The Man Who Was Afraid Part 54

"It is necessary to marry you off the sooner. I am keeping an eye on a certain red-haired fellow. He doesn't seem to be stupid. He's been polished abroad, by the way.

"Is it Smolin, papa?" asked Lubov, inquisitively and anxiously.

"And supposing it is he, what of it?" inquired Yakov Tarasovich in a business-like tone.

"Nothing, I don't know him," replied Lubov, indefinitely.

"We'll make you acquainted. It's time, Lubov, it's time. Our hopes for Foma are poor, although I do not give him up."

"I did not reckon on Foma--what is he to me?"

"That's wrong. If you had been cleverer perhaps he wouldn't have gone astray! Whenever I used to see you together, I thought: 'My girl will attract the fellow to herself! That will be a fine affair!' But I was wrong. I thought that you would know what is to your advantage without being told of it. That's the way, my girl!" said the father, instructively.

She became thoughtful as she listened to his impressive speech. Robust and strong, Lubov was thinking of marriage more and more frequently of late, for she saw no other way out of her loneliness. The desire to forsake her father and go away somewhere in order to study something, to do something. This desire she had long since overcome, even as she conquered in herself many another longing just as keen, but shallow and indefinite. From the various books she had read a thick sediment remained within her, and though it was something live it had the life of a protoplasm. This sediment developed in the girl a feeling of dis-satisfaction with her life, a yearning toward personal independence, a longing to be freed from the heavy guardianship of her father, but she had neither the power to realize these desires, nor the clear conception of their realization. But nature had its influence on her, and at the sight of young mothers with children in their arms Lubov often felt a sad and mournful languor within her. At times stopping before the mirror she sadly scrutinized in it her plump, fresh face with dark circles around her eyes, and she felt sorry for herself. She felt that life was going past her, forgetting her somewhere on the side. Now listening to her father's words she pictured to herself what sort of man Smolin might be. She had met him when he was yet a Gymnasium student, his face was covered with freckles, he was snub-nosed, always clean, sedate and tiresome. He danced heavily, awkwardly, he talked uninterestingly.

A long time had pa.s.sed since then, he had been abroad, had studied something there, how was he now? From Smolin her thoughts darted to her brother, and with a sinking heart she thought: what would he say in reply to her letter? What sort of a man was he? The image of her brother as she had pictured it to herself prevented her from seeing both her father and Smolin, and she had already made up her mind not to consent to marry before meeting Taras, when suddenly her father shouted to her:

"Eh, Lubovka! Why are you thoughtful? What are you thinking of mostly?"

"So, everything goes so swiftly," replied Luba, with a smile.

"What goes swiftly?"

"Everything. A week ago it was impossible to speak with you about Taras, while now--"

"'Tis need, my girl! Need is a power, it bends a steel rod into a spring. And steel is stubborn. Taras, we'll see what he is! Man is to be appreciated by his resistance to the power of life; if it isn't life that wrings him, but he that wrings life to suit himself, my respects to that man! Allow me to shake your hand, let's run our business together.

Eh, I am old. And how very brisk life has become now! With each succeeding year there is more and more interest in it, more and more relish to it! I wish I could live forever, I wish I could act all the time!" The old man smacked his lips, rubbed his hands, and his small eyes gleamed greedily.

"But you are a thin-blooded lot! Ere you have grown up you are already overgrown and withered. You live like an old radish. And the fact that life is growing fairer and fairer is incomprehensible to you. I have lived sixty-seven years on this earth, and though I am now standing close to my grave I can see that in former years, when I was young, there were fewer flowers on earth, and the flowers were not quite as beautiful as they are now. Everything is growing more beautiful! What buildings we have now! What different trade implements. What huge steamers! A world of brains has been put into everything! You look and think; what clever fellows you are--Oh people! You merit reward and respect! You've arranged life cleverly. Everything is good, everything is pleasant. Only you, our successors, you are devoid of all live feelings! Any little charlatan from among the commoners is cleverer than you! Take that Yozhov, for instance, what is he? And yet he represents himself as judge over us, and even over life itself--he has courage. But you, pshaw! You live like beggars! In your joy you are beasts, in your misfortune vermin! You are rotten! They ought to inject fire into your veins, they ought to take your skin off and strew salt upon your raw flesh, then you would have jumped!"

Yakov Tarasovich, small-sized, wrinkled and bony, with black, broken teeth in his mouth, bald-headed and dark, as though burned by the heat of life and smoked in it, trembled in vehement agitation, showering jarring words of contempt upon his daughter, who was young, well-grown and plump. She looked at him with a guilty expression in her eyes, smiled confusedly, and in her heart grew a greater and greater respect for the live old man who was so steadfast in his desires.

And Foma went on straying and raving, pa.s.sing his days and nights in taverns and dens, and mastering more and more firmly his contemptuously-hateful bearing toward the people that surrounded him. At times they awakened in him a sad yearning to find among them some sort of resistance to his wicked feeling, to meet a worthy and courageous man who would cause him to blush with shame by his burning reproach. This yearning became clearer--each time it sprang up in him it was a longing for a.s.sistance on the part of a man who felt that he had lost his way and was perishing.

"Brethren!" he cried one day, sitting by the table in a tavern, half-intoxicated, and surrounded by certain obscure and greedy people, who ate and drank as though they had not had a piece of bread in their mouths for many a long day before.

"Brethren! I feel disgusted. I am tired of you! Beat me unmercifully, drive me away! You are rascals, but you are nearer to one another than to me. Why? Am I not a drunkard and a rascal as well? And yet I am a stranger to you! I can see I am a stranger. You drink out of me and secretly you spit upon me. I can feel it! Why do you do it?"

