The Man Who Was Afraid Part 30

Mayakin smacked his lips and sang out in a mournful voice:

"What a blockhead you are! What a fool!" and suddenly grown angry, he spat out: "Shame upon you! All sorts of brutes drank out of the pot, nothing but the dregs remained, and now a fool has made a G.o.d unto himself of this dirty pot. Devil! You just go up to her and tell her plainly: 'I want to be your lover. I am a young man, don't charge me much for it.'"

"G.o.dfather!" said Foma, sternly, in a threatening voice, "I cannot bear to hear such words. If it were someone else."

"But who except myself would caution you? Good G.o.d!" Mayakin cried out, clasping his hands. "So she has led you by the nose all winter long!

What a nose! What a beast she is!"

The old man was agitated; in his voice rang vexation, anger, even tears Foma had never before seen him in such a state, and looking at him, he was involuntarily silent.

"She will ruin you! Oh Lord! The Babylonian prost.i.tute!"

Mayakin's eyes were blinking, his lips were trembling, and in rude, cynical words he began to speak of Medinskaya, irritated, with a wrathful jar in his voice.

Foma felt that the old man spoke the truth. He now began to breathe with difficulty and he felt that his mouth had a dry, bitter taste.

"Very well, father, enough," he begged softly and sadly, turning aside from Mayakin.

"Eh, you ought to get married as soon as possible!" exclaimed the old man with alarm.

"For Christ's sake, do not speak," uttered Foma in a dull voice.

Mayakin glanced at his G.o.dson and became silent. Foma's face looked drawn; he grew pale, and there was a great deal of painful, bitter stupor in his half-open lips and in his sad look. On the right and on the left of the road a field stretched itself, covered here and there with patches of winter-raiment. Rooks were hopping busily about over the black spots, where the snow had melted. The water under the sledge-runners was splashing, the muddy snow was kicked up by the hoofs of the horses.

"How foolish man is in his youth!" exclaimed Mayakin, in a low voice.

Foma did not look at him.

"Before him stands the stump of a tree, and yet he sees the snout of a beast--that's how he frightens himself. Oh, oh!"

"Speak more plainly," said Foma, sternly.

"What is there to say? The thing is clear: girls are cream; women are milk; women are near, girls are far. Consequently, go to Sonka, if you cannot do without it, and tell her plainly. That's how the matter stands. Fool! If she is a sinner, you can get her more easily. Why are you so angry, then? Why so bristled up?"

"You don't understand," said Foma, in a low voice.

"What is it I do not understand? I understand everything!"

"The heart. Man has a heart," sighed the youth.

Mayakin winked his eyes and said:

"Then he has no mind."

CHAPTER VI

WHEN Foma arrived in the city he was seized with sad, revengeful anger.

He was burning with a pa.s.sionate desire to insult Medinskaya, to abuse her. His teeth firmly set together, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he walked for a few hours in succession about the deserted rooms of his house, he sternly knitted his brow, and constantly threw his chest forward. His breast was too narrow to hold his heart, which was filled with wrath. He stamped the floor with heavy and measured steps, as though he were forging his anger.

"The vile wretch--disguised herself as an angel!" Pelageya vividly arose in his memory, and he whispered malignantly and bitterly:

"Though a fallen woman, she is better. She did not play the hypocrite.

She at once unfolded her soul and her body, and her heart is surely just as her breast--white and sound."

Sometimes Hope would whisper timidly in his ear:

"Perhaps all that was said of her was a lie."

But he recalled the eager certainty of his G.o.dfather, and the power of his words, and this thought perished. He set his teeth more firmly together and threw his chest still more forward. Evil thoughts like splinters of wood stuck into his heart, and his heart was shattered by the acute pain they caused.

By disparaging Medinskaya, Mayakin made her more accessible to his G.o.dson, and Foma soon understood this. A few days pa.s.sed, and Foma's agitated feelings became calm, absorbed by the spring business cares.

The sorrow for the loss of the individual deadened the spite he owed the woman, and the thought of the woman's accessibility increased his pa.s.sion for her. And somehow, without perceiving it himself, he suddenly understood and resolved that he ought to go up to Sophya Pavlovna and tell her plainly, openly, just what he wanted of her--that's all! He even felt a certain joy at this resolution, and he boldly started off to Medinskaya, thinking on the way only how to tell her best all that was necessary.

The servants of Medinskaya were accustomed to his visits, and to his question whether the lady was at home the maid replied:

"Please go into the drawing-room. She is there alone."

He became somewhat frightened, but noticing in the mirror his stately figure neatly clad with a frock-coat, and his swarthy, serious face in a frame of a downy black beard, set with large dark eyes--he raised his shoulders and confidently stepped forward through the parlour. Strange sounds of a string instrument were calmly floating to meet him; they seemed to burst into quiet, cheerless laughter, complaining of something, tenderly stirring the heart, as though imploring it for attention and having no hopes of getting it. Foma did not like to hear music--it always filled him with sadness. Even when the "machine" in the tavern played some sad tune, his heart filled with melancholy anguish, and he would either ask them to stop the "machine" or would go away some little distance feeling that he could not listen calmly to these tunes without words, but full of lamentation and tears. And now he involuntarily stopped short at the door of the drawing-room.

A curtain of long strings of parti-coloured gla.s.s beads hung over the door. The beads had been strung so as to form a fantastic figure of some kind of plants; the strings were quietly shaking and it seemed that pale shadows of flowers were soaring in the air. This transparent curtain did not hide the inside of the drawing-room from Foma's eyes. Seated on a couch in her favourite corner, Medinskaya played the mandolin. A large j.a.panese umbrella, fastened up to the wall, shaded the little woman in black by its mixture of colours; the high bronze lamp under a red lamp-shade cast on her the light of sunset. The mild sounds of the slender strings were trembling sadly in the narrow room, which was filled with soft and fragrant twilight. Now the woman lowered the mandolin on her knees and began running her fingers over the strings, also to examine fixedly something before her. Foma heaved a sigh.

A soft sound of music soared about Medinskaya, and her face was forever changing as though shadows were falling on it, falling and melting away under the flash of her eyes.

Foma looked at her and saw that when alone she was not quite so good-looking as in the presence of people--now her face looked older, more serious--her eyes had not the expression of kindness and gentleness, they had a rather tired and weary look. And her pose, too, was weary, as if the woman were about to stir but could not. Foma noticed that the feeling which prompted him to come to her was now changing in his heart into some other feeling. He sc.r.a.ped with his foot along the floor and coughed.

"Who is that?" asked the woman, starting with alarm. And the strings trembled, issuing an alarmed sound.

"It is I," said Foma, pushing aside the strings of the beads.

"Ah! But how quietly you've entered. I am glad to see you. Be seated!

Why didn't you come for such a long time?"

Holding out her hand to him, she pointed with the other at a small armchair beside her, and her eyes were gaily smiling.

"I was out on the bay inspecting my steamers," said Foma, with exaggerated ease, moving his armchair nearer to the couch.

"Is there much snow yet on the fields?"

"As much as one may want. But it is already melting considerably. There is water on the roads everywhere."

He looked at her and smiled. Evidently Medinskaya noticed the ease of his behaviour and something new in his smile, for she adjusted her dress and drew farther away from him. Their eyes met--and Medinskaya lowered her head.

"Melting!" said she, thoughtfully, examining the ring on her little finger.

"Ye-es, streams everywhere." Foma informed her, admiring his boots.

"That's good. Spring is coming."