while we were in the theatre⁠—Nina clinging to my arm. + 

III + 

It was on one of those long, happy evenings which it had now become my custom to spend regularly at their large, luxurious flat in the Mohovaya in St. Petersburg, that I was further initiated into the domestic affairs of the Bursanov family. + 

They had been sitting silently for a time. Nina seemed sad; Sonia and Vera sulky. It was twilight, but no one had thought of switching on the light. No one would dance. I played the piano for a while, and then stopped. + 

“What is the matter, Nina?” I asked. + 

She was silent, and then said in her childish open manner, “Oh, Papa and Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

“What have they done?” + 

“They are always quarrelling, always, always, always.” + 

I paused, hating to appear intrusive. + 

“You know,” she said in that half humorous, half serious way she had of speaking, and then paused a little, and then decided to have it out. + 

“Papa and Fanny Ivanovna are not⁠ ⁠… legally married.” + 

“I know,” I said. + 

“How did you know?” + 

“I suspected it.” + 

“Did Vera tell you?” + 

“I didn’t!” cried Vera in loud protest. She was fourteen, but tried to look two years older, and indeed succeeded. “I’d never dream of telling such a thing.” + 

She was shocked and angry at the unjust accusation so provokingly flung at her. It had seemed to me for some time past that there was no love wasted between Vera and her two elder sisters. Vera was different. + 

“We can’t stand this any longer,” said Sonia. “I am sick to death of their quarrelling. Day and night, day and night.⁠ ⁠… If they’d only stop at least when we have guests. But no, they are worse than ever then.” + 

I could bear her out there⁠—that is, if I were really classed as a guest. For I was, rather, what Nikolai Vasilievich called “svoy chelovek,” one of the family, so to speak, and in my presence Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna certainly let themselves go. They were like cat and dog. There was no mercy shown, no gallantry displayed. Nikolai Vasilievich gibed at her, imitating her murderous Russian with a malicious skill that set the room shrieking with laughter. Fanny Ivanovna, her white face flushing in patches of unwholesome pink, would writhe with pain, and, having gathered her forces, give back as good as she got. Nikolai Vasilievich would snatch out some isolated word that she had mispronounced and, adding some pepper of his own, would fling it into the audience of friends and strangers that he had asked to dinner, and so pluck out the sting at her expense. + 

“I’m sick of home,” Sonia said. “I shall run away.” + 

“How can you run away?” + 

“I’ll marry and run away.” + 

“No one will marry her,” said Vera from her perch in the far corner. + 

Nina sat mute, wearing her natural expression, half serious, half ironic. + 

“What do they quarrel about?” + 

Nina looked up at Sonia. “Shall I tell?” + 

“Of course.” + 

“Aha!” Vera cried maliciously. “Aha!” + 

“You shut up!” said Sonia. + 

Nina looked vaguely at the window. + 

“Papa wants to marry again.” + 

The rustle of Fanny Ivanovna’s approach was heralded through the air. + 

She appeared. + 

“Andrei Andreiech!” she cried. She always greeted me in this way, with acclamation. “How d’you do!” + 

“How dark! Nina! Vera! Sonia! Why don’t you light up the elektrichno!” + 

“How many times, Fanny Ivanovna,” said Sonia sternly, “have I told you that it is not elektrichno, but elektrichestvo?” + 

“Ach! It’s all the same.” + 

“It’s not all the same, Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

“Andrei Andreiech! What news?” + 

“None, I am afraid, Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

“Has Nikolai Vasilievich come?” + 

“You know he never comes,” said Sonia, “and yet you always keep supper waiting.” + 

“I’m tired of waiting for Papa,” Nina said petulantly, lying back on the sofa and swinging her pretty legs. + 

“He is later and later every day,” came from Vera’s perch. “Fanny Ivanovna, I’m hungry.” + 

Sonia was really angry. “I would rather he didn’t come at all, than just come to sleep here. Let him stay there, Fanny Ivanovna. Let him!” + 

“Ach! I think he might still come if we waited a little longer. Are you very hungry, Andrei Andreiech?” + 

“Say yes! Say yes!” cried the three sisters. I was amazed at this open display of hostility towards their own father, especially from Sonia. I understood the look in Fanny Ivanovna’s eyes. + 

“No, Fanny Ivanovna,” I said, “not at all.” + 

“Well, then we’ll wait just a little longer. He promised to come.” + 

There was a ring at the bell. + 

“It’s Nikolai Vasilievich!” cried Fanny Ivanovna. + 

But Nina shook her head. “Papa never rings so timidly. It must be Pàvel Pàvlovich.” + 

The three sisters sprang off their perches and dashed into the hall. + 

“Ah!” we heard Sonia’s voice. + 

“Who is it?⁠ ⁠… Kniaz?” shouted Fanny Ivanovna. + 

“No,” came the answer, “the other one.” + 

“Oh, the Baron. They are both Pàvel Pàvlovichi,” sighed Fanny Ivanovna as though the fact distressed her; but it was really because she disapproved of them both that she sighed. + 

Baron Wunderhausen as barons do in Russia, came from the Baltic Provinces, spoke Russian and German equally well, excelled in French, knew English, was polite, cunning and adaptable to any circumstances, had big calf’s eyes, was habitually somewhat overdressed, twenty-five years of age, and had a billet in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He came regularly every evening, made love with his eyes, and we danced.⁠ ⁠… + 

We danced, and then had supper, having given Nikolai Vasilievich up as we gave him up regularly every evening after waiting for him for two hours. His absence annoyed everybody, for they suspected where he was. + 

“I am going away,” said Nina as she danced with me. + 

“Going away? Where?” + 

“To Moscow,” she said, looking up. She had a wonderful way of looking up at you when she danced. She had a charming way of speaking quietly, enigmatically, half humorously, half lovingly. + 

“For always?” I cried in dismay. + 

In answer she held up two fingers behind my head which was supposed to give me the appearance of a horned devil, and laughed. I revelled in her laughter. + 

“For how long?” I asked. + 

“Two months.” + 

“Why?” + 

“To see Mama.” + 

“I didn’t know you had a Mama in Moscow.” + 

“I have,” she made the obvious answer and I smiled, and she laughed and again held up the devil’s horns. + 

“What is she doing in Moscow?” I asked, and felt it was a somewhat silly question. + 

“Living,” she replied. And it seemed to me that she blushed. And for some reason that blush seemed to tell me that there, too, there was trouble. + 

“Who are you going with?” + 

“Vera. She is going back for good. Mama wants to keep her.” + 

“Aren’t you sorry?” + 

“No.” + 

“Good God!” I cried. + 

“I am sorry to leave Sonia.” + 

“But you are coming back to her?” I asked anxiously. + 

“Yes, but I am sorry to leave her, all the same. I am sorry to leave Fanny Ivanovna,” she added. + 

“And Papa?” + 

She reflected a little. “No,” she whispered. + 

“And whom else?” I persisted, smiling into her eyes and trying to press my own claims. + 

“I won’t tell,” she said. + 

“When are you going?” + 

“Tomorrow morning. We only decided last night, Fanny Ivanovna and I,” she said quietly, “that I should go.” + 

“To take Vera to Moscow?” + 

She smiled enigmatically. We danced two rounds before she answered. + 

“That’s what we tell Papa.” + 

I looked at Sonia, as she passed us with her partner, “hesitating” marvellously. She made a moue at me and smiled. I knew that she was happy. The Baron danced with that characteristic air of his which conveyed that it gave him pleasure to give pleasure. + 

IV + 

I saw them off next morning in the desolating atmosphere of the Nicholas Station on a cold November morning. They were wrapped in heavy furs. The men had turned up the collars of their shubas against the biting frost. There was snow on the platform. We walked up and down quickly in order to warm our feet. Nikolai Vasilievich presented a pitiable sight with his pince-nez all blinded with snow, his moustache frozen, and his nose, reddened by the cold, protruding from his turned-up collar. + 

“Nina,” he said. + 

“Yes?” She turned round. + 

“Don’t go.” + 

“I must.” + 

“You won’t come back. She will keep you.” + 

She shook her head. + 

“Don’t go, Nina.” + 

“Don’t go,” I said. + 

She stood thoughtful, in indecision. + 

“Don’t, Nina,” cut in Nikolai Vasilievich. + 

She did not answer. + 

“Nina,” he said again. + 

“No, she must,” intervened Fanny Ivanovna. “This is all nonsense! She will go and come back quickly. Won’t you, Nina?” + 

“Yes,” said Nina. + 

She turned to me and slipped her hand under my arm. “I won’t let you go,” she said petulantly. “You’ll have to come with me.” + 

“You know I can’t.” + 

“I won’t let you go.” + 

“Nina,” I said. + 

“Yes?” + 

“Come here.” + 

I took her aside. + 

“Nina, will you marry me?” + 

She looked flippant and humorous and yet there was just a trace of seriousness in her look. + 

“Yes.” + 

I felt relieved⁠—oddly as I might feel if I had just concluded a satisfactory business transaction. + 

The second whistle went, and with the other passengers they boarded the train, Nikolai Vasilievich came up to her to say goodbye and probably thought he might chance it once again. + 

“Don’t go, Nina. Nina!” + 

“I shall come back,” said Nina. + 

Then they all said goodbye to Vera, and no excess of emotion was displayed on either side. + 

“Goodbye!” was said again. Then the train moved, and they waved handkerchiefs. + 

V + 

I called on them one evening in Nina’s absence and chanced to find Fanny Ivanovna alone. Nikolai Vasilievich, as ever, was out. Sonia had gone to see a friend. + 

“Sit down, Andrei Andreiech,” she said. “I am always doing needlework, as you see.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I took a chair. + 

