He left the room, and Olga Ivanovna heard him giving an order. To avoid good-byes and explanations, still more to prevent herself sobbing, she went quickly into the hall, pui on her goloshes, and went out. Once in the street she sighed faintly. She felt that she was for ever rid of Riabovsky and painting, and the heavy shame which had crushed her in the studio. All was over! She drove to her dressmaker, then to Barnay, who had arrived the day before, and from Barnay to a music shop, thinking all the time how she would write Riabovsky a cold, hard letter, full of her own worth; and that the spring and summer she would spend with Dymov in the Crimea, free herself for ever from the past, and begin life anew.
On her return, late as usual, she sat in her street clothes in the drawing-room, and prepared to write. Riabovsky had +.old her she \vas no artist; in revenge she would write that he had painted every year one and the same tiresome thing, that he had exhausted himself, and would never again pro- duce original work. She would write also that he owed much to her beneficent influence; and that if he made mistakes it was only because her influence was paralysed by various «.mbiguous personages who hid behind his pictures.
"Mama!" cried Dymov from his study, without opening the door.
"What is it?"
"Mama, don't come in, but just come to the door. It is this. The day before yesterday I took diphtheria at the hospital, and now ... I feel bad. Send at once for Koro- stelev."
Olga Ivanovna called her husband and men-friends by thei: surnames; she disliked his name Osip, which reminded hei of Gogol's Osip, and the pun "Osip okrip, a Arkhip osip." But this time she cried—
"Osip, that is impossible!"
"Send! I am ill," said Dymov from behmd the door; and she heard him walking to the sofa and lying down. "Send! " came his hoarse voice.
"What can it be?" thoughi Olga Ivanovna, chilled with fear. this is dangerous!"
Without any aim she took a candle, and went into her room, and there, wondering what she should do, she saw herself unexpectedly in the glass. With her pale, terrified face, her high-sleeved jacket with the yellow gathers on the breast, her skirt with its strange stripes, she seemed to herself fright- ful and repulsive. And suddenly she felt sorry for Dymov, sorry for his infinite love, his young life, the forsaken bed on which he had not slept so long. And remembering his kindly, suppliant smile, she cried bitterly, and wrote Koro- stelev an imploring letter. It. was two o'clock in the morning.
viii
When at eight next morning Olga Ivanovna, heavy from sleeplessness, untidy, unattractive, and guilty-faced, came out of her bedroom, an unknown., black-bearded man, ob- viously a doctor, passed her in the hall. There was a smell of drugs. Outside Dymov's study stood Korostelev, twisting his left moustache with his right hand.
"Excuse me, I cannot let you in," he said, looking at her savagely. "You might catch the disease. And in any case, what's the use? He's raving."
"Is it really diphtheria?" whispered Olga Ivanovna.
''People who do foolish things ought to pay for them," muttered Korostelev, ignoring Olga Ivanovna's question. "Do you know how he got this diphtheria? On Tuesday he sucked through a tube the diphtheria laminre from a boy's throat. And why? Stupid. . . . Like a fool!"
"Is it dangerous? Very?" asked she.
"Yes, it's a very bad form, they say. We must send for Schreck, we must . . ."
First came a little, red-haired, long-nosed man with a Jewish accent; then a tall, stooping, untidy man like a proto-deacon; lastly a young, very stout, red-faced man with spectacles.
\11 these doctors came to attend their sick colleague. K.orostelev, having served his turn, remained in the house, wandering about like a shadow. The maid-servant was kept msy serving the doctors with tea, and running to the apothe- :ary's, and no one tidied the rooms. All was still and sad.
Olga Ivanovna sat in her room, and reflected that God was punishing her for deceiving her husband. That silent, un- :omplaining, inexplicable man—impersonified, it seemed, by dndness and mildness, weak from excessive goodness—lay m his sofa and suffered alone, uttering no groan. And if he iid complain in his delirium, the doctors would guess that :he diphtheria was not the only culprit. They would question Korostelev, who knew all, and not without cause looked viciously at his friend's wife as if she were chief and real iffender, and disease only her accomplice. She no longer thought of the moonlight Volga night, the love avowal, the romance of life in the peasant's hut; she remembered only that from caprice and selfishness she had smeared herself from head to feet with something vile and sticky which no washing would wash away.
"Akh, how I lied to him!" she said, remembering her rest- less love of Riabovsky. "May it be accursed!"
At four o'clock she dined with Korostelev, who ate noth- ing, but drank red wine, and frowned. She too ate nothing. But she prayed silently, and vowed to God that if Dymov only recovered, she would love him again and be his faithful wife. Then, forgetting herself for a moment, she looked at Korostelev and thought: "How tiresome it is to be such a simple, undistinguished, obscure man, and to have such bad manners." It seemed to her that God would strike her dead for her cowardice in keeping away from her husband. And altogether she was oppressed by a dead melancholy, and a feeling that her life was ruined, and that nothing now would mend it.
After dinner, darkness. Olga Ivanovna went into the draw- ing-room, and found Korostelev asleep on a couch, his head resting on a silken cushion embroidered with gold. He snored loudly.
Alone the doctors, coming on and off duty, ignored the dis- order. The strange man sleeping and snoring in the drawing- room, the studies on the walls, the wonderful decorations, the mistress's dishevelled hair and untidy dress—none of these awakened the least interest. One of the doctors laughed; and this laugh had such a timid sound that it was painful to hear.
When next Olga Ivanovna entered the drawing-room Korostelev was awake. He sat up and smoked.
"He has got diphtheria . . . in the nasal cavity," he said 1uietly. "Yes . . . and his heart is weak. . . . It is a bad business."
"Better send for Schreck," said Olga Ivanovna.
"He's been. It was he noticed that the diphtheria had got into the nose. Yes . . . but what is Schreck? In reality, Schreck is nothing. He is Schreck, I am Korostelev, and nothing more!"
Time stretched into eternity. Olga Ivanovna lay dressed on her unmade bed, and slumbered. She felt that the whole flat from roof to ceiling was filled with a giant block of iron, and that if the iron were only removed, all would be well again. But then she remembered that there was no iron, but only Dymov's illness.
"Nature morte . . ." she thought, again losing conscious- ness. "Sport, kurort. . . . And what about Schreck? Schreck, greck, vreck, kreck. Where are my friends now? Do they know of the sorrow that has overtaken us? 0 Lord, save . . . deliver us! Schreck, greck. . . ."
And again the iron. Time stretched into eternity, and the clock downstairs struck innumerable times. Now and then the bell was rung. Doctors came. . . . In came the servant with an empty glass on a salver, and said—
"Shal! I make the bed, ma'am?"
And, receiving no answer, she went ont. Again the clock struck—-dreams of rain on the Volga—and again some one arrived, this time, it seemed, a stranger. Olga Ivanovn- started, and saw Korostelev.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"About three."
"Well, what?"
"Just that. I came to say that he's dying."
He sobbed, sat down on her bed, and wiped away his icc1rs with his sleeve. At first Olga Ivanovna understood nothii'!g; then she turned cold, and began to cross herself.
"He is dying," he repeated in a thin voice; and again he sobbed. "He is dying—because he sacrificed himself. What a loss to science!" He spoke bitterly. "This man, compared with the best of us, was a great 'man, an exceptional man! What gifts! What hopes he awakened in us all!" Korostelev wrung his hands. "Lord, my God, you will not find such a scholar if you search till judgment day! Oska Dymov, Oska Dymov, what have you done? My God!"