I
It was autumn. Two carriages were driving at a rapid trot along the high road. In the foremost sat two women. One was a lady, thin and pale; the other, her maid, was plump, with shining, red cheeks. Her short, coarse hair stood out under her faded hat; her red hand, in a torn glove, kept hurriedly putting it tidy; her high bosom, covered with a tapestry kerchief, was eloquent of health; her quick, black eyes watched out of the window the fields flying past, then glanced timidly at her mistress, then shifted uneasily about the corners of the carriage. Just before the maid’s nose swung the lady’s hat, hanging from the rack above; on her lap lay a puppy. Her feet were kept from the floor by the boxes that stood on the carriage floor, and could be faintly heard knocking on it through the shaking of the springs and the rattling of the windows.
With her hands clapped on her knees and her eyes closed, the lady swayed feebly to and fro on the cushions that had been put at her back, and with a slight frown she coughed inwardly. On her head she wore a white nightcap, and a light blue neckkerchief was tied on her soft, white neck. A straight parting, retreating under her cap, divided her fair, pomaded, exceedingly flat hair, and there was a dry, deathlike look about the whiteness of the skin of this wide parting. The faded, yellowish skin hung loose on her delicate and beautiful features, and was flushed on her cheeks. Her lips were dry and restless, her eyelashes were thin and straight, and her cloth travelling cloak fell in straight folds over her sunken bosom. Though her eyes were closed, the lady’s face expressed fatigue, irritation, and habitual suffering. A footman was dozing on the box, one elbow on the rail of the seat. The driver, hired from the posting-station, shouted briskly to the four sturdy, sweating horses, and looked round now and then at the other driver, who called to him from behind on the coach. Smoothly and rapidly the wheels made their broad, parallel tracks along the chalky mud of the road. The sky was grey and cold; a damp mist was falling over the fields and the road. The carriage was close, and smelt of eau de cologne and dust. The sick woman stretched her head back and opened her eyes. Her large, handsome, dark eyes were very bright.
“Again,” she said, her beautiful, thin hand nervously thrusting away a corner of the maid’s cloak which was just brushing against her knees, and her mouth twitched painfully. Matryosha gathered up her cloak in both hands, lifted it up on her lap, and edged further away. Her blooming face flushed bright red. The sick woman’s fine dark eyes kept eager watch on the servant’s actions. She leaned with both hands on the seat and tried to raise herself, so as to be sitting higher up; but her strength failed her. Her mouth twitched and her whole face worked with an expression of helpless, wrathful irony. “You might at least help me! … Ah, you needn’t! I can do it myself, only be so good as not to lay your bundles, bags, or whatever they are behind me, please! You had better not touch me if you’re so awkward!”
The lady shut her eyes, and rapidly raising her eyelids again glanced at the maid. Matryosha was staring at her and biting her red underlip. A heavy sigh rose from the sick woman’s chest, but changed to a cough before it was uttered. She turned away, frowning, and clutched at her chest with both hands. When the cough was over, she closed her eyes again and sat without stirring. The carriage and the coach drove into a village. Matryosha put her stout arm out from under her kerchief and crossed herself.
“What is it?” asked the lady.
“A station, madam.”
“What do you cross yourself for, I ask?”
“The church, madam.”
The sick woman turned towards the window, and began slowly crossing herself, her great eyes fastened on the big village church as the carriage drove by it.
The two carriages stopped together at the station. The sick woman’s husband and the doctor got out of the other carriage and came up to her.
“How do you feel?” asked the doctor, taking her pulse.
“Well, how are you, my dear—not tired?” asked her husband, in French. “Wouldn’t you like to get out?”
Matryosha, gathering up her bundles, squeezed into a corner so as not to be in their way as they talked.
“Just the same,” answered the lady. “I won’t get out.”
Her husband stayed a little while beside the carriage, then went into the posting-station. Matryosha got out of the carriage and ran on tiptoe through the mud to the gates.
“If I am ill, it’s no reason you shouldn’t have your lunch,” the invalid said with a faint smile to the doctor, who was standing at the carriage window.
“None of them care anything about me,” she added to herself, as soon as the doctor had moved with sedate step away from her and run at a trot up the steps of the station-house. “They are all right, so they don’t care. O my God!”