“I do it.⁠ ⁠… It is extraordinary, Andrei Andreiech. I thought I would do it so as not to think, but it’s just the very work to make you think. And so I gave it up and began reading in order to forget, in order not to think, and I found, Andrei Andreiech, that I could not read because I had to think. I think all day and night. Ach! Andrei Andreiech.” + 

And I knew that she was going to confide in me. + 

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech! Andrei Andreiech! If you only knew.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She glanced behind her at the door to make sure that nobody could hear her. + 

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech!” + 

I waited patiently for her to begin. + 

She said “Ach! Andrei Andreiech!” several times more and then began. She spoke in marks of exclamation. + 

“I suppose you know, Andrei Andreiech, that I am not Nikolai Vasilievich’s⁠ ⁠… legal wife?” + 

“I know,” I said. + 

“How did you know?” she turned on me. + 

“I suspected it.” + 

She paused. + 

“Well, now that you actually know so much, I feel that I must tell you everything, if only in fairness to myself. But don’t tell the children. They would be shocked if they knew that I had told you.” + 

“No,” said I. + 

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech, you know.⁠ ⁠… You know.⁠ ⁠…” She suddenly plunged into her native German, the foreign Russian tongue being inadequate to express her overflowing feelings, but now and then, quite unintentionally, she would employ some Russian word that came handy to her, that in her excitement she could not be bothered to translate as she proceeded to unload her feelings⁠—an urgency too long deferred. + 

“Andrei Andreiech!” she said again and again in a kind of appeal to my sense of justice. “Sie sollen wissen that I met Nikolai Vasilievich in Switzerland, in Basel, when he was there on a cure, after he had separated from his wife. He was very handsome. He is still very handsome, ach! much too handsome. You would not think that he was fifty-three.⁠ ⁠… Ach! Andrei Andreiech, I have so much, so very much to tell you that I don’t really know where to begin.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, I met him. I knew that he was married; he told me so himself from the first. He was always straight and honourable and aboveboard. He said that he had separated finally from his wife and expected to get a divorce, and that I was to come to Petersburg with him and wait till he got his divorce, and then we were to be married at once. You see, we loved each other.” She looked at me. + 

“Quite,” I said. + 

“I must tell you here,” she continued, “more about myself and my feelings and desires at that time. I belong (I hope you will forgive me for saying it, but it is a salient point in my tragedy) to a very proud family indeed. My father and all my brothers were officers in the German Guards. Soon after my father’s death we lost all our money. I had to set out in search of a livelihood because I, as the eldest sister, had to ensure that my sisters’ education was not interrupted and that it should be possible for my brothers to remain in the army. I had a good voice and⁠ ⁠… I went on the stage, into musical comedy. And, Andrei Andreiech, curious, is it not, that in spite of the fact that I and I alone kept the whole of our family⁠—my sisters, my brothers, my aged mother, my grandfather, my grandmother and two of my aunts⁠—they were ashamed of me. You see, I became almost what you would call ‘a star.’ I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I shouldn’t have said that they were ashamed of me. That is misleading. They were ashamed of my profession, as I was myself, of course. I understood them. I revelled in my sacrifice. I was young, good-looking then. Don’t look at me now, Andrei Andreiech. I have changed through suffering and age. Then, suddenly, I was seized by a craving for decency, respectability. You see, no woman really knows what it means to be respectable until she’s had to give it up. I thought: if only I could marry a man who was respectable and rich, who would be willing to support my family! My heart craved for the title, the status, of a married woman because that title was denied me. + 

“And then came Nikolai Vasilievich. + 

“I loved him. Love was thrown into the bargain. It was unexpected, irrelevant. And then love became salient, supreme, altogether dominating; and as I realized how I loved him, so I realized that my family, my sacrifice and all that this had once meant to me, were but of secondary importance in the face of my love. Love was some greater thing⁠—altogether greater. And Nikolai was rich. He owned a large house in Petersburg and had gold-mining concessions in Siberia. But that seemed a minor point. He was to get his divorce and then we would be married. + 

“We came to Petersburg and immediately got busy with the divorce. He visited lawyers. His friends and relatives all intervened and gave him advice, some in favour of a divorce and others against it. I did not at that time know what a hopeless, cruel and heartbreaking thing a Russian divorce really is. Nikolai’s wife did all she possibly could to prevent his getting a divorce. Eisenstein, the man she ran away with before Nikolai Vasilievich and I met, had no money. He was a Jew dentist, with no practice. They succeeded in proving to Nikolai Vasilievich’s satisfaction⁠—I never quite followed the case⁠—that if he asked for a divorce he would be compelled to plead guilty and so lose the children; and Nikolai Vasilievich was determined to keep the children. On my advice, Andrei Andreiech. I had begged of him, entreated him, insisted on it. ‘Divorce or no divorce, you must keep the children, Nikolai,’ I said. I knew that they would be spoilt, their lives marred and wasted, if they fell into the clutches of their mother and that Jew dentist. Yes, I insisted on it, Andrei Andreiech, even if it meant that there was to be no divorce. And what that cost me!⁠ ⁠… + 

“For I hadn’t told my people in Germany that Nikolai was married at the time. I didn’t want to add further injury to their pride. I thought it would be a matter of a few weeks and that then Nikolai and I would be married, and all would be well. How could I know? How could we know? + 

“We had the children⁠—and what sweet girls they were⁠—but no divorce. Nikolai sent money to his wife regularly every month, so as to keep the children; and so I lived with him just as if I were his wife, and indeed few people knew that I was not. We lived very happily. He sent money to my large family in Germany, regularly every month, and naturally they thought that I was married to him. How could I tell them that I was not? What did it matter after all, provided that they didn’t know? I felt that it was my duty to sacrifice my personal pride for Nikolai’s children. And such nice, tender, beautiful girls they were too, Sonia and Nina, so loving, so good, so pretty, so obedient, so well-behaved. Everyone who saw them said to me: ‘Fanny Ivanovna, what nice children you have. You must be so proud of them!’ I was. And, Andrei Andreiech, I didn’t tell them, you know, that they were not my children. It may have been wrong of me; but I did not. I was really so proud of them, Andrei Andreiech, and as I had sacrificed the divorce for them⁠ ⁠… it made me feel as if they were my own. + 

“Nikolai was still always sending money to his wife to keep her quiet. She always threatened to make a nuisance of herself. She wanted the money, too⁠—badly indeed, because that man Eisenstein she lived with wasted her money in speculation on the Stock Exchange. Often she would demand money in excess, and when Nikolai refused, she would come up to Petersburg, enter our house, or go to their school and carry the children off to Moscow and keep them there with Eisenstein. Once she even threatened to bring a case against Nikolai Vasilievich on the ground that he had run away from her with me, if you please! She was tired of Eisenstein, who had spent all her money and proved a dismal failure in dentistry, and, I think, she was anxious to get back to Nikolai. I was in the way, you see. So what do you think she did? She spread stories about me. She said I was a German governess in her household and had beguiled Nikolai into running away with me. She spread this tale among our friends and relatives each time she came up to Petersburg.” + 

“And what about the girls?” I asked. “What did they think of Moscow and their mother?” + 

“Andrei Andreiech!” she pleaded with all the fervour of a woman at a disadvantage. “A mother is a mother to her children, always, whatever she has been or is. She can plead love and sympathy and unhappiness with success. But the sudden changes certainly affected the children’s characters. + 

“One evening on their return from Moscow, when we had guests to dinner, Nina, who was only eight, said: + 

“ ‘Do you know, Papa, Mama says that Fanny Ivanovna is just a lapdog you cuddle on your knee for a while and then chase away.’ + 

“How that stabbed me⁠ ⁠… to the very heart!⁠ ⁠… But Nikolai was kind to me. I looked after him. I worshipped him. He would come to me in the evening and say: + 

“ ‘Fanny, I don’t know what I would do without you.’ And then he would think of what he could say to comfort me, and unconscious of my happiness (happiness, Andrei Andreiech, because I trusted him implicitly) he would say: + 

“ ‘When the children grow up we will get a divorce, Fanny.’ + 

“ ‘Never mind the divorce,’ I would say. ‘So long as my people in Germany don’t know, it is all I want. I am happy, Nikolai, really. I know that I am your real wife. Let the children grow up first. We must think first of the children. Always, Nikolai.’ + 

“And then I would find myself returning to the question of divorce involuntarily. You see, in my secret heart I wanted his divorce so much. And I would say again: + 

“ ‘We must not think of the divorce, Nikolai;’ just to make him repeat his promise. + 

“ ‘When the children grow up we will, Fanny. I will get a divorce then.’ + 

“And the children, as I say, were such a pride and consolation to me. There were moments when I looked at them and thought I wanted no divorce. Those were my best moments⁠ ⁠… when I thought that⁠ ⁠… that I did not really care whether he got it at all. Sonia and Nina were the compensation.” + 

“What about Vera?” I asked. + 

Fanny Ivanovna paused suddenly. She looked as if she were going to reveal an unspeakable secret, but then decided not to. + 

“Oh, Vera⁠ ⁠… she always lived with the mother. Nikolai Vasilievich hates her.⁠ ⁠… She is different.” + 

There was another pause. + 

“We lived like that eleven years,” she said, and stopped. + 

“And now?” I asked, and was horrified at my disastrous question. + 

“And now,” she said, her face quivering with emotion, “… he wants to marry⁠ ⁠… a young girl of⁠ ⁠… sixteen.⁠ ⁠…” She burst into tears. + 

She sobbed hysterically, and I stood there, helpless, filled with pity and an eagerness to help, and not knowing how to do it⁠—saying: + 

