A Lear of the Steppes, etc.

‘His mare it is, to be sure; but as to selling, he never sold her. But they took her away from him, and handed her over to that peasant.’

‘How, took it? And he consented?’

‘They never asked his consent. Things have changed here in your absence,’ Prokofy observed. With a faint smile in response to my look of amazement; ‘worse luck! My goodness, yes! Now Sletkin’s master, and orders every one about.’

‘But Martin Petrovitch?’

‘Why, Martin Petrovitch has become the very last person here, you may say. He’s on bread and water, – what more can one say? They’ve crushed him altogether. Mark my words; they’ll drive him out of the house.’

The idea that it was possible to drive such a giant had never entered my head. ‘And what does Zhitkov say to it?’ I asked at last. ‘I suppose he’s married to the second daughter?’

‘Married?’ repeated Prokofy, and this time he grinned all over his face. ‘They won’t let him into the house. “We don’t want you,” they say; “get along home with you.” It’s as I said; Sletkin directs every one.’

‘But what does the young lady say?’

‘Evlampia Martinovna? Ah, master, I could tell you … but you’re young – one must think of that. Things are going on here that are … oh!.. oh!.. oh! Hey! why Dianka’s setting, I do believe!’

My dog actually had stopped short, before a thick oak bush which bordered a narrow ravine by the roadside. Prokofy and I ran up to the dog; a snipe flew up out of the bush, we both fired at it and missed; the snipe settled in another place; we followed it.

The soup was already on the table when I got back. My mother scolded me. ‘What’s the meaning of it?’ she said with displeasure; ‘the very first day, and you keep us waiting for dinner.’ I brought her the wild snipe I had killed; she did not even look at them. There were also in the room Souvenir, Kvitsinsky, and Zhitkov. The retired major was huddled in a corner, for all the world like a schoolboy in disgrace. His face wore an expression of mingled confusion and annoyance; his eyes were red… One might positively have imagined he had recently been in tears. My mother remained in an ill humour. I was at no great pains to surmise that my late arrival did not count for much in it. During dinner-time she hardly talked at all. The major turned beseeching glances upon her from time to time, but ate a good dinner nevertheless. Souvenir was all of a shake. Kvitsinsky preserved his habitual self-confidence of demeanour.

‘Vikenty Osipitch,’ my mother addressed him, ‘I beg you to send a carriage to-morrow for Martin Petrovitch, since it has come to my knowledge that he has none of his own. And bid them tell him to come without fail, that I desire to see him.’

Kvitsinsky was about to make some rejoinder, but he restrained himself.

‘And let Sletkin know,’ continued my mother, ‘that I command him to present himself before me… Do you hear? I com … mand!’

‘Yes, just so … that scoundrel ought – ’ Zhitkov was beginning in a subdued voice; but my mother gave him such a contemptuous look, that he promptly turned away and was silent.

‘Do you hear? I command!’ repeated my mother.

‘Certainly, madam,’ Kvitsinsky replied submissively but with dignity.

‘Martin Petrovitch won’t come!’ Souvenir whispered to me, as he came out of the dining-room with me after dinner. ‘You should just see what’s happened to him! It’s past comprehension! It’s come to this, that whatever they say to him, he doesn’t understand a word! Yes! They’ve got the snake under the pitch-fork!’

And Souvenir went off into his revolting laugh.

