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

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna to ask her to go for a row. He went to her house and looked over the fence: the windows were wide open, there were no lights.

“Nadyezhda Fyodorovna!” he called.

A moment passed, he called again.

“Who’s there?” he heard Olga’s voice.

“Is Nadyezhda Fyodorovna at home?”

“No, she has not come in yet.”

“Strange⁠ ⁠… very strange,” thought Atchmianov, feeling very uneasy. “She went home.⁠ ⁠…”

He walked along the boulevard, then along the street, and glanced in at the windows of Sheshkovsky’s. Laevsky was sitting at the table without his coat on, looking attentively at his cards.

“Strange, strange,” muttered Atchmianov, and remembering Laevsky’s hysterics, he felt ashamed. “If she is not at home, where is she?”

He went to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s lodgings again, and looked at the dark windows.

“It’s a cheat, a cheat⁠ ⁠…” he thought, remembering that, meeting him at midday at Marya Konstantinovna’s, she had promised to go in a boat with him that evening.

The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and there was a policeman sitting asleep on a little bench at the gate. Everything was clear to Atchmianov when he looked at the windows and the policeman. He made up his mind to go home, and set off in that direction, but somehow found himself near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s lodgings again. He sat down on the bench near the gate and took off his hat, feeling that his head was burning with jealousy and resentment.

The clock in the town church only struck twice in the twenty-four hours⁠—at midday and midnight. Soon after it struck midnight he heard hurried footsteps.

“Tomorrow evening, then, again at Muridov’s,” Atchmianov heard, and he recognised Kirilin’s voice. “At eight o’clock; goodbye!”

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna made her appearance near the garden. Without noticing that Atchmianov was sitting on the bench, she passed beside him like a shadow, opened the gate, and leaving it open, went into the house. In her own room she lighted the candle and quickly undressed, but instead of getting into bed, she sank on her knees before a chair, flung her arms round it, and rested her head on it.

It was past two when Laevsky came home.

XV

Having made up his mind to lie, not all at once but piecemeal, Laevsky went soon after one o’clock next day to Samoylenko to ask for the money that he might be sure to get off on Saturday. After his hysterical attack, which had added an acute feeling of shame to his depressed state of mind, it was unthinkable to remain in the town. If Samoylenko should insist on his conditions, he thought it would be possible to agree to them and take the money, and next day, just as he was starting, to say that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna refused to go. He would be able to persuade her that evening that the whole arrangement would be for her benefit. If Samoylenko, who was obviously under the influence of Von Koren, should refuse the money altogether or make fresh conditions, then he, Laevsky, would go off that very evening in a cargo vessel, or even in a sailing-boat, to Novy Athon or Novorossiisk, would send from there an humiliating telegram, and would stay there till his mother sent him the money for the journey.

When he went into Samoylenko’s, he found Von Koren in the drawing room. The zoologist had just arrived for dinner, and, as usual, was turning over the album and scrutinising the gentlemen in top-hats and the ladies in caps.

“How very unlucky!” thought Laevsky, seeing him. “He may be in the way. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” answered Von Koren, without looking at him.

“Is Alexandr Daviditch at home?”

“Yes, in the kitchen.”

Laevsky went into the kitchen, but seeing from the door that Samoylenko was busy over the salad, he went back into the drawing room and sat down. He always had a feeling of awkwardness in the zoologist’s presence, and now he was afraid there would be talk about his attack of hysterics. There was more than a minute of silence. Von Koren suddenly raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:

“How do you feel after yesterday?”

“Very well indeed,” said Laevsky, flushing. “It really was nothing much.⁠ ⁠…”

“Until yesterday I thought it was only ladies who had hysterics, and so at first I thought you had St. Vitus’s dance.”

Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly, and thought:

“How indelicate on his part! He knows quite well how unpleasant it is for me.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, it was a ridiculous performance,” he said, still smiling. “I’ve been laughing over it the whole morning. What’s so curious in an attack of hysterics is that you know it is absurd, and are laughing at it in your heart, and at the same time you sob. In our neurotic age we are the slaves of our nerves; they are our masters and do as they like with us. Civilisation has done us a bad turn in that way.⁠ ⁠…”

As Laevsky talked, he felt it disagreeable that Von Koren listened to him gravely, and looked at him steadily and attentively as though studying him; and he was vexed with himself that in spite of his dislike of Von Koren, he could not banish the ingratiating smile from his face.

“I must admit, though,” he added, “that there were immediate causes for the attack, and quite sufficient ones too. My health has been terribly shaky of late. To which one must add boredom, constantly being hard up⁠ ⁠… the absence of people and general interests.⁠ ⁠… My position is worse than a governor’s.”

“Yes, your position is a hopeless one,” answered Von Koren.

These calm, cold words, implying something between a jeer and an uninvited prediction, offended Laevsky. He recalled the zoologist’s eyes the evening before, full of mockery and disgust. He was silent for a space and then asked, no longer smiling:

“How do you know anything of my position?”

“You were only just speaking of it yourself. Besides, your friends take such a warm interest in you, that I am hearing about you all day long.”

“What friends? Samoylenko, I suppose?”

“Yes, he too.”

“I would ask Alexandr Daviditch and my