'In that case, oblige me by hunting here. I am a nobleman myself, and am
very pleased to do any service to a nobleman.... And my name is Panteley
Tchertop-hanov.' He bowed, hallooed, gave his horse a lash on the neck;
the horse shook its head, reared, shied, and trampled on a dog's paws.
The dog gave a piercing squeal. Tchertop-hanov boiled over with rage;
foaming at the mouth, he struck the horse with his fist on the head
between the ears, leaped to the ground quicker than lightning, looked at
the dog's paw, spat on the wound, gave it a kick in the ribs to stop its
whining, caught on to the horse's forelock, and put his foot in the
stirrup. The horse flung up its head, and with its tail in the air edged
away into the bushes; he followed it, hopping on one leg; he got into
the saddle at last, however, flourished his whip in a sort of frenzy,
blew his horn, and galloped off. I had not time to recover from the
unexpected appearance of Tchertop-hanov, when suddenly, almost without
any noise, there came out of the bushes a stoutish man of forty on a
little black nag. He stopped, took off his green leather cap, and in a
thin, subdued voice he asked me whether I hadn't seen a horseman riding
a chestnut? I answered that I had.
'Which way did the gentleman go?' he went on in the same tone, without
putting on his cap.
'Over there.'
'I humbly thank you, sir.'
He made a kissing sound with his lips, swung his legs against his
horse's sides, and fell into a jog-trot in the direction indicated. I
looked after him till his peaked cap was hidden behind the branches.
This second stranger was not in the least like his predecessor in
exterior. His face, plump and round as a ball, expressed bashfulness,
good-nature, and humble meekness; his nose, also plump and round and
streaked with blue veins, betokened a sensualist. On the front of his
head there was not a single hair left, some thin brown tufts stuck out
behind; there was an ingratiating twinkle in his little eyes, set in
long slits, and a sweet smile on his red, juicy lips. He had on a coat
with a stand-up collar and brass buttons, very worn but clean; his cloth
trousers were hitched up high, his fat calves were visible above the
yellow tops of his boots.
'Who's that?' I inquired of Yermolaï.
'That? Nedopyuskin, Tihon Ivanitch. He lives at Tchertop-hanov's.'
'What is he, a poor man?'
'He's not rich; but, to be sure, Tchertop-hanov's not got a brass
farthing either.'
'Then why does he live with him?'
'Oh, they made friends. One's never seen without the other.... It's a
fact, indeed--where the horse puts its hoof, there the crab sticks its
claw.'
We got out of the bushes; suddenly two hounds 'gave tongue' close to us,
and a big hare bounded through the oats, which were fairly high by now.
The dogs, hounds and harriers, leaped out of the thicket after him, and
after the dogs flew out Tchertop-hanov himself. He did not shout, nor
urge the dogs on, nor halloo; he was breathless and gasping; broken,
senseless sounds were jerked out of his gaping mouth now and then; he
dashed on, his eyes starting out of his head, and furiously lashed at
his luckless horse with the whip. The harriers were gaining on the
hare... it squatted for a moment, doubled sharply back, and darted past
Yermolaï into the bushes.... The harriers rushed in pursuit. 'Lo-ok out!
lo-ok out!' the exhausted horseman articulated with effort, in a sort of
stutter: 'lo-ok out, friend!' Yermolaï shot... the wounded hare rolled
head over heels on the smooth dry grass, leaped into the air, and
squealed piteously in the teeth of a worrying dog. The hounds crowded
about her. Like an arrow, Tchertop-hanov flew off his horse, clutched
his dagger, ran straddling among the dogs with furious imprecations,
snatched the mangled hare from them, and, creasing up his whole face, he
buried the dagger in its throat up to the very hilt... buried it, and
began hallooing. Tihon Ivanitch made his appearance on the edge of the
thicket 'Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!' vociferated Tchertop-hanov a second
time. 'Ho-ho-ho-ho,' his companion repeated placidly.
'But really, you know, one ought not to hunt in summer, 'I observed to
Tchertop-hanov, pointing to the trampled-down oats.
'It's my field,' answered Tchertop-hanov, gasping.