XVII

Souvenir’s prediction turned out correct. Martin Petrovitch would not come to my mother. She was not at all pleased with this, and despatched a letter to him. He sent her a square bit of paper, on which the following words were written in big letters: ‘Indeed I can’t. I should die of shame. Let me go to my ruin. Thanks. Don’t torture me. – Martin Harlov.’ Sletkin did come, but not on the day on which my mother had ‘commanded’ his attendance, but twenty-four hours later. My mother gave orders that he should be shown into her boudoir… God knows what their interview was about, but it did not last long; a quarter of an hour, not more. Sletkin came out of my mother’s room, crimson all over, and with such a viciously spiteful and insolent expression of face, that, meeting him in the drawing-room, I was simply petrified, while Souvenir, who was hanging about there, stopped short in the middle of a snigger. My mother came out of her boudoir, also very red in the face, and announced, in the hearing of all, that Mr. Sletkin was never, upon any pretext, to be admitted to her presence again, and that if Martin Petrovitch’s daughters were to make bold – they’ve impudence enough, said she – to present themselves, they, too, were to be refused admittance. At dinner-time she suddenly exclaimed, ‘The vile little Jew! I picked him out of the gutter, I made him a career, he owes everything, everything to me, – and he dares to tell me I’ve no business to meddle in their affairs! that Martin Petrovitch is full of whims and fancies, and it’s impossible to humour him! Humour him, indeed! What a thing to say! Ah, he’s an ungrateful wretch! An insolent little Jew!’

Major Zhitkov, who happened to be one of the company at dinner, imagined that now it was no less than the will of the Almighty for him to seize the opportunity and put in his word … but my mother promptly settled him. ‘Well, and you’re a fine one, too, my man!’ she commented. ‘Couldn’t get the upper hand of a girl, and he an officer! In command of a squadron! I can fancy how it obeyed you! He take a steward’s place indeed! a fine steward he’d make!’

Kvitsinsky, who was sitting at the end of the table, smiled to himself a little malignantly, while poor Zhitkov could do nothing but twitch his moustaches, lift his eyebrows, and bury the whole of his hirsute countenance in his napkin.

After dinner, he went out on to the steps to smoke his pipe as usual, and he struck me as so miserable and forlorn, that, although I had never liked him, I joined myself on to him at once.

‘How was it, Gavrila Fedulitch,’ I began without further beating about the bush, ‘that your affair with Evlampia Martinovna was broken off? I’d expected you to be married long ago.’

The retired major looked at me dejectedly.

‘A snake in the grass,’ he began, uttering each letter of each syllable with bitter distinctness, ‘has poisoned me with his fang, and turned all my hopes in life to ashes. And I could tell you, Dmitri Semyonovitch, all his hellish wiles, but I’m afraid of angering your mamma.’ (‘You’re young yet’ – Prokofy’s expression flashed across my mind.) ‘Even as it is’ – Zhitkov groaned.

‘Patience … patience … nothing else is left me. (He struck his fist upon his chest.) Patience, old soldier, patience. I served the Tsar faithfully … honourably … yes. I spared neither blood nor sweat, and now see what I am brought to. Had it been in the regiment – and the matter depending upon me,’ he continued after a short silence, spent in convulsively sucking at his cherrywood pipe, ‘I’d have … I’d have given it him with the flat side of my sword … three times over … till he’d had enough…’

Zhitkov took the pipe out of his mouth, and fixed his eyes on vacancy, as though admiring the picture he had conjured up.

Souvenir ran up, and began quizzing the major. I turned away from them, and determined, come what may, I would see Martin Petrovitch with my own eyes… My boyish curiosity was greatly stirred.

XVIII

Next day I set out with my gun and dog, but without Prokofy, to the Eskovo copse. It was an exquisite day; I fancy there are no days like that in September anywhere but in Russia. The stillness was such that one could hear, a hundred paces off, the squirrel hopping over the dry leaves, and the broken twig just feebly catching at the other branches, and falling, at last, on the soft grass – to lie there for ever, not to stir again till it rotted away. The air, neither warm nor chill, but only fragrant, and as it were keen, was faintly, deliciously stinging in my eyes and on my cheeks. A long spider-web, delicate as a silken thread, with a white ball in the middle, floated smoothly in the air, and sticking to the butt-end of my gun, stretched straight out in the air – a sign of settled and warm weather. The sun shone with a brightness as soft as moonlight. Wild snipe were to be met with pretty often; but I did not pay special attention to them. I knew that the copse went on almost to Harlov’s homestead, right up to the hedge of his garden, and I turned my steps in that direction, though I could not even imagine how I should get into the place itself, and was even doubtful whether I ought to try to do so, as my mother was so angry with its new owners. Sounds of life and humanity reached me from no great distance. I listened… Some one was coming through the copse … straight towards me.

