But now four years had passed, and on a quiet, warm morning a letter was-delivered at the hospital. Mrs. Turkin informed Dr. Startsev that she greatly missed his company, and asked him to visit her without fail to relieve her sufferings. And by the way today was her birthday.
Below was a postscript:
'I join in Mummy's request. 'C.'
After some thought Startsev drove off to the Turkins' that evening.
'Ah! Pleased to meet you, I'm sure,' Mr. Turkin greeted him, smiling only with his eyes. 'And a very bon jour to you.'
White-haired, looking much older, Mrs. Turkin shook hands with Startsev and sighed affectedly.
'You refuse to be my boy-friend, Doctor,' she said. 'And you never come and see us. I'm too old for you, but there's someone younger here. Perhaps she'll have better luck.'
And what of Pussy? She was slimmer, paler, more handsome, more graceful. Now she was Pussy no longer, but Miss Catherine Turkin— her former freshness and childlike innocent look were gone. In her glance and manner, too, there was a new quality of hesitation or guilt, as if she no longer felt at home here in the family house.
'It seems ages since we met,' she said, giving Startsev her hand, and one could tell that her heart was beating apprehensively. 'How you have filled out.' she went on, staring inquisitively at his face. 'You're sunburnt, you're more mature, but you haven't changed much on the whole.'
She still attracted him, very much so, but now there was something missing ... or added. Just what it was he couldn't have said, but something prevented him from feeling as before. He disliked her pallor, her new expression, her faint smile and voice. Before long he was disliking her dress and the arm-chair in which she sat—disliking, too, something about the past when he had come near to marrying her. He remembered his love, remembered the dreams and hopes which had disturbed him four years ago. And felt uncomfortable.
They had tea and cake. Then Mrs. Turkin read them a Novel, all about things which never happen in real life—while Startsev listened, looked at her handsome, white head, and waited for her to finish.
'A mediocrity is not someone who can't write novels,' he reflected. 'It's someone who writes them and can't keep quiet about it.'
'Not so dusty,' said Mr. Turkin.
Then Catherine played long and noisily on the piano, and when she stopped there were lengthy expressions of delighted appreciation.
'Lucky I didn't marry her,' thought Startsev.
She looked at him, evidently expecting him to suggest going into the garden, but he did not speak.
'Well, let's talk,' she said, going up to him. 'How .ire you? What's your news, eh ?
'I've been thinking about you a lot lately,' she went on nervously. 'I wanted to write to you, wanted to go to Dyalizh myself and sec you. I did decide to go, actually, then changed my mind—heaven knows how you feel about me now. I was so excited today, waiting for you to come. For God's sake let's go into the garden.'
They went into the garden and sat down on the bench under the old maple, as they had four years earlier. It was dark.
'How are you then?' Catherine said.
'Not so bad,' Startsev answered. 'I manage.'
That was all he could think of sayihg. There was a pause.
'I'm so excited,' Catherine said, covering her face with her hands. 'But don't let that worry you. I'm happy to be home, so glad to sec everyone. I just can't get used to it. What a lot of memories! I thought we should go on talking and talking till morning.'
Now he could see her face, her shining eyes near by. Out here in the darkness she looked younger than indoors, and even her old childlike expression seemed to' have returned. She was, indeed, gazing at him with naive curiosity, as ifseeking a closer view and understanding ofa man who had once loved her so ardently, so tenderly, so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for that love. He remembered what had happened, all the little details—how he had strolled round the cemetery and then gone home exhausted in the small hours. Suddenly he felt sadness and regret for the past, and a spark seemed to come alight inside him.
'Remember how I took you to the club dance?' he said. 'It was dark and rainy-'
The spark inside him was flaring up, and now he felt the urge to speak, to complain about life.
'Ah me,' he sighed. 'Here are you asking about my life. But how do we live here? The answer is, we don't. We grow old and stout, we run to seed. One day follows another, and life passes drearily without impressions or ideas. There's earning your living by day, there's the club of an evening in the company of card-players, alcoholics and loud-mouthed fellows I can't stand. What's good about that?'
'But you have your work, an honourable ambition. You used to like talking about your hospital so much. I was an odd girl in those days, thinking myself a great pianist. Young ladies all play the piano nowadays, and I was just one more of them—nothing remarkable about me. I'm about as much of a pianist as Mother is a writer. I didn't understand you at the time, of course. But in Moscow, later, I often thought of you—in fact I thought of nothing but you. What happiness to be a country doctor, to help the suffering, to serve ordinary people.
'What happiness !' Catherine repeated eagerly. 'When I thought of you in Moscow you seemed so admirable, so superior.'
Startsev remembered the bank-notes which he so much enjoyed taking out ofhis pockets in the evenings, and the spark died inside him.
He got up to go into the house, and she took him by the arm.
'You're the best person I've ever kno^,' she went on. 'We shall meet and talk, shan't we? Do promise. I'm no pianist. I've no illusions left, and I won't play music or talk about it when you're there.'
When they were in the house and Startsev saw her face in the lamplight and her sad, grateful, inquiring eyes fixed on him, he felt uneasy.
'Lucky I never married her,' he thought again.
He began to take his leave.
'You ain't got no statutory right to leave withoutsupper,' Mr. Turkin said as he saw him off. 'Highly perpendicular of you in fact. Well, go on—perform!' he added, addressing Peacock in the hall.
Peacock—now no longer a boy, but a young man with a moustache —struck an attitude, threw up an arm.
'Unhappy woman, die!' he declaimed tragically.
All this irritated Startsev. Climbing into his carriage, he looked at the dark house and garden once so dear and precious to him. It all came back to him at once: Mrs. Turkin's 'novels', Pussy's noisy piano- playing, Mr. Turkin's wit, Peacock's tragic posturings. What, he asked himself, could be said ofa town in which the most brilliant people were so dim?
Three days later Peacock brought a letter from Catherine.
'Why don't you come and see us?' she wrote. 'I'm afraid your feelings for us have changed. I'm afraid—the very idea terrifies me. Do set my mind at rest. Do come and tell me that all is well.
'I simply must talk to you.
'Your 'C. T.'
He read the letter.
'Tell them I can't manage it today, my good fellow, I'm very busy,' he told Peacock after some thought. 'Tell them I'll come over—oh, in a couple of days.'
But three days passed, and then a week—and still he did not go. Once, when driving past the Turkins' house, he remembered that he should at least pay a brief call. But then he thought again. And did not.
Never again did he visit the Turkins.
v
A few more years have passed. Startsev has put on yet more weight —grown really fat. He breathes heavily and goes about with his head thrown back. Plump, red-faced, he drives in his troika with the bells, while Panteleymon—also plump, also red-faced, with a thick, fleshy neck—sits on the box holding his arms straight ahead as if they were wooden.
'Keep to the r-i-ight !' he bellows at oncoming traffic.
It is an impressive scene, suggesting that the passenger is not a man, but a pagan god.