The Duel and Other Stories | Page 4

a helpless child, he asked:
"Is your mother living?"
"Yes, but we are on bad terms. She could not forgive me for this
affair."
Samoylenko was fond of his friend. He looked upon Laevsky as a
good-natured fellow, a student, a man with no nonsense about him,
with whom one could drink, and laugh, and talk without reserve. What
he understood in him he disliked extremely. Laevsky drank a great deal
and at unsuitable times; he played cards, despised his work, lived
beyond his means, frequently made use of unseemly expressions in
conversation, walked about the streets in his slippers, and quarrelled
with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna before other people--and Samoylenko did
not like this. But the fact that Laevsky had once been a student in the
Faculty of Arts, subscribed to two fat reviews, often talked so cleverly
that only a few people understood him, was living with a well-educated
woman--all this Samoylenko did not understand, and he liked this and
respected Laevsky, thinking him superior to himself.
"There is another point," said Laevsky, shaking his head. "Only it is
between ourselves. I'm concealing it from Nadyezhda Fyodorovna for
the time. . . . Don't let it out before her. . . . I got a letter the day before
yesterday, telling me that her husband has died from softening of the
brain."
"The Kingdom of Heaven be his!" sighed Samoylenko. "Why are you
concealing it from her?"
"To show her that letter would be equivalent to 'Come to church to be
married.' And we should first have to make our relations clear. When
she understands that we can't go on living together, I will show her the

letter. Then there will be no danger in it."
"Do you know what, Vanya," said Samoylenko, and a sad and
imploring expression came into his face, as though he were going to
ask him about something very touching and were afraid of being
refused. "Marry her, my dear boy!"
"Why?"
"Do your duty to that splendid woman! Her husband is dead, and so
Providence itself shows you what to do!"
"But do understand, you queer fellow, that it is impossible. To marry
without love is as base and unworthy of a man as to perform mass
without believing in it."
"But it's your duty to."
"Why is it my duty?" Laevsky asked irritably.
"Because you took her away from her husband and made yourself
responsible for her."
"But now I tell you in plain Russian, I don't love her!"
"Well, if you've no love, show her proper respect, consider her
wishes. . . ."
"'Show her respect, consider her wishes,'" Laevsky mimicked him. "As
though she were some Mother Superior! . . . You are a poor
psychologist and physiologist if you think that living with a woman one
can get off with nothing but respect and consideration. What a woman
thinks most of is her bedroom."
"Vanya, Vanya!" said Samoylenko, overcome with confusion.
"You are an elderly child, a theorist, while I am an old man in spite of
my years, and practical, and we shall never understand one another. We
had better drop this conversation. Mustapha!" Laevsky shouted to the
waiter. "What's our bill?"
"No, no . . ." the doctor cried in dismay, clutching Laevsky's arm. "It is
for me to pay. I ordered it. Make it out to me," he cried to Mustapha.
The friends got up and walked in silence along the sea-front. When
they reached the boulevard, they stopped and shook hands at parting.
"You are awfully spoilt, my friend!" Samoylenko sighed. "Fate has sent
you a young, beautiful, cultured woman, and you refuse the gift, while
if God were to give me a crooked old woman, how pleased I should be
if only she were kind and affectionate! I would live with her in my
vineyard and . . ."

Samoylenko caught himself up and said:
"And she might get the samovar ready for me there, the old hag."
After parting with Laevsky he walked along the boulevard. When,
bulky and majestic, with a stern expression on his face, he walked
along the boulevard in his snow-white tunic and superbly polished
boots, squaring his chest, decorated with the Vladimir cross on a ribbon,
he was very much pleased with himself, and it seemed as though the
whole world were looking at him with pleasure. Without turning his
head, he looked to each side and thought that the boulevard was
extremely well laid out; that the young cypress-trees, the eucalyptuses,
and the ugly, anemic palm-trees were very handsome and would in
time give abundant shade; that the Circassians were an honest and
hospitable people.
"It's strange that Laevsky does not like the Caucasus," he thought,
"very strange."
Five soldiers, carrying rifles, met him and saluted him. On the right