He pulled the hare into shape, hung it on to his saddle, and flung the
paws among the dogs.
'I owe you a charge, my friend, by the rules of hunting,' he said,
addressing Yermolaï. 'And you, dear sir,' he added in the same jerky,
abrupt voice, 'my thanks.'
He mounted his horse.
'Pe-ermit me to ask... I've forgotten your name and your father's.'
Again I told him my name.
'Delighted to make your acquaintance. When you have an opportunity, hope
you'll come and see me.... But where is that Fomka, Tihon Ivanitch?' he
went on with heat; 'the hare was run down without him.'
'His horse fell down under him,' replied Tihon Ivanitch with a smile.
'Fell down! Orbassan fell down? Pugh! tut!... Where is he?'
'Over there, behind the copse.'
Tchertop-hanov struck his horse on the muzzle with his whip, and
galloped off at a breakneck pace. Tihon Ivanitch bowed to me twice, once
for himself and once for his companion, and again set off at a trot into
the bushes.
These two gentlemen aroused my curiosity keenly. What could unite two
creatures so different in the bonds of an inseparable friendship? I
began to make inquiries. This was what I learned.
Panteley Eremyitch Tchertop-hanov had the reputation in the whole
surrounding vicinity of a dangerous, crack-brained fellow, haughty and
quarrelsome in the extreme. He had served a very short time in the army,
and had retired from the service through 'difficulties' with his
superiors, with that rank which is generally regarded as equivalent to
no rank at all. He came of an old family, once rich; his forefathers
lived sumptuously, after the manner of the steppes--that is, they
welcomed all, invited or uninvited, fed them to exhaustion, gave out
oats by the quarter to their guests' coachmen for their teams, kept
musicians, singers, jesters, and dogs; on festive days regaled their
people with spirits and beer, drove to Moscow in the winter with their
own horses, in heavy old coaches, and sometimes were for whole months
without a farthing, living on home-grown produce. The estate came into
Panteley Eremyitch's father's hands in a crippled condition; he, in his
turn, 'played ducks and drakes' with it, and when he died, left his sole
heir, Panteley, the small mortgaged village of Bezsonovo, with
thirty-five souls of the male, and seventy-six of the female sex, and
twenty-eight acres and a half of useless land on the waste of
Kolobrodova, no record of serfs for which could be found among the
deceased's deeds. The deceased had, it must be confessed, ruined himself
in a very strange way: 'provident management' had been his destruction.
According to his notions, a nobleman ought not to depend on merchants,
townsmen, and 'brigands' of that sort, as he called them; he set up all
possible trades and crafts on his estate; 'it's both seemlier and
cheaper,' he used to say: 'it's provident management'! He never
relinquished this fatal idea to the end of his days; indeed, it was his
ruin. But, then, what entertainment it gave him! He never denied himself
the satisfaction of a single whim. Among other freaks, he once began
building, after his own fancy, so immense a family coach that, in spite
of the united efforts of the peasants' horses, drawn together from the
whole village, as well as their owners, it came to grief and fell to
pieces on the first hillside. Eremey Lukitch (the name of Panteley's
father was Eremey Lukitch), ordered a memorial to be put up on the
hillside, but was not, however, at all abashed over the affair. He
conceived the happy thought, too, of building a church--by himself, of
course--without the assistance of an architect. He burnt a whole forest
in making the bricks, laid an immense foundation, as though for a
provincial hall, raised the walls, and began putting on the cupola; the
cupola fell down. He tried again--the cupola again broke down; he tried
the third time---the cupola fell to pieces a third time. Good Eremey
Lukitch grew thoughtful; there was something uncanny about it, he
reflected... some accursed witchcraft must have a hand in it... and at
once he gave orders to flog all the old women in the village. They
flogged the old women; but they didn't get the cupola on, for all that.