‘You should have said so straight out, dear,’ I heard a woman’s voice.

‘Be reasonable,’ another voice broke in, the voice of a man. ‘Can one do it all at once?’

I knew the voices. There was the gleam of a woman’s blue gown through the reddening nut bushes. Beside it stood a dark full coat. Another instant – and there stepped out into the glade, five paces from me, Sletkin and Evlampia.

They were disconcerted at once. Evlampia promptly stepped back, away into the bushes. Sletkin thought a little, and came up to me. There was not a trace to be seen in his face of the obsequious meekness, with which he had paced up and down Harlov’s courtyard, four months before, rubbing up my horse’s snaffle. But neither could I perceive in it the insolent defiance, which had so struck me on the previous day, on the threshold of my mother’s boudoir. It was still as white and pretty as ever, but seemed broader and more solid.

‘Well, have you shot many snipe?’ he asked me, raising his cap, smiling, and passing his hand over his black curls; ‘you are shooting in our copse… You are very welcome. We would not hinder you… Quite the contrary.’

‘I have killed nothing to-day,’ I rejoined, answering his first question; ‘and I will go out of your copse this instant.’

Sletkin hurriedly put on his cap. ‘Indeed, why so? We would not drive you out – indeed, we’re delighted… Here’s Evlampia Martinovna will say the same. Evlampia Martinovna, come here. Where have you hidden yourself?’ Evlampia’s head appeared behind the bushes. But she did not come up to us. She had grown prettier, and seemed taller and bigger than ever.

‘I’m very glad, to tell the truth,’ Sletkin went on, ‘that I have met you. Though you are still young in years, you have plenty of good sense already. Your mother was pleased to be very angry with me yesterday – she would not listen to reason of any sort from me, but I declare, as before God, so before you now, I am not to blame in any way. We can’t treat Martin Petrovitch otherwise than we do; he’s fallen into complete dotage. One can’t humour all his whims, really. But we show him all due respect. Only ask Evlampia Martinovna.’

Evlampia did not stir; her habitual scornful smile flickered about her lips, and her large eyes watched us with no friendly expression.

‘But why, Vladimir Vassilievitch, have you sold Martin Petrovitch’s mare?’ (I was particularly impressed by that mare being in the possession of a peasant.)

‘His mare, why did we sell it? Why, Lord have mercy on us – what use was she? She was simply eating her head off. But with the peasant she can work at the plough anyway. As for Martin Petrovitch, if he takes a fancy to drive out anywhere, he’s only to ask us. We wouldn’t refuse him a conveyance. On a holiday, we should be pleased.’

‘Vladimir Vassilievitch,’ said Evlampia huskily, as though calling him away, and she still did not stir from her place. She was twisting some stalks of ripple grass round her fingers and snapping off their heads, slapping them against each other.

‘About the page Maximka again,’ Sletkin went on, ‘Martin Petrovitch complains because we’ve taken him away and apprenticed him. But kindly consider the matter for yourself. Why, what had he to do waiting on Martin Petrovitch? Kick up his heels; nothing more. And he couldn’t even wait on him properly; on account of his stupidity and his youth. Now we have sent him away to a harness-maker’s. He’ll be turned into a first-rate handicraftsman – and make a good thing of it for himself – and pay us ransom-money too. And, living in a small way as we do, that’s a matter of importance. On a little farm like ours, one can’t afford to let anything slip.’

‘And this is the man Martin Petrovitch called a “poor stick,”’ I thought. ‘But who reads to Martin Petrovitch now?’ I asked.

‘Why, what is there to read? He had one book – but, luckily, that’s been mislaid somewhere… And what use is reading at his age.’

‘And who shaves him?’ I asked again.

Sletkin gave an approving laugh, as though in response to an amusing joke. ‘Why, nobody. At first he used to singe his beard in the candle – but now he lets it be altogether. And it’s lovely!’

‘Vladimir Vassilievitch!’ Evlampia repeated insistently: ‘Vladimir Vassilievitch!’