Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

he did not even feel it⁠—as though loneliness had been his natural state throughout his long, eventful life.

He forgot his morning greetings, he forgot to say good night; and when his wife held out her hand, or his daughter Cissy lifted her smooth forehead to his lips, he was not quite sure what to do with the hand or the forehead. When guests came to luncheon⁠—the Vice-Governor and his wife, or Kosloff⁠—he did not rise, or bow, or smile, but went hastily on with his meal⁠—and when he had finished he did not ask to be excused, but simply rose and left the room.

“Where are you going, Pievna? Please stay with us, we are so lonely. They’ll bring the coffee soon.” He answered calmly: “No! I’d rather go to my study. I don’t want any coffee,” and the rudeness of the answer was lost in its candour and simplicity.

He cared nothing about Cissy’s new clothes, did not greet the guests of the house, let her Excellency invent excuses for his absence, had nothing to do with society, and refused to accept statements without an explanation of motives. Twice a week he received petitioners, and listened to each attentively, with an interest that seemed even a trifle rude, as he inspected the petitioner from head to foot. “Are you convinced that it will be better so?” he asked, after he had listened patiently; and when the astonished man had given an affirmative answer he promised immediately to grant his request. In these days he never considered the possibility of overstepping the limits of his powers, or else he had an exaggerated impression of them; at all events, he often decided matters which were quite out of his province. The new Governor, in consequence, had many difficulties with the entanglements that resulted⁠—all the more so as some of the questions were of the most complex and illegal character.

In order to dispel her husband’s gloom, Maria Petrovna often came to his study, felt of his forehead to see if he were feverish, and began to talk about their trip. But he held her off with blunt directness. “Yes, very well, run along now! I would rather be alone. You have your own room, and I don’t bother you there.”

“Ah, how you have changed, Pievna!”

“Nonsense! Nonsense!” he said, in his gruffest tones, leaning his back up against the cold stove. “Do go and make that pug of yours shut up. You can’t hear a thing in the whole house for his barking!”

Of all his former habits, card-playing was the only one which he still enjoyed. Twice a week he had his whist, and he played for small stakes with keen and evident pleasure. He was a thoughtful, clever player, and if his partner revoked he called him down in proper shape. “What are you thinking of, my dear sir! I led diamonds!” flashed out his cool, clear voice⁠—hard and cutting as the diamond itself⁠ ⁠… and Maria Petrovna, in the next room, hearing her husband’s voice, would smile her tired smile and shake her head sadly. Her yellow cheeks hung flabby as a pointer’s; the powder stood out on her face, and her heavy, bulging, brownish lids rose and fell like iron shutters in a shop window. At this moment it seemed to her, as it did to all the others, utterly impossible that a person who could play cards like that could be assassinated.

Through the two long weeks before his death, he simply waited. Doubtless he had other feelings beside⁠—thoughts of the daily routine, his surroundings, his past; the stale, old thoughts of a man whose body and mind are long since fossilised. Probably he thought of the workmen and that sad, awful day⁠—but all these reflections were vague and superficial, and vanished as they came⁠—like the light wind’s ripple on the river⁠—and again as before, the still, dark waters of his fathomless soul stood calm in silent waiting. It was as though politeness and habit only had united him to his mental processes, and when ceremony and custom vanished his ideas fled too. He was as isolated in his brain as he was in his family.

As usual he rose at seven, had his cold shower, drank his milk, and at eight o’clock took his accustomed stroll. Each time he crossed the threshold of his palace he felt that he should never return⁠—that the two hours’ walk would prolong itself into an eternal wandering through the unknown.⁠ ⁠… With his red-lined General’s cloak; tall, broad-shouldered, his grey head high with soldierly bearing; he marched through the city for two long hours like a stately ghost⁠—past wooden houses dark with mould, past countless gates and empty squares, past shops whose clerks, shivering in the brisk morning air, bowed slavishly. Whether the pale October sun shone out, or the fine cold rain trickled down, unfailingly he rose and followed his orbit⁠—a sad, majestic wanderer of the town, seeking death at the head of his column. Forward he marched through mire and puddle, the scarlet lining of his overcoat reflected in the mud; forward through the streets, not noticing policemen’s salutes nor horses⁠—and a bird’s-eye view of his daily Road of Suspense would have shown an extraordinary tracery of short, straight lines, crossing and recrossing in a hopeless tangle. He seldom glanced to right or left, and never looked behind; yet scarcely even saw what was before him, so sunk was he in the depths of his dark forebodings. He rarely acknowledged greetings, and many a startled eye encountered his passing glance⁠—direct, unseeing, and yet so penetrating.

Long after he was dead and buried, and the new Governor, a smiling young man surrounded by Cossack guards, drove rapidly through the city in his equipage of state, many recalled these last two long weeks of his pilgrimage⁠—the grey-haired ghost in the General’s uniform marching through the mire with upright carriage, the scarlet lining of his cloak glancing in the puddles; and followed by the hoary old law: “A life for