The Darling | Page 8

enjoyed by those tales and novels in which women
are beautiful, poetical, and exalted; and if the Russian has been for
years in ecstasies over Raphael's Madonna, or is eager for the
emancipation of women, I assure you there is no affectation about it.
But the trouble is that when we have been married or been intimate
with a woman for some two or three years, we begin to feel deceived
and disillusioned: we pair off with others, and again--disappointment,
again--repulsion, and in the long run we become convinced that women
are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undeveloped, cruel--in fact, far from
being superior, are immeasurably inferior to us men. And in our
dissatisfaction and disappointment there is nothing left for us but to
grumble and talk about what we've been so cruelly deceived in."
While Shamohin was talking I noticed that the Russian language and
our Russian surroundings gave him great pleasure. This was probably
because he had been very homesick abroad. Though he praised the
Russians and ascribed to them a rare idealism, he did not disparage
foreigners, and that I put down to his credit. It could be seen, too, that
there was some uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to talk more of
himself than of women, and that I was in for a long story in the nature
of a confession. And when we had asked for a bottle of wine and had
each of us drunk a glass, this was how he did in fact begin:
"I remember in a novel of Weltmann's some one says, 'So that's the
story!' and some one else answers, 'No, that's not the story-- that's only
the introduction to the story.' In the same way what I've said so far is
only the introduction; what I really want to tell you is my own love
story. Excuse me, I must ask you again; it won't bore you to listen?"
I told him it would not, and he went on:
The scene of my story is laid in the Moscow province in one of its
northern districts. The scenery there, I must tell you, is exquisite. Our
homestead is on the high bank of a rapid stream, where the water
chatters noisily day and night: imagine a big old garden, neat

flower-beds, beehives, a kitchen-garden, and below it a river with leafy
willows, which, when there is a heavy dew on them, have a lustreless
look as though they had turned grey; and on the other side a meadow,
and beyond the meadow on the upland a terrible, dark pine forest. In
that forest delicious, reddish agarics grow in endless profusion, and
elks still live in its deepest recesses. When I am nailed up in my coffin I
believe I shall still dream of those early mornings, you know, when the
sun hurts your eyes: or the wonderful spring evenings when the
nightingales and the landrails call in the garden and beyond the garden,
and sounds of the harmonica float across from the village, while they
play the piano indoors and the stream babbles . . . when there is such
music, in fact, that one wants at the same time to cry and to sing aloud.
We have not much arable land, but our pasture makes up for it, and
with the forest yields about two thousand roubles a year. I am the only
son of my father; we are both modest persons, and with my father's
pension that sum was amply sufficient for us.
The first three years after finishing at the university I spent in the
country, looking after the estate and constantly expecting to be elected
on some local assembly; but what was most important, I was violently
in love with an extraordinarily beautiful and fascinating girl. She was
the sister of our neighbour, Kotlovitch, a ruined landowner who had on
his estate pine-apples, marvellous peaches, lightning conductors, a
fountain in the courtyard, and at the same time not a farthing in his
pocket. He did nothing and knew how to do nothing. He was as flabby
as though he had been made of boiled turnip; he used to doctor the
peasants by homeopathy and was interested in spiritualism. He was,
however, a man of great delicacy and mildness, and by no means a fool,
but I have no fondness for these gentlemen who converse with spirits
and cure peasant women by magnetism. In the first place, the ideas of
people who are not intellectually free are always in a muddle, and it's
extremely difficult to talk to them; and, secondly, they usually love no
one, and have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism has an
unpleasant effect on sensitive people. I did not care for his appearance
either. He was tall, stout, white-skinned,