“Don’t be afraid, Andryusha,” Tania said again, trembling like one with a fever. “Don’t be afraid. Papa, it will soon pass, it will soon pass.”
Kovrin was too excited to be able to speak. He wanted to say to his father-in-law in a playful tone:
“Congratulate me, I think I’m out of my mind,” but his lips only moved, and he smiled bitterly.
At nine o’clock in the morning he was wrapped up in a fur coat and a shawl and driven in a carriage to the doctor’s. He began a cure.
CHAPTER VIII Torture
SUMMER HAD COME back again, and the doctor ordered Kovrin to go to the country. Kovrin was already cured, he had ceased seeing the black monk, and it only was necessary to restore his physical strength. While living on his father-in-law’s estate he drank much milk, he worked only two hours a day, he did not drink wine, nor did he smoke.
On the eve of St. Elias’s day vespers were celebrated in the house. When the deacon handed the censer to the priest there was an odour of the churchyard in the whole of the huge old hall, and it made Kovrin feel dull. He went into the garden. He walked about there without noticing the magnificent flowers; he sat on one of the benches and then wandered into the park; when he came to the river he went down to the water’s edge and stood there for some time plunged in thought looking at the water. The gloomy pines, with their rough roots that but a year ago had seen him so young, joyful and hale, now did not whisper together, but stood motionless and dumb, just as if they did not recognize him. And, really, he was changed since last year; his head was closely cropped, his long beautiful hair was gone, his gait was languid, his face had grown stouter and paler.
He crossed over the foot-bridge to the other bank. Where the year before there had been rye, now mowed-down oats lay in long rows. The sun had already disappeared, and on the horizon the red glow of sunset was still widespread, foretelling wind for the next day. It was quiet. Looking in the direction where a year before the black monk had made his first appearance, Kovrin stood for about twenty minutes till the brightness of the sunset had faded away.
When he returned to the house languid and dissatisfied, vespers were over. Egor Semenych and Tania were sitting on the steps of the terrace drinking tea. They were talking about something, but when they saw Kovrin coming they suddenly were silent, and he concluded, judging by their faces, that the conversation had been about him.
“I think it’s time for you to have your milk,” Tania said to her husband.
“No, it’s not time . . .” he answered as he sat down on the very lowest step. “Drink it yourself. I don’t want it.”
Tania exchanged an anxious glance with her father and said in a guilty tone:
“You yourself have noticed that milk does you good.”
“Oh yes, very much good,” Kovrin said, smiling. “I congratulate you; since Friday I have added another pound to my weight.” He squeezed his head tightly between his hands and said sadly: “Why, why do you make me have this cure? All sorts of bromate preparations, idleness, warm baths, watching, poor-spirited, alarm for every mouthful, for every step—all this in the end will make a perfect idiot of me. I went mad, I had the mania of greatness, but for all that I was gay, healthy and even happy; I was interesting and original. Now I have become more sober-minded and matter-of-fact, but in consequence I am now like everybody else. I am mediocre, life is tiresome to me. . . . Oh, how cruelly you have acted towards me! I saw hallucinations; in what way did that interfere with anybody? I ask you, with whom did that interfere?”
“God knows what you are saying!” Egor Semenych said with a sigh. “It’s tiresome to listen to you!”
“Then don’t listen.”
The presence of people, especially of Egor Semenych, irritated Kovrin. He answered him drily, coldly, even rudely, and when he looked at him it was always with derision and with hatred. Egor Semenych was confused and coughed guiltily, although he could feel no blame. Unable to understand this sudden and sharp change in their friendly and kind-hearted relations, Tania pressed close to her father, and looked into his eyes with troubled glances; she wanted to understand the cause, but could not; all that was clear to her was that their relations became with every day worse and worse, that latterly her father had aged very much, and that her husband had become irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and uninteresting. She could no longer laugh and sing, she ate nothing at dinner, she often had sleepless nights, expecting something dreadful, and she was so worn out that once she lay in a faint from dinner-time until evening. During vespers it had appeared to her that her father was crying, and now when they were all three sitting together on the terrace she had to make an effort not to think of this.
“How happy were Buddha, Mohammed and Shakespeare, that their kind relations and doctors did not try to cure them of their ecstasies and inspirations!” Kovrin said. “If Mohammed had taken bromide to calm his nerves, had worked only two hours a day and had drunk milk, as little would have remained of this remarkable man as of his dog. The doctors and the kind relations will in the end so blunt the capacities of mankind that at last mediocrity will be considered genius and civilization will perish. If you only knew how thankful I am to you!” Kovrin said with vexation.
He felt greatly irritated and to prevent himself from saying too much he rose quickly and went into the house. The night was calm, and the scent of tobacco and jalap was borne through the open window. In the large dark ballroom the moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the piano. Kovrin remembered his raptures of the previous summer, when the jalaps smelt in the same way and the moon looked in at the windows. In order to renew last year’s frame of mind he hurried into his study, lit a strong cigar and ordered the butler to bring him some wine. But the cigar only left an unpleasantly bitter taste in his mouth, and the wine had not the same flavour it had had the year before. What loss of habit does! He got giddy from the cigar, and after two sips of wine he had palpitations of the heart, so he had to take a dose of bromide.
When she was going to bed Tania said to him:
“My father adores you. You are angry with him for some reason and it is killing him. Only look at him: he is ageing not by days, but by hours. I implore you, Andryusha, for God’s sake, for the sake of your late father, for the sake of my peace, be more affectionate with him.”
“I can’t, and I won’t.”
“But why?” Tania asked, beginning to tremble all over. “Tell me why?”
“Because I don’t like him, that’s all,” Kovrin said carelessly, and shrugged his shoulders; “but let us not talk of him, he is your father.”
“I can’t, I really can’t understand,” Tania said, pressing her hands to her temples and looking at a point in front of her. “Something incomprehensible, something terrible is happening in our house. You are changed, you are not like yourself. You are clever, you are no ordinary man and you get irritated with trifles; you meddle in all sort of tittle-tattle. Such trifles agitate you, that sometimes one is astonished and cannot believe it, and asks oneself: Is it you? Well, well, don’t be angry, don’t be angry,” she continued, alarmed by her own words and kissing his hands. “You are clever, kind, noble. You will be towards with my father. He is so good.”
“He’s not good, but good-natured. The good-natured uncles in farces, who are somewhat like your father-well-fed and with good-natured faces, extremely hospitable and a little comical—appeared touching and amusing to me in novels and farces and also in real life at one time—now they are repugnant to me. They are all egoists to the marrow of their bones. What’s most repugnant to me is their being overfed and their abdominal, their entirely oxlike or swinelike optimism.”