“Fanny Ivanovna⁠ ⁠… Fanny Ivanovna⁠ ⁠… don’t cry.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Then I tried to think of what was usually done on such occasions. I rushed for a glass of water. + 

When she had drunk it and wiped her tear-stained face with her little lace handkerchief, she continued, breathing heavily: + 

“He came to me one evening in April and said: + 

“ ‘Fanny, I must talk to you very seriously.’ + 

“ ‘And what might it be that you want to talk to me about so seriously, du alter Schimmel?’ I said, and followed him happily into his study, thinking that he wished to consult me about some business transaction. He often consulted me on his affairs. + 

“ ‘Sit down, Fanny,’ he said, and I was astonished at his seriousness. I sat down and he seemed to be waiting till I was comfortably settled in my chair. + 

“ ‘Fanny,’ he said, ‘⁠—don’t be frightened⁠—I’ve got to marry Zina.’ + 

“Zina, Andrei Andreiech, was a girl in Sonia’s school and Sonia’s class, of Sonia’s age. Seventeen, Andrei Andreiech. + 

“I laughed. I could see that he was joking. I thought of the date. It was April⁠—not the first but the twenty-first⁠—yes, I remember perfectly. + 

“ ‘Don’t laugh,’ he said. ‘I am perfectly serious. I must. I have thought of it all. I fought against it. I have thought of every possible way that I could settle it. There is no other way. I can’t, Fanny. It is love, this time, real love. There is nothing that you can say that I have not thought of. There is nothing that you can say that will alter my decision.⁠ ⁠…’ + 

“ ‘Nikolai! You are mad! Du bist verrückt!’ I cried. ‘Wahnsinnich!’ + 

“And again I tried to think that he was joking. But Nikolai is obstinate as a mule. Obstinacy runs in the family. His grandmother was like that. Nina has it from her father. Obstinacy! What a terrible vice! There is no reason, no meaning in obstinacy beyond further obstinacy. It’s a disease. There is no strength, no character about it. The weakest thing on earth is so often obstinate. Take Nikolai. A weak and sloppy man, and such a mule!” She paused. “Perhaps I like to think that it is obstinacy. I cannot bear, Andrei Andreiech, to think that it is love. + 

“ ‘Nikolai!’ I cried, and laughed. I really felt it was funny. ‘Think of yourself! Look at yourself in the glass. Romeo! Look at your grey hairs and those wrinkles!’ (Those dear, dear wrinkles. He had acquired them in my time, and so I had an absurd conviction that they should be mine.) ‘You’re fifty-three and she is a girl of sixteen.’ + 

“ ‘Seventeen,’ he said, as though it mattered. + 

“ ‘Seventeen!’ I cried. ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ I tried to laugh, but it had no effect on him. I expect, too, that my laughter lacked real merriment. ‘O mein Gott, mein Gott, mein Gott!’ + 

“ ‘It is love,’ he said very seriously. ‘It has come late, but still it has come at last, and I am proud⁠—don’t laugh⁠—I am proud that at my age I should be capable of such love. I thought that I had loved, I had loved, you, Fanny; but this is the love that comes once only, to which you yield gloriously, magnificently, or you are crushed and broken and thrust aside.⁠ ⁠…’ + 

“ ‘Du bist verrückt, Nikolai,’ I repeated. ‘Wahnsinnich.⁠ ⁠…’ + 

“And then I thought of my people. And then I cried.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She fumbled for her handkerchief. She sobbed again. Again I dashed for a glass of water, this time doing the job gallantly, efficiently, as though I had been doing that sort of thing all my life. + 

She was bent on going on. + 

“I cried and he cried with me and tried to console me, but I only thought of what I could say to stop him from taking this mad, disastrous step. + 

“He said, ‘I know it is terrible, heartbreaking for you, Fanny, and the children.⁠ ⁠…’ + 

“The children, Andrei Andreiech⁠—I had forgotten them! I who had sacrificed everything for them, divorce and everything else, I had never given them a thought in my disaster. I took it up, Andrei Andreiech, promptly⁠—I even admit somewhat dishonestly⁠—for I was thinking more of myself, of me. Me! me! me! I had lived with him for eleven years! + 

“ ‘Think of your children,’ I cried. ‘Think of your children, Nikolai. They are yours. They are not my children, and yet I have sacrificed my life and my honour for them.’ + 

“I tried to shame him, but I had to realize that indeed nothing could shame him. I mean, he was already ashamed to his full capacity, conscious of unpardonable sin, conscious of being a bad man, the very worst man⁠—had admitted it all to himself⁠ ⁠… and was satisfied, as though this confession to himself had cleansed him of his wickedness and he had come out of it, clean, sanctified. That’s what I couldn’t stand, Andrei Andreiech. That he should have told himself that so good and wise and indeed well versed was he in his own wickedness, that there could be no crime, no sin, of which we others could accuse him of which he had not already in his goodness and wisdom accused himself, and so forgiven himself and started clear, afresh, with our lives all wrecked and ruined⁠—that’s what I can’t forgive him. That’s what Nina can’t forgive him. But imagine our consternation when he tells us that he had never really expected our forgiveness when he had made up his mind to marry Zina, his mind evidently having been made up in spite of that knowledge. Why, it would be far better if he had not realized how he had sinned than to plume himself on being a sinner unavoidably and bowing to his fate so readily that you almost suspected that, after the manner of his race, he had bribed it heavily to please him. I am afraid I am overstraining this point, Andrei Andreiech. But it is, after all, the point. + 

“At last I sprang upon him. ‘What do you propose to do, Nikolai? What do you want us to do? Speak, tell me!’ + 

“He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Live on as we have been living, you looking after the children. What if I am married to Zina? I can still come home every night to you and the children. It changes nothing.’ + 

“ ‘Nein, besten Dank!’ I said. ‘No, thank you, blagadaru vas! I will return to Germany as soon as you give me the money⁠—provide for me for life. I will not leave otherwise.’ ” + 

In her great tragedy she was still a sound business woman. + 

VI + 

She was silent for some time. + 

“Andrei Andreiech, does she love him? Cannot live without him? ‘Don’t you believe it,’ I told Nikolai Vasilievich. ‘She will leave you as soon as she has robbed you of your money.’ + 

“ ‘Then I shall come back to you,’ he said. + 

“ ‘Thank you for nothing,’ I said. ‘I shan’t want you then.’ + 

“Andrei Andreiech, it is all his money. It is really comic, but they all believe him to be preposterously rich. A house-owner in Petersburg! Goldmines in Siberia! A millionaire! Zina’s people keep telling her, ‘Stick to him, stick to him, don’t let him go. These goldmines in Siberia, these millions, this house in the Mohovaya!’ That’s all, in fact, they are after. Why won’t his wife give him his divorce and be done with him? Because she believes in the goldmines. Why does Baron Wunderhausen always hang about here? Why does he run after Nina, Vera, and Sonia? The goldmines again, and the house in the Mohovaya.” + 

“What of me!” I cried in horror. “I come here every evening, Fanny Ivanovna, and stay till late in the night.” + 

“Oh, you are different.” + 

“I shall have to stop coming now.” + 

“You may as well dismiss at once from your mind any suspicion of an ulterior motive,” said Fanny Ivanovna, rising to the occasion. “They are worth nothing, anyhow⁠ ⁠… both the goldmines in Siberia and the house in the Mohovaya.” + 

“Worthless! You don’t mean it?” + 

“Absolutely.” + 

“Do the goldmines pay nothing?” + 

“Andrei Andreiech, I have lived with Nikolai Vasilievich now for over eleven years. I don’t remember their ever paying a copeck. They may have paid before my time. But I doubt it. Nikolai Vasilievich, though, is constantly pouring money into them, every month, every year, to keep them going. And this, Andrei Andreiech, what with the money he has to fork out for his wife and Eisenstein and what we spend ourselves and what he gives Zina and her people, who are very poor, and”⁠—she blushed⁠—“what he sends my own people in Germany, and his own sisters and cousins and several other friends and dependents⁠ ⁠… why, Andrei Andreiech, it takes all he can scrape together.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But the house in the Mohovaya?” + 

“Precisely. He has been compelled to mortgage the house to be able to manage at all⁠ ⁠… and keep the other thing going.” + 

I whistled under my breath. I remember how Baron Wunderhausen had grasped me by the arm one day as he spoke with enthusiasm of Nikolai Vasilievich. + 

“Rich as Croesus,” he had said. + 

Well, I felt sorry for him.⁠ ⁠… + 

I heard a little nervous cough and a rustle, and a harmless little old man, like a mouse, whom I had not noticed in the room before, rose and walked out. + 

I was horrified. + 

“Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “that man has heard everything you’ve said.” + 

“Oh, Kniaz!” she said with undisguised contempt. “He’s heard it all before.” + 

I felt that this startling news rather took the gilt off the confession. I had flattered myself on being the first, in fact the only one. + 

“He’s heard it many times,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “Every now and then I feel that I absolutely must confess it all to somebody⁠ ⁠… no matter who it is.” + 

“I thought,” I said a little reproachfully, “that you had told nobody, Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

“Andrei Andreiech!” she cried in her tone of appeal to my sense of justice, “I haven’t spoken of it to anyone for more than two weeks. If you hadn’t come here today, I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I really think I should have confessed it to the hall-porter. You don’t understand.” + 

“I do understand,” I said, but I could not help feeling misused and mishandled. I almost begrudged her the gallantry of my dash for water⁠—two separate dashes, to be exact⁠—when I remembered that they must have been carried out by other men before me, the confession tonight being, of course, an exact replica of the confessions that had preceded it, Lord knows how many times, like a melodrama with its laughter and hysterics occurring always at the proper interval as it is produced each night. And I was led to revise my recently adopted theory that I was indeed a born confidant by virtue of my understanding personality, tempting strange women into thrilling, exhilarating confessions of their secrets. Rather did I feel the victim of a lengthy and tedious autobiography inflicted on me under false pretences. + 

