The Duel, Anton Chekhov [most interesting books to read TXT] 📗

“Very fine, too. You can kiss him if you like.”

“Give me the hundred roubles, then,” Samoylenko asked timidly.

“I won’t.”

A silence followed. Samoylenko was quite crushed; his face wore a guilty, abashed, and ingratiating expression, and it was strange to see this pitiful, childish, shamefaced countenance on a huge man wearing epaulettes and orders of merit.

“The bishop here goes the round of his diocese on horseback instead of in a carriage,” said the deacon, laying down his pen. “It’s extremely touching to see him sit on his horse. His simplicity and humility are full of Biblical grandeur.”

“Is he a good man?” asked Von Koren, who was glad to change the conversation.

“Of course! If he hadn’t been a good man, do you suppose he would have been consecrated a bishop?”

“Among the bishops are to be found good and gifted men,” said Von Koren. “The only drawback is that some of them have the weakness to imagine themselves statesmen. One busies himself with Russification, another criticises the sciences. That’s not their business. They had much better look into their consistory a little.”

“A layman cannot judge of bishops.”

“Why so, deacon? A bishop is a man just the same as you or I.”

“The same, but not the same.” The deacon was offended and took up his pen. “If you had been the same, the Divine Grace would have rested upon you, and you would have been bishop yourself; and since you are not bishop, it follows you are not the same.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, deacon,” said Samoylenko dejectedly. “Listen to what I suggest,” he said, turning to Von Koren. “Don’t give me that hundred roubles. You’ll be having your dinners with me for three months before the winter, so let me have the money beforehand for three months.”

“I won’t.”

Samoylenko blinked and turned crimson; he mechanically drew towards him the book with the spider on it and looked at it, then he got up and took his hat.

Von Koren felt sorry for him.

“What it is to have to live and do with people like this,” said the zoologist, and he kicked a paper into the corner with indignation. “You must understand that this is not kindness, it is not love, but cowardice, slackness, poison! What’s gained by reason is lost by your flabby good-for-nothing hearts! When I was ill with typhoid as a schoolboy, my aunt in her sympathy gave me pickled mushrooms to eat, and I very nearly died. You, and my aunt too, must understand that love for man is not to be found in the heart or the stomach or the bowels, but here!”

Von Koren slapped himself on the forehead.

“Take it,” he said, and thrust a hundred-rouble note into his hand.

“You’ve no need to be angry, Kolya,” said Samoylenko mildly, folding up the note. “I quite understand you, but⁠ ⁠… you must put yourself in my place.”

“You are an old woman, that’s what you are.”

The deacon burst out laughing.

“Hear my last request, Alexandr Daviditch,” said Von Koren hotly. “When you give that scoundrel the money, make it a condition that he takes his lady with him, or sends her on ahead, and don’t give it him without. There’s no need to stand on ceremony with him. Tell him so, or, if you don’t, I give you my word I’ll go to his office and kick him downstairs, and I’ll break off all acquaintance with you. So you’d better know it.”

“Well! To go with her or send her on beforehand will be more convenient for him,” said Samoylenko. “He’ll be delighted indeed. Well, goodbye.”

He said goodbye affectionately and went out, but before shutting the door after him, he looked round at Von Koren and, with a ferocious face, said:

“It’s the Germans who have ruined you, brother! Yes! The Germans!”

Next day, Thursday, Marya Konstantinovna was celebrating the birthday of her Kostya. All were invited to come at midday and eat pies, and in the evening to drink chocolate. When Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna arrived in the evening, the zoologist, who was already sitting in the drawing room, drinking chocolate, asked Samoylenko:

“Have you talked to him?”

“Not yet.”

“Mind now, don’t stand on ceremony. I can’t understand the insolence of these people! Why, they know perfectly well the view taken by this family of their cohabitation, and yet they force themselves in here.”

“If one is to pay attention to every prejudice,” said Samoylenko, “one could go nowhere.”

“Do you mean to say that the repugnance felt by the masses for illicit love and moral laxity is a prejudice?”

“Of course it is. It’s prejudice and hate. When the soldiers see a girl of light behaviour, they laugh and whistle; but just ask them what they are themselves.”

“It’s not for nothing they whistle. The fact that girls strangle their illegitimate children and go to prison for it, and that Anna Karenin flung herself under the train, and that in the villages they smear the gates with tar, and that you and I, without knowing why, are pleased by Katya’s purity, and that every one of us feels a vague craving for pure love, though he knows there is no such love⁠—is all that prejudice? That is the one thing, brother, which has survived intact from natural selection, and, if it were not for that obscure force regulating the relations of the sexes, the Laevskys would have it all their own way, and mankind would degenerate in two years.”

Laevsky came into the drawing room, greeted everyone, and shaking hands with Von Koren, smiled ingratiatingly. He waited for a favourable moment and said to Samoylenko:

“Excuse me, Alexandr Daviditch, I must say two words to you.”

Samoylenko got up, put his arm round Laevsky’s waist, and both of them went into Nikodim Alexandritch’s study.

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” said Laevsky, biting his nails. “Have you got what you promised?”

“I’ve only got two hundred. I’ll get the rest today or tomorrow. Don’t worry yourself.”

“Thank God⁠ ⁠…” sighed Laevsky, and his hands began trembling with joy. “You are saving me, Alexandr Daviditch, and I swear