«And suddenly the gods will be angered,» said Kovrin jokingly. «But it would hardly be to my taste if they were to steal my happiness and force me to shiver and starve.»
Tánya awoke, and looked at her husband with amazement and terror. He spoke, he turned to the chair, he gesticulated, and laughed; his eyes glittered and his laughter sounded strange.
«Andrusha, whom are you speaking to?» she asked, seizing the hand which he had stretched out to the monk. «Andrusha, who is it?»
«Who?» answered Kovrin. «Why, the monk!… He is sitting there.» He pointed to the Black Monk.
«There is no one there, … no one, Andrusha; you are ill.»
Tánya embraced her husband, and, pressing against him as if to defend him against the apparition, covered his eyes with her hand.
«You are ill,» she sobbed, trembling all over. «Forgive me, darling, but for a long time I have fancied you were unnerved in some way…. You are ill, … psychically, Andrusha.»
The shudder communicated itself to him. He looked once more at the chair, now empty, and suddenly felt weakness in his arms and legs. He began to dress. «It is nothing, Tánya, nothing, …» he stammered, and still shuddered. «But I am a little unwell…. It is time to recognise it.»
«I have noticed it for a long time, and father noticed it,» she said, trying to restrain her sobs. «You have been speaking so funnily to yourself, and smiling so strangely, … and you do not sleep. O, my God, my God, save us!» she cried in terror. «But do not be afraid, Andrusha, do not fear, … for God’s sake do not be afraid….»
She also dressed…. It was only as he looked at her that Kovrin understood the danger of his position, and realised the meaning of the Black Monk and of their conversations. It became plain to him that he was mad.
Both, themselves not knowing why, dressed and went into the hall; she first, he after her. There they found Yegor Semiónovitch in his dressing-gown. He was staying with them, and had been awakened by Tánya’s sobs.
«Do not be afraid, Andrusha,» said Tánya, trembling as if in fever. «Do not be afraid … father, this will pass off … it will pass off.»
Kovrin was so agitated that he could hardly speak. But he tried to treat the matter as a joke. He turned to his father-in-law and attempted to say: «Congratulate me … it seems I have gone out of my mind.» But his lips only moved, and he smiled bitterly.
At nine o’clock they put on his overcoat and a fur cloak, wrapped him up in a shawl, and drove him to the doctor’s. He began a course of treatment.
VIII
Again summer. By the doctor’s orders Kovrin returned to the country. He had recovered his health, and no longer saw the Black Monk. It only remained for him to recruit his physical strength. He lived with his father-in-law, drank much milk, worked only two hours a day, never touched wine, and gave up smoking.
On the evening of the 19th June, before Elijah’s day, a vesper service was held in the house. When the priest took the censor from the sexton, and the vast hall began to smell like a church, Kovrin felt tired. He went into the garden. Taking no notice of the gorgeous blossoms around him he walked up and down, sat for a while on a bench, and then walked through the park. He descended the sloping bank to the margin of the river, and stood still, looking questioningly at the water. The great pines, with their shaggy roots, which a year before had seen him so young, so joyous, so active, no longer whispered, but stood silent and motionless, as if not recognising him…. And, indeed, with his short-dipped hair, his feeble walk, and his changed face, so heavy and pale and changed since last year, he would hardly have been recognised anywhere.
He crossed the stream. In the field, last year covered with rye, lay rows of reaped oats. The sun had set, and on the horizon flamed a broad, red afterglow, fore-telling stormy weather. All was quiet; and, gazing towards the point at which a year before he had first seen the Black Monk, Kovrin stood twenty minutes watching the crimson fade. When he returned to the house, tired and unsatisfied, Yegor Semiónovitch and Tánya were sitting on the steps of the terrace, drinking tea. They were talking together, and, seeing Kovrin, stopped. But Kovrin knew by their faces that they had been speaking of him.
«It is time for you to have your milk,» said Tánya to her husband.