I heard the sound of the outer door closing on the old Prince. + 

“Kniaz,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “is also one of those who live on Nikolai Vasilievich. He always comes here. Never misses a day. Sits, reads, eats, and then goes. And all without uttering a word. When he borrows money from Nikolai Vasilievich he naturally opens his mouth, and then shuts it until the next occasion.” + 

The old Prince was one of those quiet nonentities who enter unasked and leave unhindered almost any Russian home; and no one is likely to object to their coming because no one is likely to notice them. They have a face, a name, a manner so ordinary that you cannot remember them, ever. They are so colourless, so blank that they seem scarcely to exist at all. I think Goncharov speaks of them somewhere, but I would not be sure of it. “Kniaz” was like that. His name was some very ordinary name, and it even seemed odd that he should not have a more exclusive name for his title. But no one cared. No one, to be sure, knew what his name was. His imya otchestvo was Pàvel Pàvlovich, like the Baron’s, and so he was called by all but Fanny Ivanovna, who called him “Kniaz,” sarcastically⁠—a Prince without a copeck to his title! I only remember that he was always very neatly dressed, shaved regularly and wore a very stiff and sharp collar which seemed to torture his dry and skinny neck. + 

“Kniaz has some shares,” she explained, “in a limited company, but they are worthless⁠—always have been⁠—and never paid any dividends. Never so long as anybody can remember.” + 

“Has he always lived on you, then?” + 

“He lived on his brother when he was alive. He had great expectations from his brother. But his brother died and left him more shares, quite a number of shares, in the same limited company. Whom the brother lived on when he was alive, Lord only knows!” + 

“Did they get their shares from their father?” + 

“Their uncle.” + 

“Did he get any dividends?” + 

“Nikolai says no. But he seems to have put all his money into them.” + 

“And now I suppose you invite Kniaz to come and live with you?” I asked. + 

“He comes of his own accord.” + 

“You don’t object to his coming?” + 

“No one would tell him even if they did. It’s not a Russian habit to object to anyone who comes to your house. It isn’t much good objecting either. They’ll come anyhow. But never mind.” + 

“Extraordinary man,” said I. “What does he propose to do? Has he any plan?” + 

“He believes in the shares.” + 

“Have you ever tried to disillusion him?” + 

“I wouldn’t be so heartless,” said Fanny Ivanovna. + 

“And the girls?” + 

“For them money does not exist. They are sublimely indifferent to it.” + 

“And Nikolai Vasilievich?” + 

“Nikolai Vasilievich believes in the mines. Kniaz helps him to sustain that belief in return for Nikolai’s faith in the shares. The money Kniaz borrows from Nikolai Vasilievich he regards merely as an advance on his future dividends.” + 

“And does Nikolai Vasilievich regard it in that light?” I asked. + 

“He pretends he does. But he always says: ‘Never mind, if only the mines begin to pay all will be well, Pàvel Pàvlovich.’ ” + 

“And the ‘family,’ Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “I mean his wife and her family, his fiancée and her family, you and your family, his sisters and cousins, Kniaz and the others and their families⁠—do they believe in the mines?” + 

“More firmly than Nikolai. If, in fact, one fine day Nikolai turned a sceptic in matters mining, they would, I am sure, suspect him of shamming poverty to prevent them from getting their legitimate share.” + 

“Fanny Ivanovna,” I sighed, “good night.” + 

“I know it is amusing,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t real life, our life, my life. Then I would find it a trifle more amusing.” + 

I hailed a driver who slumbered in his sleigh on the corner of the Mohovaya and the Pantilemenskaya. As I drove home across the frozen river, on which the moon spread its yellow light, I thought of the Bursanovs’ muddled life, and then Chekhov’s Three Sisters dawned upon my memory. + 

I understood now why Nikolai Vasilievich sympathized so heartily with the people in the play. + 

VII + 

That evening I remember as an ever-deepening initiation into the very complicated affairs of the Bursanov family. It had been raining again, and the washed cobbles on either side of the street looked clean and shining as if newly polished. For once Nikolai Vasilievich was at home, but he had gone into his study, and, sitting at the piano, I could not help listening to what was said in the room. + 

“But Mama does want a divorce herself, Fanny Ivanovna,”⁠—from Nina. + 

“She didn’t before,” said Fanny Ivanovna. + 

“She does now,” said Nina. + 

“I wonder why?” + 

“I don’t really think, Fanny Ivanovna, that you have any right to know that.” + 

“She can’t have a divorce, anyhow,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “And I have asked you to make that clear to her.” + 

“You see,” said the girl of fifteen, “Mama has her own point of view. She doesn’t look at things from your point of view. Why should she?” + 

“Why should she⁠ ⁠…” repeated Fanny Ivanovna. And there was a long pause. + 

“I’ve done what you asked me,” said her ambassador, shrugging her pretty shoulders. + 

I stopped playing. + 

Nikolai Vasilievich came back and we sat down to dinner, and amongst us appeared Vera. I was to understand her presence a little afterwards. The atmosphere was tense. No doubt they had all been discussing the family tangle. No doubt Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna had been shouting and blackguarding each other as usual. But silence reigned for the moment. It was as if they had all been a little overstrained by this uncanny family burden. Then there was a ring at the bell. + 

It was merely the postman, and the maid brought in a letter for Fanny Ivanovna. So soon as she caught sight of the envelope she got flushed and wildly excited. + 

“It’s from Germany,” she cried, and something about her flush, about her manner, told us that the letter was a painful reminder of her painful circumstances, rather than a joy. She tore it open, and for some reason the room grew still: all seemed to watch her in perfect silence. And then she fluttered the letter and flushed again, and cried out to Nikolai Vasilievich in a voice of deep sorrow and reproach, as a tear welled up from her eye: + 

“Listen.⁠ ⁠… ‘Dear Fanny⁠ ⁠… and Nikolai!’ And Nikolai! And Nikolai!⁠ ⁠… Do you hear: And Nikolai!⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Nikolai‑i‑i⁠—” echoed with pathetic insistence. It was a sound that rent the heart. Tears flushed her eyes, sobs choked her throat. And for the moment, at all events, they forgot her clumsy stupidities; they felt only how irreparably they had wronged her. + 

And then, like the announcement of the next act, there was another ring. We heard an unfamiliar voice inquire in the hall if Nikolai Vasilievich was at home. Then the visitor’s card was brought in by the maid. + 

“No!” said Nikolai Vasilievich, rising very emphatically. “I draw the line there.” And he walked away to his study. + 

Fanny Ivanovna, her tragedy forgotten in the excitement of the visit, snatched at the card. + 

“Eisenstein!” she exclaimed. + 

“Och!” cried the three sisters in disgust. + 

And then, uninvited, unannounced, Eisenstein walked into the dining-room. + 

He was a tall, flabby man, with prominently Jewish features, and probably good-looking as Jews of that type go. + 

“Nina,” he said, looking round. “I want to see Nina. I missed seeing her in Moscow.” + 

“Yes?” Nina said, “I am here.” + 

Fanny Ivanovna looked at Eisenstein with scrutiny. I think she could feel no real enmity to this man because he had, after all, run away with Nikolai Vasilievich’s wife⁠—to all appearance a necessary preliminary to her own advent into his life. It was quite obvious that Eisenstein was not in the least seeking a tête-à-tête with Nina, but on the contrary, desired to exhibit his overflowing emotions to as large an audience as possible. + 

“Nina,” he said, halting in the middle of the room. And I remembered that Eisenstein had been an actor in his youth, a conjurer and ventriloquist. “Nina, she mustn’t leave me. You who have such influence over your mother must insist on that.” And sooner than anyone had been prepared for it his body quivered and he wept bitter tears. + 

“Moesei Moeseiech,” Nina said, “you mustn’t cry. That won’t do at all.” + 

“Monsieur Eisenstein,” intervened Fanny Ivanovna, rising dramatically, “this is my house and I won’t allow it.” + 

“You leave him alone, Fanny Ivanovna,” said Nina. + 

“I can’t bear it, Nina,” he said, coming up to her. “Why must she leave me? Haven’t I always been very kind to her, Nina? She says I speculate. But why do I speculate? For her, Nina.” + 

“For her!” cried Nina in bewilderment. + 

But he misunderstood her intonation. + 

“Why, of course!” + 

“With her money, Moesei Moeseiech?” + 

“My dear child, even if it is her money, what of it? I am still doing it for her, trying to get her more. My heart bleeds for her. She has so little money. Your father in his immoral pursuits of other women has forgotten his own wife.” + 

“Moesei Moeseiech, leave us.” + 

“But why, Nina?” + 

“You’re⁠ ⁠… hopeless.” + 

“Hopeless? And you say that, Nina. Haven’t I always been a good father to you when you came to live with us at Moscow? Haven’t I always been a good father to you? Now, have I not? Nina, Nina! You alone can stop her.” + 

“I’ve had too many fathers, Moesei Moeseiech, and I am not sure, if not too many mothers.” She paused. But when he opened his mouth to speak, she rose abruptly, turned on her heel and left the room. + 

Fanny Ivanovna rose a second time. + 

“Monsieur Eisenstein,” she said, “you have upset everybody. I must ask you to leave my house. I cannot have you exhibiting your domestic difficulties in this strange manner before our friends. We all have our sorrows, but we must keep them to ourselves. They are of no interest to others. Please leave us.” Again she must have thought of him as the man who had delivered Nikolai Vasilievich from his wife. She had a kind look for him, but she was a determined lady. + 