He began reconstructing the peasants' huts on a new plan, and all on a
system of 'provident management'; he set them three homesteads together
in a triangle, and in the middle stuck up a post with a painted
bird-cage and flag. Every day he invented some new freak; at one time he
was making soup of burdocks, at another cutting his horses' tails off to
make caps for his servants; at another, proposing to substitute nettles
for flax, to feed pigs on mushrooms.... He had once read in the
_Moscow Gazette_ an article by a Harkov landowner, Hryak-Hrupyorsky,
on the importance of morality to the well-being of the peasant, and the
next day he gave forth a decree to all his peasants to learn off the
Harkov landowner's article by heart at once. The peasants learnt the
article; the master asked them whether they understood what was said
in it? The bailiff replied--that to be sure they understood it! About the
same time he ordered all his subjects, with a view to the maintenance
of order and provident management, to be numbered, and each to have his
number sewn on his collar. On meeting the master, each was to shout,
'Number so-and-so is here!' and the master would answer affably:
'Go on, in God's name!'
In spite, however, of order and provident management, Eremey Lukitch got
by degrees into a very difficult position; he began at first by
mortgaging his villages, and then was brought to the sale of them; the
last ancestral home, the village with the unfinished church, was sold at
last for arrears to the Crown, luckily not in the lifetime of Eremey
Lukitch--he could never have supported such a blow--but a fortnight
after his death. He succeeded in dying at home in his own bed,
surrounded by his own people, and under the care of his own doctor; but
nothing was left to poor Panteley but Bezsonovo.
Panteley heard of his father's illness while he was still in the
service, in the very heat of the 'difficulties' mentioned above. He was
only just nineteen. From his earliest childhood he had not left his
father's house, and under the guidance of his mother, a very
good-natured but perfectly stupid woman, Vassilissa Vassilyevna, he grew
up spoilt and conceited. She undertook his education alone; Eremey
Lukitch, buried in his economical fancies, had no thoughts to spare for
it. It is true, he once punished his son with his own hand for
mispronouncing a letter of the alphabet; but Eremey Lukitch had received
a cruel and secret blow that day: his best dog had been crushed by a
tree. Vassilissa Vassilyevna's efforts in regard Panteley's education
did not, however, get beyond one terrific exertion; in the sweat of her
brow she engaged him a tutor, one Birkopf, a retired Alsatian soldier,
and to the day of her death she trembled like a leaf before him. 'Oh,'
she thought, 'if he throws us up--I'm lost! Where could I turn? Where
could I find another teacher? Why, with what pains, what pains I enticed
this one away from our neighbours!' And Birkopf, like a shrewd man,
promptly took advantage of his unique position; he drank like a fish,
and slept from morning till night. On the completion of his 'course of
science,' Panteley entered the army. Vassilissa Vassilyevna was no more;
she had died six months before that important event, of fright. She had
had a dream of a white figure riding on a bear. Eremey Lukitch soon
followed his better half.
At the first news of his illness, Panteley galloped home at breakneck
speed, but he did not find his father alive. What was the amazement of
the dutiful son when he found himself, utterly unexpectedly, transformed
from a rich heir to a poor man! Few men are capable of bearing so sharp
a reverse well. Panteley was embittered, made misanthropical by it. From
an honest, generous, good-natured fellow, though spoilt and
hot-tempered, he became haughty and quarrelsome; he gave up associating
with the neighbours--he was too proud to visit the rich, and he
disdained the poor--and behaved with unheard of arrogance to everyone,
even to the established authorities. 'I am of the ancient hereditary
nobility,' he would say. Once he had been on the point of shooting the
police-commissioner for coming into the room with his cap on his head.
Of course the authorities, on their side, had their revenge, and took
every opportunity to make him feel their power; but still, they were
rather afraid of him, because he had a desperate temper, and would
propose a duel with knives at the second word. At the slightest retort
Tchertop-hanov's eyes blazed, his voice broke.... Ah, er--er--er,' he
stammered, 'damn my soul!'... and nothing could stop him. And,
moreover, he was a man of stainless character, who had never had a hand
in anything the least shady. No one, of course, visited him... and with
all this he was a good-hearted, even a great-hearted man in his own way;
acts of injustice, of oppression, he would not brook even against
strangers; he stood up for his own peasants like a rock. 'What?' he
would say, with a violent blow on his own head: 'touch my people, mine?
My name's not Tchertop-hanov, if I...'