«No, not yet,» he answered, sitting down on the lowest step. «You drink it. I do not want it.» Tánya timidly exchanged glances with her father, and said in a guilty voice:
«You know very well that the milk does you good.»
«Yes, any amount of good,» laughed Kovrin. «I congratulate you, I have gained a pound in weight since last Friday.» He pressed his hands to his head and said in a pained voice: «Why … why have you cured me? Bromide mixtures, idleness, warm baths, watching in trivial terror over every mouthful, every step … all this in the end will drive me to idiocy. I had gone out of my mind … I had the mania of greatness. … But for all that I was bright, active, and even happy…. I was interesting and original. Now I have become rational and solid, just like the rest of the world. I am a mediocrity, and it is tiresome for me to live…. Oh, how cruelly… how cruelly you have treated me! I had hallucinations … but what harm did that cause to anyone? I ask you what harm?»
«God only knows what you mean!» sighed Yegor Semiónovitch. «It is stupid even to listen to you.»
«Then you need not listen.»
The presence of others, especially of Yegor Semiónovitch, now irritated Kovrin; he answered his father-in-law drily, coldly, even rudely, and could not look on him without contempt and hatred. And Yegor Semiónovitch felt confused, and coughed guiltily, although he could not see how he was in the wrong. Unable to understand the cause of such a sudden reversal of their former hearty relations, Tánya leaned against her father, and looked with alarm into his eyes. It was becoming plain to her that their relations every day grew worse and worse, that her father had aged greatly, and that her husband had become irritable, capricious, excitable, and uninteresting. She no longer laughed and sang, she ate nothing, and whole nights never slept, but lived under the weight of some impending terror, torturing herself so much that she lay insensible from dinner-time till evening. When the service was being held, it had seemed to her that her father was crying; and now as she sat on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.
«How happy were Buddha and Mahomet and Shakespeare that their kind-hearted kinsmen and doctors did not cure them of ecstacy and inspiration!» said Kovrin. «If Mahomet had taken potassium bromide for his nerves, worked only two hours a day, and drunk milk, that astonishing man would have left as little behind him as his dog. Doctors and kind-hearted relatives only do their best to make humanity stupid, and the time will come when mediocrity will be considered genius, and humanity will perish. If you only had some idea,» concluded Kovrin peevishly, «if you only had some idea how grateful I am!» He felt strong irritation, and to prevent himself saying too much, rose and went into the house. It was a windless night, and into the window was borne the smell of tobacco plants and jalap. Through the windows of the great dark hall, on the floor and on the piano, fell the moonrays. Kovrin recalled the raptures of the summer before, when the air, as now, was full of the smell of jalap and the moonrays poured through the window…. To awaken the mood of last year he went to his room, lighted a strong cigar, and ordered the servant to bring him wine. But now the cigar was bitter and distasteful, and the wine had lost its flavour of the year before. How much it means to get out of practice! From a single cigar, and two sips of wine, his head went round, and he was obliged to take bromide of potassium.
Before going to bed Tánya said to him:
«Listen. Father worships you, but you are annoyed with him about something, and that is killing him. Look at his face; he is growing old, not by days but by hours! I implore you, Andrusha, for the love of Christ, for the sake of your own dead father, for the sake of my peace of mind—be kind to him again!»
«I cannot, and I do not want to.»
«But why?» Tánya trembled all over. «Explain to me why!»
«Because I do not like him; that is all,» answered Kovrin carelessly, shrugging his shoulders. «But better not talk of that; he is your father.»
«I cannot, cannot understand,» said Tánya. She pressed her hands to her forehead and fixed her eyes on one point. «Something terrible, something incomprehensible is going on in this house. You, Ahdrusha, have changed; you are no longer yourself…. You—a clever, an exceptional man—get irritated over trifles. … You are annoyed by such little things that at any other time you yourself would have refused to believe it. No … do