To be sure, they could treat him in a different way. In the depth of his soul perhaps not one of them considered himself lower than Foma, but he was rich, and this hindered them from treating him more as a companion, and then he always spoke certain comically wrathful, conscience-rending words, and this embarra.s.sed them. Moreover, he was strong and ready to fight, and they dared not say a word against him. And that was just what he wanted. He wished more and more intensely that one of these people he despised would stand up against him, face to face, and would tell him something strong, which, like a lever, would turn him aside from the sloping road, whose danger he felt, and whose filth he saw, being filled with helpless aversion for it.

And Foma found what he needed.

One day, irritated by the lack of attention for him, he cried to his drinking-companions:

"You boys, keep quiet, every one of you! Who gives you to drink and to eat? Have you forgotten it? I'll bring you in order! I'll show you how to respect me! Convicts! When I speak you must all keep quiet!"

And, indeed, all became silent; either for fear lest they might lose his good will, or, perhaps, afraid that he, that healthy and strong beast, might beat them. They sat in silence about a minute, concealing their anger at him, bending over the plates and attempting to hide from him their fright and embarra.s.sment. Foma measured them with a self-satisfied look, and gratified by their slavish submissiveness, said boastfully:

"Ah! You've grown dumb now, that's the way! I am strict! I--"

"You sluggard!" came some one's calm, loud exclamation.

"Wha-at?" roared Foma, jumping up from his chair. "Who said that?"

Then a certain, strange, shabby-looking man arose at the end of the table; he was tall, in a long frock-coat, with a heap of grayish hair on his large head. His hair was stiff, standing out in all directions in thick locks, his face was yellow, unshaven, with a long, crooked nose.

To Foma it seemed that he resembled a swab with which the steamer decks are washed, and this amused the half-intoxicated fellow.

"How fine!" said he, sarcastically. "What are you snarling at, eh? Do you know who I am?"

With the gesture of a tragic actor the man stretched out to Foma his hand, with its long, pliant fingers like those of a juggler, and he said in a deep hoa.r.s.e ba.s.so:

"You are the rotten disease of your father, who, though he was a plunderer, was nevertheless a worthy man in comparison with you."

Because of the unexpectedness of this, and because of his wrath, Foma's heart shrank. He fiercely opened his eyes wide and kept silent, finding no words to reply to this insolence. And the man, standing before him, went on hoa.r.s.ely, with animation, beastlike rolling his large, but dim and swollen, eyes:

"You demand of us respect for you, you fool! How have you merited it?

Who are you? A drunkard, drinking away the fortune of your father. You savage! You ought to be proud that I, a renowned artist, a disinterested and faithful worshipper at the shrine of art, drink from the same bottle with you! This bottle contains sandal and mola.s.ses, infused with snuff-tobacco, while you think it is port wine. It is your license for the name of savage and a.s.s."

"Eh, you jailbird!" roared Foma, rushing toward the artist. But he was seized and held back. Struggling in the arms of those that seized him, he was compelled to listen without replying, to the thundering, deep and heavy ba.s.s of the man who resembled a swab.

"You have thrown to men a few copecks out of the stolen roubles, and you consider yourself a hero! You are twice a thief. You have stolen the roubles and now you are stealing grat.i.tude for your few copecks! But I shall not give it to you! I, who have devoted all my life to the condemnation of vice, I stand before you and say openly: 'You are a fool and a beggar because you are too rich! Here lies the wisdom: all the rich are beggars.' That's how the famous coupletist, Rimsky-Kannibalsky, serves Truth!"

Foma was now standing meekly among the people that had closely surrounded him, and he eagerly listened to the coupletist's thundering words, which now aroused in him a sensation as though somebody was scratching a sore spot, and thus soothing the acute itching of the pain.

The people were excited; some attempted to check the coupletist's flow of eloquence, others wanted to lead Foma away somewhere. Without saying a word he pushed them aside and listened, more and more absorbed by the intense pleasure of humiliation which he felt in the presence of these people. The pain irritated by the words of the coupletist, caressed Foma's soul more and more pa.s.sionately, and the coupletist went on thundering, intoxicated with the impurity of his accusation:

"You think that you are the master of life? You are the low slave of the rouble."

Someone in the crowd hiccoughed, and, evidently displeased with himself for this, cursed each time he hiccoughed:

"Oh devil."

And a certain, unshaven, fat-faced man took pity on Foma, or, perhaps, became tired of witnessing that scene, and, waving his hands, he drawled out plaintively:

"Gentlemen, drop that! It isn't good! For we are all sinners! Decidedly all, believe me!"

"Well, speak on!" muttered Foma. "Say everything! I won't touch you."

The mirrors on the walls reflected this drunken confusion, and the people, as reflected in the mirrors, seemed more disgusting and hideous than they were in reality.

"I do not want to speak!" exclaimed the coupletist, "I do not want to cast the pearls of truth and of my wrath before you."

He rushed forward, and raising his head majestically, turned toward the door with tragic footsteps.

"You lie!" said Foma, attempting to follow him. "Hold on! you have made me agitated, now calm me."

They seized him, surrounded him and shouted something to him while he was rushing forward, overturning everybody. When he met tactile obstacles on his way the struggle with them gave him ease, uniting all his riotous feelings into one yearning to overthrow that which hindered him. And now, after he had jostled them all aside and rushed out into the street, he was already less agitated. Standing on the sidewalk he looked about the street and thought with shame:

"How could I permit that swab to mock me and abuse my father as a thief?"