The mysterious Mr. Hippolytus was sitting on his bed taking off 1 iis trousers when Nikitin went into his room.
'Don't go to bed yet, old man,' Nikitin gasped. 'Just give me a moment, please.'
Hippolytus quickly put his trousers on again and asked anxiously what the mattcr was.
'I'm gctting married.'
Nikitin sat do^vm beside his colleague with the amazed look of one who has succceded in surprising himself. 'Just fancy, I'm getting married. To Masha Shelestov, I proposed this cvening.'
'Well, she seems a nice girl. She is very young, though,'
'Yes, young she is,' sighed Nikitin with a worried shrug. 'Very young indeed.'
'She was a pupil of mine once. I remember her, she wam't bad at geography but she was no good at history. And she was inattentive in class.'
Nikitin suddenly felt rather sorry for his colleague and wanted to say something kind and consoling. 'Why don't get married, old man?' he asked. 'My dear Hippolytus, why don't you marry Varya, say? She's a splendid girl, quite first-rate. Oh, she is very argumentative, I know, but she's so very, very good-hearted. She was asking about you just now. So you marry her, old chap, how about it?'
That Varya wouldn't have this boring, snub-nosed character Nikitin knew perfectly well, yet he still tried to persuade him to marry her. Why?
Hippolytus pondered. 'Marriage is a serious step,' he said. 'One must look at all the angles, weigh every issue, one mustn't be too casual. Caution never comes amiss—cspecially in wedlock when a man, ceasing to be a bachelor, begins a new life.'
He began uttering his pIatitudes, but Nikitin stopped listening to him, said goodnight and went to his room. Hastily undressing, he quickly Iay down in a great hurry to brood on his happiness, his Masha, his future. Then he smiled, suddenly remembering that he still hadn't read Lessing.
'I must read him,' he thought. 'But then again, why should I? To hell with him.'
Exhausted by bliss, he fell asleep at once and smiled through till morning. Hc dreamt of the clatter of horses' hooves on the wooden floor. He dreamt of black Count Nulin and the grey, Giant, with his sister Mayka, being brought out of the stable.
II
It was very crowded and noisy in church. At onc point somconc in the congregation actually shouted aloud, and the priest who was marrying me and Masha pcered over his spectacles.
'Don't wander about the church,' he said sternly. 'Just keep still and worship. This is God's house, remember.'
I had two of my colleagues in attendance, while Masha was attended by Captain Polyansky and Lieutenant Gernet. The bishop's choir sang superbly. The sputtering candles, the glitter, the fine clothes, the officers, the mass of joyful, contented faces, Masha's special ethereal look, the entire ambience, the words of the nuptial prayers—they moved me to tears, they filled me with exultation. How my life has blossomed out, I thought. How romantically, how poetically it has been shaping oflate. Two years ago I wasjust a student living in cheap lodgings in Moscow's Neglinny Drive, with no money, no relatives and—1 then fancied—no future. But now I teach at the high school in one of the best county towns, I'm secure, I'm loved, I'm spoilt. For me this congregation is assembled, thought I. For me three chandeliers burn, for me the archdeacon booms, for me the choir puts forth its efforts. For me too this young creature, soon to be called my wife, is so youthful, so elegant, so happy. I remembered our first meetings, our country rides, my proposal and the weather which seemed to have gone out of its way to be wonderfully fine all summer. That happiness which, in my old Neglinny Drive days, only seemed possible in novels and stories—I was actually experiencing it now, apparently, I was taking it in my hands.
After the ceremony everyone crowded round Masha and me, they expressed their sincere pleasure, they congratulated us, they wished us happiness. A retired major-general in his late sixties congratulated Masha alone.
'I trust, my dear, that now you're married you'll still be the same dear little rosebud,' he told her in a squeaky, senile voice audible throughout the church.
The officers, the headmaster, the teachers—all gave the socially incumbent grin, and I could feel that ingratiating, artificial smile on my face too. Dear old Mr. Hippolytus—history master, geography master, mouther of platitudes—shook my hand firmly and spoke with feeling. 'Hitherto you've been a bachelor and have lived on your own. But now you're married and single no longer.'
From church we went to the two-storeyed house with unrendered walls which comes to me with the dowry. Besides the house Masha is bringing about twenty thousand roubles in cash and a place called Meliton's Heath complete with a shack where I'm told there are lots of hens and ducks running wild because no one looks after them.
When I got home from church I strctchcd and loungcd on thc otto- man in my new study, smoking. I felt more snug, morc comfortable, more cosy than evcr in my life. Meanwhile wedding gucsts chccred, a wretched band played flourishes and sundry trash in the hall. Masha's sister Varya ran into the study carrying a wineglass, her face oddly strained as if her mouth was full of water. Apparently she had meant to run on, but she suddenly burst out laughing and sobbing, whilc the glass rolled, ringing, across the floor. We took her by the arms and led her off.
'No one understands,' shc muttered later as shc lay on thc old nursc's bed at the back of the house. 'No one, no one—God, no one undcr- stands.'
Everyone understood perfectly well, though, that she was four ycars older than her sister Masha, that she still wasn't married, and that she wasn't crying through envy but because she was sadly aware that her time was passing—or had perhaps already passed. By the timc the quadrille began she was back in the drawing-room with a tearful, heavily powdered face, and I saw her spooning up a dish of ice-crcam held for her by Captain Polyansky.
It is now past five in the morning. I have taken up my diary to describe my complete, my manifold happiness, intending to write half a dozen pages and read them to Masha later in thc day, but oddly enough my mind is just a vague, dreamy jumble, and all I remember distinctly is this business of Varya. 'Poor Varya', I want to write. Yes, I could go on sitting here and writing 'poor Varya'. And now the trees have started rustling, which means rain. Crows are cawing and my dear Masha, who has just fallen asleep, has a rather sad expression.
Nikitin did not touch his diary for a long time aftenvards. He had various entrance and other school examinations at the beginning of August, and after the fifteenth of the month term started again. He usually left for school before nine, and an hour later was already missing Masha and his new home, and kept looking at his watch. In the lower forms he would get one of the boys to dictate and would sit in the window day-dreaming, eyes shut, while his pupils wrote. Picturing the future, recalling the past—he found everything equally splendid, Jike a fairy-tale. In the senior forms they read Gogol or Pushkin's prose aloud, which made hini drowsy, conjuring up in his imagination people, trees, fields, horses.
'Superb,' he would sigh, as if bewitched by the author.
At the lunch break Masha would send him his meal in a snow-white napkin, and he would cat it slowly, with pauscs to prolong his enjoy- ment, while Hippolytus—who usually lunched on .1 single roll—looked at him with respectful envy, uttering some such platitude as that 'man cannot live without food'.
From school Nikitin would go to his coaching, and when he at last reached home about half past ftve he would feel as happy and excited as if he had been away a whole year. He would run panting upstairs, fmd Masha, take her in his arms, kiss her, swear he loved her and couldn't live without her, claiming to have missed her tcrribly, asking in panic whether she was well and why she looked so solemn. Then they would dine together. After dinner he would lie smoking on his study ottoman while she sat beside him, talking in a low voice.