The small manor-house to which Lavretsky had come and in which two years
before Glafira Petrovna had breathed her last, had been built in the
preceding century of solid pine-wood; it looked ancient, but it was
still strong enough to stand another fifty years or more. Lavretsky made
the tour of all the rooms, and to the great discomfiture of the aged
languid flies, settled under the lintels and covered with white dust,
he ordered the windows to be opened everywhere; they had not been opened
ever since the death of Glafira Petrovna. Everything in the house had
remained as it was; the thin-legged white miniature couches in the
drawing-room, covered with glossy grey stuff, threadbare and rickety,
vividly suggested the days of Catherine; in the drawing-room, too, stood
the mistress’s favourite arm-chair, with high straight back, against
which she never leaned even in her old age. On the principal wall hung
a very old portrait of Fedor’s great-grandfather, Andrey Lavretsky;
the dark yellow face was scarcely distinguishable from the warped
and blackened background; the small cruel eyes looked grimly out from
beneath the eyelids, which dropped as if they were swollen; his black
unpowdered hair rose bristling above his heavy indented brow. In the
corner of the portrait hung a wreath of dusty immortelles. “Glafira
Petrovna herself was pleased to make it,” Anton announced. In the
bedroom stood a narrow bedstead, under a canopy of old-fashioned and
very good striped material; a heap of faded cushions and a thin quilted
counterpane lay on the bed, and at the head hung a picture of the
Presentation in the Temple of the Holy Mother of God; it was the very
picture which the old maid, dying alone and forgotten by every one, had
for the last time pressed to her chilling lips. A little toilet table
of inlaid wood, with brass fittings and a warped looking-glass in a
tarnished frame stood in the window. Next to the bedroom was the little
ikon room with bare walls and a heavy case of holy images in the corner;
on the floor lay a threadbare rug spotted with wax; Glafira Petrovna
used to pray bowing to the ground upon it. Anton went away with
Lavretsky’s groom to unlock the stable and coach-house; to replace him
appeared an old woman of about the same age, with a handkerchief tied
round to her very eyebrows; her head shook, and her eyes were dim, but
they expressed zeal, the habit of years of submissive service, and at
the same time a kind of respectful commiseration. She kissed Lavretsky’s
hand and stood still in the doorway awaiting his orders. He positively
could not recollect her name and did not even remember whether he had
ever seen her. Her name, it appeared, was Apraxya; forty years before,
Glafira Petrovna had put her out of the master’s house and ordered that
she should be a poultry woman. She said little, however; she seemed
to have lost her senses from old age, and could only gaze at him
obsequiously. Besides these two old creatures and three pot-bellied
children in long smocks, Anton’s great-grandchildren, there was also
living in the manor-house a one-armed peasant, who was exempted from
servitude; he muttered like a woodcock and was of no use for anything.
Not much more useful was the decrepit dog who had saluted Lavretsky’s
return by its barking; he had been for ten years fastened up by a heavy
chain, purchased at Glafira Petrovna’s command, and was scarcely able to
move and drag the weight of it. Having looked over the house, Lavretsky
went into the garden and was very much pleased with it. It was all
overgrown with high grass, and burdock, and gooseberry and raspberry
bushes, but there was plenty of shade, and many old lime-trees, which
were remarkable for their immense size and the peculiar growth of their
branches; they had been planted too close and at some time or other--a
hundred years before--they had been lopped. At the end of the garden
was a small clear pool bordered with high reddish rushes. The traces of
human life very quickly pass away; Glafira Petrovna’s estate had not
had time to become quite wild, but already it seemed plunged in that
quiet slumber in which everything reposes on earth where there is not
the infection of man’s restlessness. Fedor Ivanitch walked also through
the village; the peasant-women stared at him from the doorways of their
huts, their cheeks resting on their hands; the peasants saluted him from
a distance, the children ran out, and the dogs barked indifferently. At
last he began to feel hungry; but he did not expect his servants and his
cook till the evening; the waggons of provisions from Lavriky had not
come yet, and he had to have recourse to Anton. Anton arranged matters
at once; he caught, killed, and plucked an old hen; Apraxya gave it a
long rubbing and cleaning, and washed it like linen before putting it
into the stew-pan; when, at last, it was cooked Anton laid the cloth
and set the table, placing beside the knife and fork a three-legged
salt-cellar of tarnished plate and a cut decanter with a round glass
stopper and a narrow neck; then he announced to Lavretsky in a sing-song
voice that the meal was ready, and took his stand behind his chair,
with a napkin twisted round his right fist, and diffusing about him
a peculiar strong ancient odour, like the scent of a cypress-tree.
Lavretsky tried the soup, and took out the hen; its skin was all covered
with large blisters; a tough tendon ran up each leg; the meat had a
flavour of wood and soda. When he had finished dinner, Lavretsky said
that he would drink a cup of tea, if--“I will bring it this minute,” the
old man interrupted. And he kept his word. A pinch of tea was hunted
up, twisted in a screw of red paper; a small but very fiery and
loudly-hissing samovar was found, and sugar too in small lumps, which
looked as if they were thawing. Lavretsky drank tea out of a large cup;
he remembered this cup from childhood; there were playing-cards depicted
upon it, only visitors used to drink out of it--and here was he drinking
out if like a visitor. In the evening his servants came; Lavretsky did
not care to sleep in his aunt’s bed; he directed them put him up a bed
in the dining-room. After extinguishing his candle he stared for a long
time about him and fell into cheerless reflection; he experienced that
feeling which every man knows whose lot it is to pass the night in a
place long uninhabited; it seemed to him that the darkness surrounding
him on all sides could not be accustomed to the new inhabitant, the
very walls of the house seemed amazed. At last he sighed, drew up the
counterpane round him and fell asleep. Anton remained up after all the
rest of the household; he was whispering a long while with Apraxya, he
sighed in an undertone, and twice he crossed himself; they had
neither of them expected that their master would settle among them at
Vassilyevskoe when he had not far off such a splendid estate with such
a capitally built house; they did not suspect that the very house was
hateful to Lavretsky; it stirred painful memories within him. Having
gossiped to his heart’s content, Anton took a stick and struck the night
watchman’s board, which had hung silent for so many years, and laid down
to sleep in the courtyard with no covering on his white head. The May
night was mild and soft, and the old man slept sweetly.