Kirilov stood still and was silent. When Aboguin uttered some more words on the higher vocation of a doctor, and self-sacrifice, the doctor sternly asked:
"Is it far?"
"Thirteen or fourteen versts. I've got good horses, Doctor. I give you my word of honour that I'll take you there and back in an hour. Only an hour."
The last words impressed the doctor more strongly than the references to humanity or the doctor's vocation. He thought for a while and said with a sigh:
"Well, let us go!'
He went off quickly, with a step that was not sure, to his study and soon after returned in a long coat. Aboguin, delighted, danced impatiently round him, helped him on with his overcoat, and accompanied him out oi the house.
Outside it was dark, but brighter than in the haU. Now in the darkness the tall stooping figure of the doctor was clearly visible with the long, narrow beard and the aquiline nose. Besides his pale face Aboguin's big face could now be seen and a little student cap which hardly covered the crown of his head. The scarf showed white only in front, but behind it was hid under his long hair.
"Believe me, I'm able to appreciate your magnanimity," murmured Aboguin, as he helped the doctor to a seat in the carriage. "We'll whirl away. Luke, dear man, drive as fast as you can, do!"
The coachman drove quickly. First appeared a row of bare buildings, which stood along the hospital yard. It was dark everywhere, save that at the end of the yard a bright light from someone's window broke through the garden fence, and three windows in the upper story of the separate house seemed to be paler than the air. Then the carriage drove into dense obscurity where you could smell mushroom damp, and hear the whisper of the trees. The noise of the wheels awoke the rooks who began to stir in the leaves and raised a doleful, bewildered cry as if they knew that the doctor's wn was dead and Aboguin's wife ill. Then began to appear separate trees, a shrub. Sternly gleamed the pond, where big black shadows slept. The carriage rolled along over an even plain. Now the cry of the rooks was but faintly heard far away behind. Soon it became completely still.
Almost all the way Kirilov and Aboguin were silent; save that once Aboguin sighed profoundly and murmured:
"It's terrible pain. One never loves his nearest 50 much as when there is the risk of losing them."
And when the carriage was quietly passing through the river, Kirilov gave a sudden start, as though the dashing of the water frightened him, and he began to move im- patiently.
"Let me go," be said in anguish. "I'll come to you later .1 only want to send the attendant to my wife. She is all alone."
Aboguin was silent. The carriage, swaying and rattiing against the stones, drove over the sandy bank and went on. Kirilov began to toss about in anguish, and glanced around. Behind the road was visible in the scant light of the stars and the willows that fringed the bank disappearing into the darkness. To the right the plain stretched smooth and bound- less as heaven. On it in the distance here and there dim lights were burning, probably on the turf-pits. To the left, parallel with the road stretched a little hill, tufted with tiny shrubs, and on the hill a big half-moon stood motionless, red, slightly veiled with a mist, and surrounded with fine clouds which seemed to be gazing upon it from every side, and guarding it, lest it should disappear.
In all nature one felt something hopeless and sick. Like a fallen woman who sits alone in a dark room trying not to think of her past, the earth languished with reminiscence of spring and summer and waited in apathy for ineluctable winter. Wherever one's glance turned nature showed every- where like a dark, cold, bottomless pit, whence neither Kirilov nor Aboguin nor the red half-moon could escape. . . .
The nearer the carriage approached the destination the more impatient did Aboguin become. He moved about, jumped up and stared over the driver's shoulder in front of him. And when at last the carriage drew up at the foot of the grand staircase, nicely covered with a striped linen awning and he looked up at the lighted windows of the first floor one could hear his breath trembling.
"If anything happens ... I shan't survive it," he said, entering the hall with the doctor and slowly rubbing his hands in his agitation. "But I can't hear any noise. Thal means it's all right so far," he added, listening to the stillness.
No voices or steps were heard in the hall. For all the bright illumination the whole house seemed asleep. Now the doctor "Jld Aboguin who had been in darkness up till now could ^minu each other. The doctor was tall, with a st^p, slovenly dressed, and his face was plai:l. There was some^ thing unpleasantly sharp, ungracious, and :.evere in his thick negro lips, his aquiline nose and his faded, indifferent look. His tangled hair, his sunken temples, the early grey in his long thin beard, that showed his .shining chin, his pale grey complexion and the slipshod awkwardness of his manners— the hardness of it all suggested to the mind bad times under- gone, an unjust lot and weariness of life and men. To look at the hard figure of the you could not believe that he had a wife and could weep over his child. Aboguin revealed something different. He was robust, solid and fair-haired, with a big head and large, yet soft, features, exquisitely dressed in the latest fashion. In his carriage, his tight-buttoned coat and his mane of hair you felt something noble and leonine. He walked with his head straight and his chest prominent, he spoke in a pleasant baritone, and in his manner of re- moving his scascarf or arranging his hair there appeared a subtle, almost feminine, elegance. Even his pallor and child- ish fear as he glanced upwards to the staircase while taking off his coat, did not di&urb his carriage or take from the satisfaction, the health and aplomb which his figure breathed.
"There's no one about, nothing I can hear," he said, walk- ing upstairs. "Xo commotion. ::\lay God be good!"
He accompanied the doctor through the hall to a large salon, where a big piano showed dark and a lustre hung in a white cover. Thence they both passed into a small and beau- tiful drawing-room, very cosy, filled with a pleasant, rosy half-darkness.
"Please sit here a moment. Doctor," said Aboguin, "I . . . [ won't be a second. I'll just have a look and tell them."
Kirilov was left alone. The luxury of the drawing-room, the pleasant half-darkness, even his presence in a stranger's unfamiliar ho^ evidently did not move him. He sat in a chair looking at his hands burnt with carbolic acid. He had oo more fhan a glimpse of tht- bright red lampsbatie, the
ENEMIES 47
'tello case, and when he looked sideways across the room to where the dock was ticking, he noticed a stuffed wolf, as solid and satisfied as Aboguin himself.
It was still. . . . Somewhere far away in the other rooms someone uttered a loud "Ah!" A glass door, probably a cup- board door, rang, and again everything was still. After five minutes had passed, Kirilov did not look at his hands any more. He raised his eyes to the door through which Aboguin had disappeared.
Aboguin was standing on the threshold, but not the same man as went out. The expression of satisfaction and subtle elegance had disappeared from him. His face and hands, the attitude of his body were distorted with a disgusting expres- sion either of horror or of tormenting physical pain. His nose, lips, moustache, all his features were moving and as it were trving to tear themselves away from his face, but the eyes were as though laughing from pain.
Aboguin took a long heavy step into the middle of the room, stooped, moaned, and shook his fists.
"Deceived!" he cried. emphasising the syllable cei. "She deceived me! She's gone! She fell ill and sent me for the doctor only to run away with this fool Papchinsky. My God!"