But for not being put out even by the most determined lady, give me a Russian Jew. Eisenstein looked round and saw Vera in the twilight, mute and hostile, perched up on the armchair in the corner. + 

“Vera! Vèrochka!” he cried. “You, my daughter⁠—” + 

“S‑s‑s‑sh!” Fanny Ivanovna hissed like a serpent. “You must not!” + 

“Must not, why? Why mustn’t I?” he said with that characteristically Jewish intonation. “Why should I be ashamed of my own daughter? You treat me as if I was an outsider and didn’t belong to the family. Why should my daughter be ashamed of me? She is my daughter, and you know it, Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

Whether this was a revelation to Vera, or only a confirmation of what she already knew or had perhaps suspected, it was hard to tell. She sat there on her perch, mute, aloof. + 

“Now,” said Fanny Ivanovna, coming up to him with indomitable determination, “you must certainly go.” And he left the room, sobbing. + 

“How horribly he cried,” said Sonia. I followed her out into the drawing-room. When I returned I perceived that Vera was wiping her tear-stained eyes and telling Fanny Ivanovna who had evidently been consoling her: + 

“And I had hated him so.⁠ ⁠… Oh, I still hate him so⁠ ⁠… so.⁠ ⁠…” She half sobbed again, wiping her tear-stained face with her little handkerchief. And I thought that I could now discover something Jewish about her pretty features. + 

And then there was another bell. It seemed that evening that it was one long succession of bells each carrying in its trail some fresh dramatic revelation, as though we had been privileged to witness some three-act soul-shattering melodrama. It was to be a night of bells and sobs. + 

VIII + 

This time there was a good deal of whispering between the maid on the one hand, and Sonia and Nina and Vera on the other. Then the three sisters vanished into the hall, and there was more whispering. It seemed that the heavy front door had been only half shut and that they had all gone out on to the landing. + 

About five minutes later they returned to Fanny Ivanovna, purring round her like three pretty kittens, till Fanny Ivanovna became suspicious. Then they grew still, and a mysterious look came on Nina’s face. + 

“Fanny Ivanovna,” she said. + 

“Yes?” + 

“Will you do something for me, Fanny Ivanovna?” + 

“I will. You know, Nina, that I will do anything for you, anything⁠—reasonable.” + 

“I’m afraid you will think it unreasonable, Fanny Ivanovna.” + 

“What is it?” said Fanny Ivanovna, for some reason looking round at me, as though I were a party to the conspiracy. + 

Nina looked at Sonia, and Sonia nodded. + 

“Mama is outside⁠—on the landing. She wants to see you. Will you see her? Please, Fanny Ivanovna, please.” + 

I understood now why Vera had come back to Petersburg. + 

“Please!” cried Sonia. + 

“Please!” echoed Vera. + 

Fanny Ivanovna rose very swiftly, as if by the swiftness of her movement she intended to intercept at the root that which she considered quite inadmissible. + 

“No!” she said, colouring highly. “No!” + 

“Fanny Ivanovna, please!” + 

“No, Nina, no. It’s out of the question.” + 

“Oh, Fanny Ivanovna, please!” they entreated her. “She is our mother, Fanny Ivanovna. We can’t have our mother waiting on the landing. After all, she’s our mother.” + 

“After all,” said Fanny Ivanovna, putting a terrible meaning of her own into these simple words, “after all I am the mistress of this house. True, I have been thrown into the mud and trampled on, told I am not wanted, done away with, about to be thrown into the street like a dog, but while I am here I am the mistress of this flat. After all, I am!” she cried out, almost in tears. + 

“Very well, then, I will never speak to you again,” said Nina. + 

The three sisters again vanished on the landing, and whispers were renewed, and Fanny Ivanovna resumed her needlework, her agile fingers, it seemed to me, moving quicker than was their custom. + 

“The lapdog⁠ ⁠…” she whispered, turning her face to me. “The German governess.⁠ ⁠… Andrei Andreiech, why should I? Why should I?⁠ ⁠…” + 

When at last the three sisters returned from the landing, such depressing silence descended upon the room that I thought I would do well to follow the example of the two Pàvel Pàvlovichi and go home. There was no one to see me out this time. As I reached the lower steps of the broad winding staircase I heard the faint sound of a woman weeping. Then I could see a dark silhouette between the large glass double-doors leading out into the dim street. It was also dim in the vestibule. As I came nearer I saw that it was Magda Nikolaevna Bursànova. + 

My first impulse was to dash upstairs for a glass of water. But the sobs died away at my approach. + 

It was still raining heavily. + 

I raised my hat. + 

“I have sent the porter for a cab,” she said, wiping her tears hurriedly. “I don’t know if he’ll get one now. It’s raining terribly.” + 

And as we waited, before I knew where I was, she too began her confession. + 

“You must have heard of me very often,” she said in her gentle, musical voice. She was a very gentle-mannered woman and in her youth she must have been curiously like Nina. She even had, I thought, the sidelong look. “I am sure,” she said, “I shouldn’t like to hear all that you have, no doubt, been told about me.” + 

Then she added: + 

“I know you. Nina has spoken of you. But there is one thing, Andrei⁠—I don’t know your⁠—” + 

“Andrei Andreiech.” + 

“There is one thing, Andrei Andreiech, that I want to know. Why, why can’t we put our heads together and decide something, help each other, instead of standing on our silly dignities? Heaven knows that we are in a muddle. Heaven knows that we have all of us sinned in our own small way, Andrei Andreiech. I came. I wanted to see her, to arrange things, to have it all out. I want to marry and leave them. I want Nikolai to give me a divorce. Then I will leave them alone. They can all do just as they please. I bear no one any malice. + 

“I came, and I was not admitted.⁠ ⁠… Into my own house, my own flat. It was my flat, Andrei Andreiech. I chose it. I bought the things and arranged them. There isn’t a single thing in here that wasn’t mine. When all is said and done, they are my children, Andrei Andreiech. And I have to wait outside like some low hawker⁠—a tatarin⁠—on the landing⁠ ⁠… not admitted.⁠ ⁠…” She was about to sob again, but then thought better of it and replaced her handkerchief. + 

“But, Andrei Andreiech, to send my own daughter to me to Moscow as a kind of emissary to ask me on no account to grant Nikolai Vasilievich a divorce, so that he should be unable to marry again⁠—I call that low, low.⁠ ⁠… All this time she has wanted a divorce⁠—reproached me, in fact, for standing in the way. What has it to do with me? If Nikolai really wanted a divorce, how could I have prevented him from getting it?” + 

“He would lose the children,” I explained. + 

“Why should he lose the children?” she asked. + 

“It’s the Russian law.” + 

Magda Nikolaevna laughed. “Are you a law student?” + 

“No.” + 

“I thought not.” + 

“Why?” + 

She laughed again. She had, I noticed, a very wicked laugh. + 

“Andrei Andreiech, you are very, very young, and believe everything you hear. If I am in the wrong and he is in the right, is it likely, I ask you, that under any conceivable law Nikolai should lose the children? It is the one who is in the wrong that loses the children. If Nikolai does not want a divorce because he does not want to lose the children, he knows that he is in the wrong.” + 

“So you think that is the reason he doesn’t want a divorce?” I said, and then added, “Of course I knew that.” + 

“Ah, but you didn’t know why he would lose the children by a divorce. If you are logical you must admit that it is so. It’s either so, or⁠—” + 

“Or?” + 

“Or Nikolai simply did not want a divorce.” + 

“Why?” + 

“Perhaps he didn’t want it.” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed wickedly. “You see, you can’t have it both ways. Either he didn’t want a divorce because he didn’t want to lose the children, in which case he obviously admits that he is in the wrong. Or,” she laughed wickedly, “he merely says so to Fanny Ivanovna, who is stupid and knows no better, because he does not want a divorce⁠ ⁠… so as not to marry her.” + 

“But he does want a divorce,” I said. + 

“Now,” said Magda Nikolaevna. “I suppose you know why he wants it now?” + 

I nodded, and she nodded in answer⁠—I thought rather significantly. I remembered that it had always been her wish to read for the Bar, but her own life had been too busy and complicated by legal proceedings to admit of the leisure necessary for the pursuit of her hobby. + 

“You know only half the story, young man,” she said. “You know, for instance, that I ran away with Eisenstein. But you don’t know why I ran away with Eisenstein.” + 

“I am sure I don’t want to,” I said, “if that is not being very rude.” + 

“Half-truths are more dangerous than lies,” said she. Here the porter returned with a cab. + 

She searched in her little bag for a coin, but I anticipated her. + 

“But you must,” she said. And dragging me after her under the raised hood of the cab and seated therein comfortably she was about to begin a long story, but suddenly checked herself. + 

“It’s rather absurd,” she said and then laughed softly, which for the moment made her seem to me again curiously like Nina, “that I should be telling you why I ran away with Eisenstein at a time when I ought to be telling you why I have just run away from him. + 

“I am going to marry,” she said. + 

“Yes?” + 

“An Austrian, Cecedek. Do you know him?” + 

“No.” + 

“Andrei Andreiech,” she said suddenly, as we sat under the dripping roof, bouncing softly over the cobblestones, “why don’t you go in for law? It’s so interesting.” + 

And glad of a change of subject I told her why I did not propose to read law. But as we turned on to the Liteiny and began ascending the convex bridge, she bent eagerly towards me and told me in great detail why she had run away with Eisenstein and why she was now running away from him. + 

IX + 

It was a day, I remember, of a peculiar warmth and fragrance, when you could feel that winter has become spring. I was strolling down the Nevski, and upon the wide, lighted splendour of this queen of streets I ran into Nikolai Vasilievich, with a pretty flapper on his arm. + 