Tihon Ivanitch Nedopyuskin could not, like Panteley Eremyitch, pride
himself on his origin. His father came of the peasant proprietor class,
and only after forty years of service attained the rank of a noble. Mr.
Nedopyuskin, the father, belonged to the number of those people who are
pursued by misfortune with an obduracy akin to personal hatred. For
sixty whole years, from his very birth to his very death, the poor man
was struggling with all the hardships, calamities, and privations,
incidental to people of small means; he struggled like a fish under the
ice, never having enough food and sleep--cringing, worrying, wearing
himself to exhaustion, fretting over every farthing, with genuine
'innocence' suffering in the service, and dying at last in either a
garret or a cellar, in the unsuccessful struggle to gain for himself or
his children a crust of dry bread. Fate had hunted him down like a hare.
He was a good-natured and honest man, though he did take bribes--from a
threepenny bit up to a crown piece inclusive. Nedopyuskin had a wife,
thin and consumptive; he had children too; luckily they all died young
except Tihon and a daughter, Mitrodora, nicknamed 'the merchants'
belle,' who, after many painful and ludicrous adventures, was married to
a retired attorney. Mr. Nedopyuskin had succeeded before his death in
getting Tihon a place as supernumerary clerk in some office; but
directly after his father's death Tihon resigned his situation. Their
perpetual anxieties, their heartrending struggle with cold and hunger,
his mother's careworn depression, his father's toiling despair, the
coarse aggressiveness of landladies and shopkeepers--all the unending
daily suffering of their life had developed an exaggerated timidity in
Tihon: at the mere sight of his chief he was faint and trembling like a
captured bird. He threw up his office. Nature, in her indifference, or
perhaps her irony, implants in people all sorts of faculties and
tendencies utterly inconsistent with their means and their position in
society; with her characteristic care and love she had moulded of Tihon,
the son of a poor clerk, a sensuous, indolent, soft, impressionable
creature--a creature fitted exclusively for enjoyment, gifted with an
excessively delicate sense of smell and of taste...she had moulded him,
finished him off most carefully, and set her creation to struggle up on
sour cabbage and putrid fish! And, behold! the creation did struggle up
somehow, and began what is called 'life.' Then the fun began. Fate,
which had so ruthlessly tormented Nedopyuskin the father, took to the
son too; she had a taste for them, one must suppose. But she treated
Tihon on a different plan: she did not torture him; she played with him.
She did not once drive him to desperation, she did not set him to suffer
the degrading agonies of hunger, but she led him a dance through the
whole of Russia from one end to the other, from one degrading and
ludicrous position to another; at one time Fate made him 'majordomo' to
a snappish, choleric Lady Bountiful, at another a humble parasite on a
wealthy skinflint merchant, then a private secretary to a goggle-eyed
gentleman, with his hair cut in the English style, then she promoted him
to the post of something between butler and buffoon to a dog-fancier....
In short, Fate drove poor Tihon to drink drop by drop to the dregs the
bitter poisoned cup of a dependent existence. He had been, in his time,
the sport of the dull malignity and the boorish pranks of slothful
masters. How often, alone in his room, released at last 'to go in
peace,' after a mob of visitors had glutted their taste for horseplay at
his expense, he had vowed, blushing with shame, chill tears of despair
in his eyes, that he would run away in secret, would try his luck in the
town, would find himself some little place as clerk, or die once for all
of hunger in the street! But, in the first place, God had not given him
strength of character; secondly, his timidity unhinged him; and thirdly,
how could he get himself a place? whom could he ask? 'They'll never give
it me,' the luckless wretch would murmur, tossing wearily in his bed,
'they'll never give it me!' And the next day he would take up the same
degrading life again. His position was the more painful that, with all
her care, nature had not troubled to give him the smallest share of the
gifts and qualifications without which the trade of a buffoon is almost
impossible. He was not equal, for instance, to dancing till he dropped,
in a bearskin coat turned inside out, nor making jokes and cutting
capers in the immediate vicinity of cracking whips; if he was turned out
in a state of nature into a temperature of twenty degrees below
freezing, as often as not, he caught cold; his stomach could not digest
brandy mixed with ink and other filth, nor minced funguses and
toadstools in vinegar. There is no knowing what would have become of
Tihon if the last of his patrons, a contractor who had made his fortune,
had not taken it into his head in a merry hour to inscribe in his will:
'And to Zyozo (Tihon, to wit) Nedopyuskin, I leave in perpetual
possession, to him and his heirs, the village of Bezselendyevka,
lawfully acquired by me, with all its appurtenances.' A few days later
this patron was taken with a fit of apoplexy after gorging on sturgeon
soup. A great commotion followed; the officials came and put seals on
the property.