“Well, Edward Ivanovitch,” said her husband, meeting the doctor and rubbing his hands, with a cheery smile. “I’ve ordered the case of wine to be brought in; what do you say to a bottle?”
“I shouldn’t say no,” answered the doctor.
“Well, how is she?” the husband asked with a sigh, lifting his eyebrows and dropping his voice.
“I have told you she can’t possibly get as far as Italy; if she reaches Moscow it will be a wonder, especially in this weather.”
“What are we to do! O my God! my God!” The husband put his hand over his eyes. “Put it here,” he added to the servant who brought in the case of wine.
“You should have kept her at home,” the doctor answered, shrugging his shoulders.
“But tell me, what could I do?” protested the husband. “I did everything I could, you know, to keep her. I talked to her of our pecuniary position, and of the children whom we should have to leave behind, and of my business—she won’t hear a word of anything. She makes plans for her life abroad as though she were strong and well. And to tell her of her position would be her deathblow.”
“But she has that already, you ought to know it, Vassily Dmitritch. A person can’t live with no lungs, and the lungs can’t grow again. It’s distressing and terrible, but what’s one to do? My duty and yours is simply to see that her end should be as easy as possible. It’s the priest who is needed now.”
“O my God! But conceive my position, having to speak to her of the last sacrament. Come what will, I can’t tell her. You know how good she is.”
“You must try, all the same, to persuade her to wait till the roads are frozen,” said the doctor, shaking his head significantly, “or we may have a disaster on the road.”
“Aksyusha, hey, Aksyusha!” shrieked the overseer’s daughter, flinging a jacket over her head, and stamping on the dirty back steps of the station; “let’s go and have a look at the lady from Shirkin; they say she’s being taken abroad for her lungs. I’ve never seen what people look like in consumption.”
Aksyusha darted out at the doorway, and arm in arm they ran by the gate. Slackening their pace, they walked by the carriage, and peeped in at the lowered window. The sick woman turned her head towards them, but noticing their curiosity, she frowned and turned away.
“My gra-a-cious!” said the overseer’s daughter, turning her head away quickly. “Such a wonderful beauty as she was, and what does she look like now. Enough to frighten one, really. Did you see, did you see, Aksyusha?”
“Yes, she is thin!” Aksyusha assented. “Let’s go by and get another look at her, as though we were going to the well. She turned away before I’d seen her properly. I am sorry for her, Masha!”
“And the mud’s awful!” answered Masha, and both ran back to the gate.
“I’ve grown frightful, it seems,” thought the invalid. “Ah, to make haste, to make haste to get abroad, then I shall soon be better!”
“Well, how are you, my dear?” said her husband, still munching as he came up to the carriage.
“Always that invariable question,” thought the sick woman, “and he goes on eating too!”
“Just the same,” she muttered through her teeth.
“Do you know, my dear, I’m afraid the journey will be bad for you in this weather, and Edward Ivanovitch says so too. Hadn’t we better turn back?”
She kept wrathfully silent.
“The weather will change, and the roads perhaps will be hard, and that would make it better for you; and then we would all go together.”
“Excuse me. If I hadn’t listened to you long ago, I should be in Berlin by now and should be quite well.”
“That couldn’t be helped, my angel; it was out of the question, as you know! But now, if you would wait for a month, you would be ever so much better. I should have settled my business, and we could take the children.”
“The children are quite well, and I am not.”
“But consider, my dear, with this weather if you get worse on the road … there, at any rate, you’re at home.”
“And if I am at home? … To die at home?” the sick woman answered hotly. But the word die evidently terrified her; she bent an imploring, questioning look upon her husband. He dropped his eyes and did not speak. The sick woman’s mouth puckered all at once like a child’s, and tears dropped from her eyes. Her husband buried his face in his handkerchief, and walked away from the carriage without speaking.
“No, I am going,” said the sick woman, lifting her eyes towards heaven, and she fell to whispering disconnected words. “My God, what for?” she said, and the tears flowed more freely. For a long while she prayed fervently, but there was still the same pain and tightness on her chest. It was still as grey and cheerless in the sky, and in the fields, and along the road; and the same autumn mist, neither thicker nor clearer, hung over the mud of the road, the roofs of the huts, the carriage and the sheepskins of the drivers, who were greasing and harnessing a carriage, chatting together in their vigorous, merry voices.