“Andrei Andreiech!” + 

“Nikolai Vasilievich!” + 

And we shook hands warmly. + 

“May I introduce⁠—?” + 

And I was introduced. + 

I could hardly recognize him. His careworn look seemed to have deserted him in his dissipation, as if ashamed to accompany him thither. He seemed ten years younger in her presence. He was smarter, bore himself better, seemed actually taller, bigger.⁠ ⁠… Oh, was it at all the same Nikolai Vasilievich who wrangled so furiously with Fanny Ivanovna? This Nikolai Vasilievich was as happy as a schoolboy. But before we had walked ten yards Nikolai Vasilievich was already expatiating on his unhappy family affairs. “Well, well!” he sighed. He rather liked to sigh over his sins; indeed it appeared that his distressing family burdens formed the sole subject of his conversation with this engaging flapper. + 

“I keep telling Nikolai,” said Zina, “ ‘don’t marry me, don’t. It is superfluous. I love you so much that I am perfectly prepared to live with you⁠ ⁠… just to show you how I really love you.’ What is marriage? A piece of paper. It’s absurd. It means nothing. What do we care? What do I care? I have been reading Verbitskaya’s Springs of Happiness. She seems to agree with me.” + 

“No,” said her noble lover, “I wouldn’t think of taking advantage of your innocence. Verbitskaya is a fool. It would break your people’s hearts.” + 

“You are breaking your own people’s hearts, Nikolai Vasilievich,” I ventured. + 

“Exactly,” rejoined Nick. (He hardly looked old enough to warrant the dignity of “Nikolai Vasilievich.”) “I have broken enough hearts. I don’t want to break any more. I’ve had enough of this heartbreaking business, I can tell you. It is enough to break your own.” + 

“Your Oscar Wilde,” Zina turned to me, “said that hearts were made to be broken.” + 

“He also said,” I retorted, “that ‘We all kill the thing we love,’ and, in fact, a few other expensive things of that sort. But it is no reason, I assure you, why you should break anybody’s heart.” + 

“Exactly,” said Nicholas. “You think it very jolly to live together without being married, don’t you? But you just ask Fanny Ivanovna how she feels about it. No, my child, your Oscar Wilde is a fool.” + 

Quite automatically we turned into a cinema, the Parisiana in the Nevski, and witnessed the sort of stuff to which an uncomplaining public is still being treated every day and night all over the globe. When Nicholas left the box to get some chocolates Zina put her white-gloved hand on my arm. “I know,” she said, “Nikolai is being made to appear a blackguard by people who misunderstand his complex personality, but I am ready to give my life for him, Andrei Andreiech. Oh, you have no idea what a thoroughly good man he is when he is away from all those petty worries, those mean jealousies, those paltry domestic squabbles, those innumerable families all hanging round his neck, and he, alone, standing up against those legions, yes, legions of relatives and dependents and hangers-on. Oh, don’t laugh. I’m not excepting my own people. Oh, no! I am indeed ashamed, Andrei Andreiech, that it should be so. I had a dream last night. Shall I tell you what it was? It was Nikolai standing high upon a mountain peak, seeking to escape towards light and freedom and finding that he could not, because he was linked to the past. He tried to break the chains, but the past held him, clung to him, a monster with a thousand arms, like that picture in Gogol’s ‘Terrible Vengeance.’ He found the past too strong for him. + 

“Why can’t he break with the past? Why should the past always hold him? Why should he always bear the burden of these families? Andrei Andreiech! he hasn’t lived yet. For was that life? I want to help him, make him happy, rid him of these petty worries, these mean intrigues. I want to help, to help, to help. But how can I help?⁠ ⁠… I thought, all night I thought out solutions, and then I came to what seemed to me the one reasonable, the only just solution. I proposed that we should commit suicide together. But, Andrei Andreiech, he doesn’t seem to be very keen on it. Poor boy, with all these ugly worries he is becoming horribly materialistic.” + 

They took me that evening to see Zina’s people. They lived across the river, over on the Petersburg side, a very large family in a small flat. There were innumerable aunts and uncles, sisters-in-law, second cousins, and suchlike relatives, and of course a collection of giggling flappers practising the piano; two ancient grandfathers⁠—the oldest thing in veterans⁠—who had outlived their welcome, whose deaths, in fact, were looked forward to with undisguised impatience and freely discussed at meals; and a middle-aged doctor, his own health no better for his profession, with only a poor practice to support that swarm; and Nikolai Vasilievich, the mine-owner, standing behind them all like a benediction. + 

In addition there was Uncle Kostia, who, from what I could see, was living on the resources of his younger brother, Zina’s father. Uncle Kostia was a writer. Yet, though he had attained middle age, Uncle Kostia had never published a line. His two departments were history and philosophy, and everyone in the family had the greatest respect for Uncle Kostia and thought him very clever. Later I had occasion to observe Uncle Kostia at closer range. He would wake up extremely late and would then sit for hours on his bed, thinking. He did not communicate his thoughts to anybody else; but all the members of the family took it for granted that Uncle Kostia was very clever. Uncle Kostia rarely dressed and rarely washed. When at length he parted with his bed he would stroll about through all the rooms in his dressing-gown, and think. No one spoke to him because, for one thing, all were frightened of displaying their ignorance in conversation, for Uncle Kostia was very clever, and also, I think, because they were loth to interrupt the flow of Uncle Kostia’s thoughts. At length he would settle down at a writing-table near the window in his brother’s study, and then for a long time Uncle Kostia would rub his eyes. In a languid manner he would dip his pen into ink and his hand would proceed to sketch diagrams and flowers on the margin of his foolscap, and Uncle Kostia would stare long at the window. Perhaps a buzzing fly endeavouring to find an exit would arrest his flow of thoughts, or would promote them⁠—who knows?⁠—but Uncle Kostia would grow very still: and one by one the members of the family would leave the room on tiptoe, and the last one out would shut the door behind him noiselessly. For Uncle Kostia was writing. What he wrote no one knew; he had never breathed a word about it to anyone. All we knew was that Uncle Kostia was very clever. From what I could make out no one had ever seen a line of his writing. But that he thought a great deal there was no question. His life was spent in contemplation. But what it was he contemplated, equally no one knew. + 

Such was the family to which Nikolai Vasilievich extended his protectorate. + 

“He is such a really good man,” confided Zina’s mother, a grey-haired, God-fearing old lady. “And to be pursued by those two wicked women both bent on making his life miserable, these cold and heartless daughters who laugh at him⁠ ⁠… their own father! Andrei Andreiech, our lives are muddled up enough, God forgive us, and none of us knows where he is or how he stands or what he is about; but there are things that in our hearts we know we mustn’t do. And for his own daughters to go spying on their father, God forgive me, is the very limit. Just think of it, Andrei Andreiech, just think of it! Last Sunday, Zina tells me, she was about to meet Nikolai in the Summer Garden, and⁠—can you imagine it?⁠—his two daughters⁠—I forget which two⁠—with that Baron of theirs, followed them, pursued them wherever they went, giggling all the while as loud as they could, giggling.⁠ ⁠… Nikolai and Zina were finally compelled to board a tramcar to escape their pursuit. He wept when he came to me, Andrei Andreiech, and I have never seen Nikolai weep before. He said he hadn’t thought it possible of his daughters, Andrei Andreiech.” + 

After a somewhat sketchy dinner we all decided to go to the Saburov Theatre to see a new play. We proceeded accordingly in seven cabs and settled down in five boxes. + 

About halfway through the first act I perceived Nikolai give a start and then grow pale. I followed his gaze and then looked straight before me. In a box almost opposite our own sat Fanny Ivanovna, Sonia, Nina, Vera, Kniaz, and Baron Wunderhausen. For some absurd reason I, too, felt guilty and uncomfortable to the last degree, almost as if I had been caught red-handed in some disreputable act. Whether the silly play bored them and they were, like us, disgusted with the characteristic utterances of some well-to-do ex-student in the play holding forth on the disillusionment of life, or whether the sight of the prodigal Nicholas in his congenial surroundings was too much for Fanny Ivanovna; but they all left the theatre before the curtain fell on act two. + 

Nikolai Vasilievich seemed unusually morose as we drove home that night through the deserted streets of Petersburg. “The most perplexing thing about it all, Andrei Andreiech,” said he, “is⁠ ⁠… well, it’s like that fable of Krilov.” And he quoted the fable with that curious pride that Russians usually take in Krilov’s un-Russian (I think British) common sense, as he instanced the case of the load pulled jointly by the swan, the crab and the pike in their several characteristically individual directions with the distressing result⁠—the moral!⁠—that the load, the fabulist tells us, is today exactly where it was before they had started on their expedition. The paradox of Nikolai’s position was that he had fled from his many family responsibilities to this engaging flapper precisely because of the intolerable burden of so many responsibilities⁠—and had incurred additional ones. + 

X + 

Now when I ask myself how I could have so hopelessly misgauged the situation, I find it difficult to give a clear account of it. I had wanted to help, to be a friend to all those helpless, charming and kindhearted people.⁠ ⁠… Anyhow, it was my first experience of “intervention.” + 

That night I lay awake in bed, planning how I could straighten out the tangle. Was it not, I pondered, up to me, their mutual confidant, to see that these childish, fascinating people did not destroy each other’s lives in their muddle-headedness and inertia? The older people had all blundered. Nina had been on a mission to Moscow, and Nina had failed. They would trust me, I said, to act for the best. And was it not a worthy task to save these helpless creatures from so much misery and anguish? Well, of course it was. Suddenly I felt violently enthusiastic. I felt so violently enthusiastic that I jumped out of bed. I paced the floor that midnight hour, thinking with a Napoleonic concentration. + 