The relations arrived; the will was opened and read; and they called for
Nedopyuskin: Nedopyuskin made his appearance. The greater number of the
party knew the nature of Tihon Ivanitch's duties in his patron's
household; he was greeted with deafening shouts and ironical
congratulations. 'The landowner; here is the new owner!' shouted the
other heirs. 'Well, really this,' put in one, a noted wit and humourist;
'well, really this, one may say... this positively is... really what
one may call... an heir-apparent!' and they all went off into shrieks.
For a long while Nedopyuskin could not believe in his good fortune. They
showed him the will: he flushed, shut his eyes, and with a despairing
gesture he burst into tears. The chuckles of the party passed into a
deep unanimous roar. The village of Bezselendyevka consisted of only
twenty-two serfs, no one regretted its loss keenly; so why not get some
fun out of it? One of the heirs from Petersburg, an important man, with
a Greek nose and a majestic expression of face, Rostislav Adamitch
Shtoppel, went so far as to go up to Nedopyuskin and look haughtily at
him over his shoulder. 'So far as I can gather, honoured sir,' he
observed with contemptuous carelessness, 'you enjoyed your position in
the household of our respected Fedor Fedoritch, owing to your obliging
readiness to wait on his diversions?' The gentleman from Petersburg
expressed himself in a style insufferably refined, smart, and correct.
Nedopyuskin, in his agitation and confusion, had not taken in the
unknown gentleman's words, but the others were all quiet at once; the
wit smiled condescendingly. Mr. Shtoppel rubbed his hands and repeated
his question. Nedopyuskin raised his eyes in bewilderment and opened his
mouth. Rostislav Adamitch puckered his face up sarcastically.
'I congratulate you, my dear sir, I congratulate you,' he went on: 'it's
true, one may say, not everyone would have consented to gain his daily
bread in such a fashion; but _de guslibus non est disputandum_,
that is, everyone to his taste.... Eh?'
Someone at the back uttered a rapid, decorous shriek of admiration and
delight.
'Tell us,' pursued Mr. Shtoppel, much encouraged by the smiles of the
whole party, 'to what special talent are you indebted for your
good-fortune? No, don't be bashful, tell us; we're all here, so to
speak, _en famille_. Aren't we, gentlemen, all here _en famille_?'
The relation to whom Rostislav Adamitch chanced to turn with this
question did not, unfortunately, know French, and so he confined himself
to a faint grunt of approbation. But another relation, a young man, with
patches of a yellow colour on his forehead, hastened to chime in, 'Wee,
wee, to be sure.'
'Perhaps,' Mr. Shtoppel began again, 'you can walk on your hands, your
legs raised, so to say, in the air?'
Nedopyuskin looked round in agony: every face wore a taunting smile,
every eye was moist with delight.
'Or perhaps you can crow like a cock?'
A loud guffaw broke out on all sides, and was hushed at once, stifled by
expectation.
'Or perhaps on your nose you can....'
'Stop that!' a loud harsh voice suddenly interrupted Rostislav Adamitch;
'I wonder you're not ashamed to torment the poor man!'
Everyone looked round. In the doorway stood Tchertop-hanov. As a cousin
four times removed of the deceased contractor, he too had received a
note of invitation to the meeting of the relations. During the whole
time of reading the will he had kept, as he always did, haughtily apart
from the others.
'Stop that!' he repeated, throwing his head back proudly.
Mr. Shtoppel turned round quickly, and seeing a poorly dressed,
unattractive-looking man, he inquired of his neighbour in an undertone
(caution's always a good thing):
'Who's that?'