I felt, as my thoughts ran ahead of me, that the dramatis personae of this human drama was much too long to enable me to assign successfully to each character the part he was to play in his colleagues’ lives. I switched on the light over my writing-table and began to write. I wrote down their names in two columns. Then I perceived that the two columns did not serve my purpose; so I drew arrows and circles round the names and endeavoured to arrange them in sets and groups according to my own ideas as to how they should be mated. I began by mating Nina with myself. This was easy enough: it was obvious. I consented to make Baron Wunderhausen a present of Sonia. That was done. Obviously Kniaz would have to go on living on Nikolai Vasilievich till some employment could be found for him. I should have to go into this question later; examine the shares, see what possibilities they had of ever going up, and so on. Now so much was settled. Of course, Magda Nikolaevna must have her divorce. No useful purpose would be served by putting spokes in her wheel, by hindering her in her praiseworthy intention to marry Cecedek, that Austrian fellow, who was extraordinarily wealthy. They wanted all the money they could get. But the condition of this concession should be that Cecedek must agree to share the brunt of supporting the multitudinous families, dependents and hangers-on with Nikolai Vasilievich until such time at least as something more definite could be known about the mines. It might be advisable to sell the mines and repurchase the mortgaged house in the Mohovaya. But that was a detail that could be settled later. I felt that I was getting on marvellously. + 

Now that Nicholas and Magda were divorced (I could not help calling them by their diminutives, for I felt so much older and wiser than they, having taken them in hand), Nicholas must be prevailed upon to marry Fanny. This step would do much to relieve the tension and prevent bad blood between the two. It would secure Fanny’s prestige in her own eyes and would consolidate her position in regard to her people in Germany. Now, Fanny having been granted this very liberal concession, which after all was nothing short of her one real great ambition in life, she on her part should not be allowed to impede Zina’s passionate desire to live with Nicholas: a gratification, as a matter of fact, demanded by the overpowering love of two human beings; and Zina, who had always been prepared for anything from suicide upward, would not begrudge Fanny the formal and somewhat hollow superiority of wedlock; while Zina’s people, in the face of the considerable financial assistance that they would continue to receive at the hands of Nikolai, and Magda’s future husband would find that their objection carried little moral weight. There remained Vera. She should stay, provisionally, with Fanny Ivanovna and Nicholas, the latter spending as much time in Fanny’s household as might be deemed fit or practicable. Vera hated her father, and Eisenstein, poor as he was, would not be likely to demand his daughter. Now Eisenstein should not be left without a job. He must leave the Stock Exchange. That was absolutely necessary. His dental qualifications should be looked into; and he might⁠—but that at any rate was not of the first importance⁠—be made assistant to Zina’s father (though unfortunately the latter’s practice was all too small already). How to enlarge the practice could be settled afterwards. Uncle Kostia’s manuscripts would have to be examined, and possibly some of his deeper thoughts might be published with advantage. + 

Now, having made these few preliminary arrangements, it was imperative to ensure the financial working of this new combine. Well, expenses must be cut down all round. Nicholas and Cecedek should not be taxed too heavily, for if they went bankrupt then the whole new structure would collapse like a pack of cards. I would set myself, at an early date, to examine very carefully the requirements of the various families and hangers-on. + 

First, there was Fanny’s family in Germany. Now Fanny, once definitely married to Nicholas, should have more moral courage to face the situation. Those spendthrift brothers in the Guards must be told to chuck the army and enter a commercial life. Militarism was no honourable profession. The sisters should marry. For all I knew they might long ago have married men with considerable means, but have kept it quiet from their sister, so as to continue to draw allowances from Nicky. + 

Now Zina’s family came next. The number of its mere hangers-on was preposterous. Of course, those two ancient grandfathers were already tottering and their end was nigh. The flappers who strummed on the piano were growing up. A few of them might be conveniently married off to suitable and financially independent young men. Zina’s father, assisted by Eisenstein, might make a better job of his doctoring; though to begin with, he should receive medical treatment himself. + 

Then.⁠ ⁠… + 

I thought. There was no “then.” I had disposed of them all. There were indeed fewer cases than I had expected. I had disposed of them as I had gone along. Of course, Baron Wunderhausen, after he had married Sonia, was not really disposed of, perhaps on the contrary. But this was an isolated case into which I need not enter, at any rate just yet. + 

Perhaps I was young and absurd. But was I absurd? What was wrong with my proposition? What thoughtful mind would accuse me of absurdity if it only cared to look at the thing squarely? The people were helpless⁠—children. + 

Of course, I would have to do it all tactfully, slowly, discreetly. But really, was it not a worthy mission? To arbitrate; to settle things. I felt as President Wilson must have felt years later when he was laying down the principles of a future League of Nations.⁠ ⁠… + 

I stood before Nina the following day, bursting with the desire to lay it all down before her all in a heap, as it were, but holding myself back with an effort, conscious of the danger of precipitate action. “Let us sit down, Nina,” I said, fingering a large folded sheet of paper. I held another even larger sheet, rolled up under my arm. “You see, Nina, we young people must help the old people out of their muddles. They are obviously unfit to help themselves.” + 

“I have done what I could,” she answered. “I have been down to Moscow, but of course I admit I only acted as Fanny Ivanovna’s envoy.” + 

“Exactly. You have failed?” + 

“I didn’t enjoy plenipotentiary powers, as they call it.” + 

“Quite so. Now listen to me, Nina.” And I proceeded to lay before her the principles on which I said I was going to reshape their lives: each one would have to give up something for the benefit of the whole, and each one would similarly receive a compensation of some kind in that future life of theirs: in short, as I had mapped it out the night before. I now unfolded my chart and diagram, and she bent over them and our heads nearly touched as we went into this complicated question very thoroughly and seriously indeed. I could barely suppress the look of pride that every now and then would steal over my face. I explained and propounded with something of the insolence of a creator, an artist and a prophet, and she listened to me, all absorbed in my scheme, following the diagram, I thought, with marvellous intuition. + 

“Ah, yes. I understand,” she murmured. “That’s good. This couldn’t be better. Ah, there you kill two birds with one stone⁠ ⁠… oh, three birds!” + 

Then Nina rose. + 

“Well, what d’you think of it!” I said with undisguised triumph in my look. And looking at me with a quaint and sudden seriousness that astonished me immensely (to the detriment of my triumphant look), she answered: + 

“All this is very well, but⁠ ⁠… pray what business is it all of yours!” + 

I expostulated. I told her how eager I had been to help. But she laughed. She made fun of me. She had been making fun of me all the time, even while we were bending with such a serious mien over the chart and diagram. And I perceived that her serious look, her interest in the scheme a while ago, was all deliberately put on to commit me more deeply to the exposition of my scheme in order to make more fun of me afterwards. + 

She laughed. She burst with merriment. + 

“Nina!” + 

She laughed still more. She was convulsed; she could barely speak, and the tears came into her eyes. + 

Then she opened the door into the corridor and called out: + 

“Sonia! Sonia!” + 

“Nina!” I cried in remonstrance. + 

“Vera!” she called. “Papa! Fanny Ivanovna! Kniaz! Pavl Pàvlch!” + 

I had to realize, to my deep shame and anguish, that they were all at home, as they entered the room one by one. My face grew crimson. + 

Nina held out the chart and the diagram at arm’s length and explained, it seemed to me wilfully misrepresenting the whole thing, mating individuals in a preposterous fashion, so that Sonia would cry out: + 

“But Cecedek does not want to marry Fanny Ivanovna!” + 

And Fanny Ivanovna, colouring highly, would exclaim: + 

“What⁠—what’s that?” + 

“They more or less belong to the same race,” said Nina. “Is that the idea?” She turned to me with assumed innocence. + 

And Sonia cried again, “But Zina doesn’t want to live with the dentist-Jew!” + 

“I take it that she’ll have to. You can’t have it all ways, you know, in such a complicated scheme.” And then with a side look at me, “Am I right?” + 

“And why should Cecedek subsidize anybody?” + 

“Why?” said Nina, with a look at me. + 

“You’re making a farce of it!” I cried in utter desperation. + 

“It’s you who are making a farce of it,” Nina cried. “Papa, he is laughing at us!” + 

Fanny Ivanovna walked out of the room in what seemed to me a defiant manner. I seemed to hear a solitary “Hm!” + 

Nikolai Vasilievich, with the diagram in his hand and trailing the chart in a degrading manner along the floor, so that I burnt with shame for my neat and able work of the night before, led me aside and said in a very earnest tone of voice, addressing me as “Young man”: + 

“You know we are always glad to have you here, but to make fun of our family difficulties⁠ ⁠… to make fun⁠ ⁠… to make fun⁠ ⁠…” (he was getting a little heated) “of our family difficulties into which you, as our guest, were unavoidably initiated⁠ ⁠… is, I consider, tactless and indelicate.” And he tore up first the chart and then the diagram into a thousand fragments and flung them into the great big stove in the corner of the room. + 

“Nikolai Vasilievich!” I cried. “I assure you I only wanted to help.” + 

“Oh, look here,” said Nikolai Vasilievich impatiently, turning on his heels, “please stop these unbecoming jokes. They’re not even funny.” And they all left me. + 

But I went into the corridor and caught Nina by the hand and dragged her back into the room and did what is known as “giving her a bit of my mind.” I was so wild that I did not know how to begin. “Very well,” I cried at last, “I shall leave you all to stew in your own juice!” + 

“Very well,” she said. + 

“And I shall never come again.” + 

“Very well,” she said. + 

And it seemed that to whatever I said in my excitement, she answered coldly and indifferently as she sat there, looking at me coldly and indifferently, “Very well,” until it irritated me beyond endurance, and I cried: + 