'Tchertop-hanov--he's no great shakes,' the latter whispered in his ear.
Rostislav Adamitch assumed a haughty air.
'And who are you to give orders?' he said through his nose, drooping his
eyelids scornfully; 'who may you be, allow me to inquire?--a queer fish,
upon my word!'
Tchertop-hanov exploded like gunpowder at a spark. He was choked with
fury.
'Ss--ss--ss!' he hissed like one possessed, and all at once he
thundered: 'Who am I? Who am I? I'm Panteley Tchertop-hanov, of the
ancient hereditary nobility; my forefathers served the Tsar: and who may
you be?'
Rostislav Adamitch turned pale and stepped back. He had not expected
such resistance.
'I--I--a fish indeed!'
Tchertop-hanov darted forward; Shtoppel bounded away in great
perturbation, the others rushed to meet the exasperated nobleman.
'A duel, a duel, a duel, at once, across a handkerchief!' shouted the
enraged Panteley, 'or beg my pardon--yes, and his too....'
'Pray beg his pardon!' the agitated relations muttered all round
Shtoppel; 'he's such a madman, he'd cut your throat in a minute!'
'I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, I didn't know,' stammered
Shtoppel; 'I didn't know....'
'And beg his too!' vociferated the implacable Panteley.
'I beg your pardon too,' added Rostislav Adamitch, addressing
Nedopyuskin, who was shaking as if he were in an ague.
Tchertop-hanov calmed down; he went up to Tihon Ivanitch, took him by
the hand, looked fiercely round, and, as not one pair of eyes ventured
to meet his, he walked triumphantly amid profound silence out of the
room, with the new owner of the lawfully acquired village of
Bezselendyevka.
From that day they never parted again. (The village of Bezselendyevka
was only seven miles from Bezsonovo.) The boundless gratitude of
Nedopyuskin soon passed into the most adoring veneration. The weak,
soft, and not perfectly stainless Tihon bowed down in the dust before
the fearless and irreproachable Panteley. 'It's no slight thing,' he
thought to himself sometimes, 'to talk to the governor, look him
straight in the face.... Christ have mercy on us, doesn't he look at
him!'
He marvelled at him, he exhausted all the force of his soul in his
admiration of him, he regarded him as an extraordinary man, as clever,
as learned. And there's no denying that, bad as Tchertop-hanov's
education might be, still, in comparison with Tihon's education, it
might pass for brilliant. Tchertop-hanov, it is true, had read little
Russian, and knew French very badly--so badly that once, in reply to the
question of a Swiss tutor: '_Vous parlez français, monsieur?_' he
answered: '_Je ne comprehend_' and after a moment's thought, he
added _pa_; but any way he was aware that Voltaire had once
existed, and was a very witty writer, and that Frederick the Great, king
of Prussia, had been distinguished as a great military commander. Of
Russian writers he respected Derzhavin, but liked Marlinsky, and called
Ammalat-Bek the best of the pack....
A few days after my first meeting with the two friends, I set off for
the village of Bezsonovo to see Panteley Eremyitch. His little house
could be seen a long way off; it stood out on a bare place, half a mile
from the village, on the 'bluff,' as it is called, like a hawk on a
ploughed field. Tchertop-hanov's homestead consisted of nothing more
than four old tumble-down buildings of different sizes--that is, a
lodge, a stable, a barn, and a bath-house. Each building stood apart by
itself; there was neither a fence round nor a gate to be seen. My
coachman stopped in perplexity at a well which was choked up and had
almost disappeared. Near the barn some thin and unkempt puppies were
mangling a dead horse, probably Orbassan; one of them lifted up the
bleeding nose, barked hurriedly, and again fell to devouring the bare
ribs. Near the horse stood a boy of seventeen, with a puffy, yellow
face, dressed like a Cossack, and barelegged; he looked with a
responsible air at the dogs committed to his charge, and now and then
gave the greediest a lash with his whip.
'Is your master at home?' I inquired.
'The Lord knows!' answered the lad; 'you'd better knock.'