“Very well! But do you silly people realize how utterly laughable you all are? Oh, my God! Can’t you see yourselves!” (I could not see myself.) “But can’t you see that you have been lifted out of Chekhov?⁠ ⁠… Oh, what would he not have given to see you and use you!” + 

“He’s dead,” she said. + 

“But there are others. Oh, no, my dear, you are not safe. What’s there to prevent some mean, unscrupulous scribbler who cares less for people than for his art, from writing you up? One doesn’t often come across such incomparable material. I feel I am almost capable of doing it myself. I’ll write up such a Three Sisters as will knock old Chekhov into a cocked hat. It’s so easy. You just set down the facts. The only handicap that I’m aware of is that you are all of you so preposterously improbable that no one would believe that you were real. This is, in fact, the trouble with most modern literature. No fiction is good fiction unless it is true to life, and yet no life is worth relating unless it be a life out of the ordinary; and then it seems improbable like fiction.” + 

She did not answer, but by her face I could see that now she was angry. + 

“I wanted to help you, and this is the thanks I get.⁠ ⁠…” + 

And feeling that I must make my exit dramatically conclusive, I said, “And now I’m going”; and then on reflection added, “and I shall never come again.” + 

I lingered for a moment, to give her an opportunity of stopping me. But she did not avail herself of it; and so I left the room. Once or twice I stopped in the corridor to listen if she was coming, when I intended to continue my dramatic exit. But she did not come. + 

It did not matter, anyhow, I thought, as I was putting on my coat (slowly while no one watched me, but if she had appeared I would have hastened my withdrawal). I knew that she would watch me from the window, and at the door there stood that beautifully proportioned nag “Professor Metchnikoff,” waiting for me. My heart leapt within my breast at the agreeable thought of how I would step into the victoria and drive off swiftly with a dramatic conclusiveness. + 

I dashed down the staircase. I stood beneath the porch. But where in heaven was “Professor Metchnikoff”? + 

And I beheld where he was. + 

I had often seen our wily Tartar coachman Alexei shake his little head, as I lavished praise on the shape of “Professor Metchnikoff,” and heard him say that the animal was “unreliable.” I had never believed him. Well, did I now? + 

I beheld a curious spectacle. The little wily Alexei, big-bottomed in accordance with the best traditions, sat helpless on his soft broad box-seat and flapped his reins in a hopeless fashion, producing with his lips an entreating but ineffectual sound, as Professor Metchnikoff, composed and dignified, retreated backward toward the tramlines at the crossroads. + 

I ran to his rescue, and taking Professor Metchnikoff by the bridle I led him forward. I looked up as I did so. Thank God, Nina was not at the window. I then left Professor Metchnikoff, who stood quite quiet, and stepped into the carriage. No sooner had I done so than Professor Metchnikoff resumed his steady and dignified retreat. The coachman, strapped tightly in his cushioned clothes, was helpless as a doll. I glanced at the house, and lo! on the balcony above Nina’s window there stood Sonia, Nina, Vera, Kniaz, Fanny Ivanovna, Nikolai Vasilievich, and Baron Wunderhausen, looking down at me and laughing. + 

I glanced up at them and crimsoned, and then in a fury I leant forward and hit Professor Metchnikoff across the back with my walking-stick. Professor Metchnikoff halted for a moment, as if considering what to do, and then decided in favour of a retirement. And, seated in the open carriage, I retreated steadily to the accompaniment of laughter from the balcony. Despite the coachman’s frantic efforts to the contrary, I vanished backward very slowly out of sight⁠—when suddenly the fiendish nag jerked forward and trotted home as though nothing had ever been the matter. + 

XI + 

How often then I dreamed of those white nights of Petersburg, those white mysterious sleepless nights.⁠ ⁠… + 

Fanny Ivanovna was alone, and we sat together on the open balcony and talked about her troubles in the white night. We sat listless. We felt a strange tremor. We waited for the night, for twilight; but they were not. Heaven had come down over earth. It was one splash of humid, milk-white, pellucid mist. We could see everything before us clearly to the minutest detail. The street with its tall buildings tried hard to fall asleep, but could not: it, too, suffered from insomnia; and the black windowpanes of the sleepless houses were like tired eyes of great monsters. Now and then a man would pass beneath us, his steps resounding sharp and loud upon the pavement. Curiously, he had no shadow. Then he was gone, and there was not a soul in the street. + 

A horrible dream crept over us.⁠ ⁠… And to rouse ourselves from its increasing domination, we talked. Talking with her, as ever, meant listening. “I have passed the tragic stage, Andrei Andreiech,” she said. “Now I don’t care. I am almost accustomed to my position.” + 

I tried to put a word in. “I suggest, Fanny Ivanovna, that you all break loose, disentangle yourselves from one another, and then begin at the beginning.” + 

But she talked on into the night, heedless of my remarks. + 

“I am only waiting till Nikolai Vasilievich can pay me off; then I shall return to Germany. I am indeed quite optimistic. I am now at the laughing stage. You see, our life can hardly be called a comedy, for if it were produced on the stage no one would believe it was real. No real people could be so silly. It is a farce, Andrei Andreiech. You were right when you made a farce of it then with your chart and diagram and things, do you remember?” + 

“I honestly wished to help,” I remonstrated. + 

But she laughed appreciatively, as if to say that she had noted with approval my attempt to pull her leg. + 

She talked in fragments. “Yes, Andrei Andreiech, you will find⁠—it is indeed a curious thing⁠—that girls who are brought up in such unnatural surroundings as you would think scarcely contributive to the development of the moral virtues, are often the very girls who have the strictest possible conception of morality. What they have seen around them has only had the effect of putting them upon their guard. They are morally inoculated. I haven’t the slightest hesitation in allowing them to read any books they like. They can read Verbitskaya and Artsibashev and Lappo-Danilevskaya and the rest of them if they please. You in England are fortunate indeed. You have serious, moral writers who think of the good of the race and really teach you something positive, constructive and worth while. You have Byron and Oscar Wilde.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Like so many other people in Russia, Fanny Ivanovna believed that England has three great outstanding writers: Byron, Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde. + 

“Ach! Andrei Andreiech! I have had a terrible row with Cecedek. It’s all that Baron Wunderhausen. He made love to Nina.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I remember that at these words I sat up in my chair. + 

“… in French, Andrei Andreiech!” + 

“ ‘I hate talking of such things in Russian,’ he said, thinking he would impress her. But she wouldn’t listen.” + 

My body relaxed in the chair. + 

“If there’s one thing that Nina simply cannot stand, it is being made love to⁠ ⁠… above all in French! He came to me after that and said: + 

“ ‘Fanny Ivanovna, it came over me like that⁠ ⁠… overnight!⁠ ⁠…’ + 

“ ‘Oh, then it will go out overnight,’ I said. ‘Pàvel Pàvlovich, please don’t talk of it to me.’ But he turned to me and said in a secretive whisper: + 

“ ‘Fanny Ivanovna, if you will help me to win her heart I will be your greatest friend on earth.’ And then, after the manner of a doctor, ‘And now tell me all your troubles. We’ll see what we can do.’ + 

“ ‘Pàvel Pàvlovich,’ I cried, ‘Sie sind verrückt. My troubles are my private affairs and concern no one but myself. Good night.’ + 

“So he complained of me to Magda Nikolaevna; and, would you believe it! she sent Cecedek to tell me that she will not allow me to hamper her daughters’ happiness, that she doesn’t want them to die old maids, like me⁠—me! if you please⁠—that I am unfit to look after them, and so on, and so on. Andrei Andreiech, they are sixteen, fifteen and fourteen! But I can guess the true cause. She wants to marry Cecedek and she naturally doesn’t want her daughters to live with her as this would make her appear her own age, to say nothing of the danger of his falling in love with one of them. They are so pretty.” + 

“But why need they live with her at all?” + 

“Ah,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “She said emphatically that she will not have them live with their father if that’s the way he carries on. She is afraid it will corrupt their morals.” + 

“But doesn’t she continue to draw an allowance from Nikolai Vasilievich?” + 

“She does. But ever since she met Cecedek, who is preposterously rich, she has lost her faith in Nikolai Vasilievich’s mines⁠—indeed says so openly. This distresses Nikolai very much indeed. I don’t know why it is that he attaches such importance to her faith in the mines, unless it is because he acquired those goldmines in her time. Of course, she is anxious for her daughters’ future. She feels that their chances are getting spoiled with her own life and that of Nikolai Vasilievich becoming muddled up. I don’t doubt that she loves her daughters and means well. + 

“So now our Baron is again after Sonia, but really after the mines, if you ask me.” She laughed a little, privately, to herself, and then said, “I wish he’d wash his neck.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Soon, very soon, Andrei Andreiech, I shall leave them. It will be hard⁠ ⁠… intolerably hard. But my mind is made up. I am not such a fool, Andrei Andreiech, as not to know when my time is up. And then I have a little pride still left in me. It is now merely a matter of the mines. I am ready. I have begun to pack. I have written home to Germany. But I couldn’t post the letter. Not yet.⁠ ⁠… Andrei Andreiech: what have I to live for? Will you tell me: what?⁠ ⁠… Only when I am gone from them perhaps the children will say: ‘She has been good to us. She has loved us like a mother’⁠ ⁠… and then, perhaps, I shall not have lived in vain.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I went home by the silent river. The Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul was like a weary watchman. The Admiralty Needle seemed lost in the white mist. I sat down on a stone seat of the embankment and rested. The broad milky river was so mysteriously calm in the granite frame of the quays. I sat and wondered; then my thoughts began to drift; and I was lost in this half light, this half dream, this unreal half existence.⁠ ⁠… + 