“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard.
“Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room.
The whole family ran to the window, for they had been expecting their
Volodia for hours. At the front porch stood a wide posting sleigh with
its troika of white horses wreathed in dense clouds of steam. The sleigh
was empty because Volodia was already standing in the front entry
untying his hood with red, frostbitten fingers. His schoolboy’s uniform,
his overcoat, his cap, his goloshes, and the hair on his temples were
all silvery with frost, and from his head to his feet he exhaled such a
wholesome atmosphere of cold that one shivered to be near him. His
mother and aunt rushed to kiss and embrace him. Natalia fell down at his
feet and began pulling off his goloshes. His sisters shrieked, doors
creaked and banged on every side, and his father came running into the
hall in his shirt-sleeves waving a pair of scissors and crying in alarm:
“Is anything the matter? We expected you yesterday. Did you have a good
journey? For heaven’s sake, give him a chance to kiss his own father!”
“Bow, wow, wow!” barked the great black dog, My Lord, in a deep voice,
banging the walls and furniture with his tail.
All these noises went to make up one great, joyous clamour that lasted
several minutes. When the first burst of joy had subsided the family
noticed that, beside Volodia, there was still another small person in
the hall. He was wrapped in scarfs and shawls and hoods and was standing
motionless in the shadow cast by a huge fox-skin coat.
“Volodia, who is that?” whispered Volodia’s mother.
“Good gracious!” Volodia exclaimed recollecting himself. “Let me present
my friend Tchetchevitsin. I have brought him from school to stay with
us.”
“We are delighted to see you! Make yourself at home!” cried the father
gaily. “Excuse my not having a coat on! Allow me!—Natalia, help Mr.
Tcherepitsin to take off his things! For heaven’s sake, take that dog
away! This noise is too awful!”
A few minutes later Volodia and his friend were sitting in the
dining-room drinking tea, dazed by their noisy reception and still rosy
with cold. The wintry rays of the sun, piercing the frost and snow on
the window-panes, trembled over the samovar and bathed themselves in the
slop-basin. The room was warm, and the boys felt heat and cold jostling
one another in their bodies, neither wanting to concede its place to the
other.
“Well, Christmas will soon be here!” cried Volodia’s father, rolling a
cigarette. “Has it seemed long since your mother cried as she saw you
off last summer? Time flies, my son! Old age comes before one has time
to heave a sigh. Mr. Tchibisoff, do help yourself! We don’t stand on
ceremony here!”
Volodia’s three sisters, Katia, Sonia, and Masha, the oldest of whom was
eleven, sat around the table with their eyes fixed on their new
acquaintance. Tchetchevitsin was the same age and size as Volodia, but
he was neither plump nor fair like him. He was swarthy and thin and his
face was covered with freckles. His hair was bristly, his eyes were
small, and his lips were thick; in a word, he was very plain, and, had
it not been for his schoolboy’s uniform, he might have been taken for
the son of a cook. He was taciturn and morose, and he never once smiled.
The girls immediately decided that he must be a very clever and learned
person. He seemed to be meditating something, and was so busy with his
own thoughts that he started if he were asked a question and asked to
have it repeated.
The girls noticed that Volodia, who was generally so talkative and gay,
seldom spoke now and never smiled and on the whole did not seem glad to
be at home. He only addressed his sisters once during dinner and then
his remark was strange. He pointed to the samovar and said:
“In California they drink gin instead of tea.”
He, too, seemed to be busy with thoughts of his own, and, to judge from
the glances that the two boys occasionally exchanged, their thoughts
were identical.
After tea the whole family went into the nursery, and papa and the girls
sat down at the table and took up some work which they had been doing
when they were interrupted by the boys’ arrival. They were making
decorations out of coloured paper for the Christmas tree. It was a
thrilling and noisy occupation. Each new flower was greeted by the girls
with shrieks of ecstasy, of terror almost, as if it had dropped from the
sky. Papa, too, was in raptures, but every now and then he would throw
down the scissors, exclaiming angrily that they were blunt. Mamma came
running into the nursery with an anxious face and asked:
“Who has taken my scissors? Have you taken my scissors again, Ivan?”
“Good heavens, won’t she even let me have a pair of scissors?” answered
papa in a tearful voice, throwing himself back in his chair with the air
of a much-abused man. But the next moment he was in raptures again.
On former holidays Volodia had always helped with the preparations for
the Christmas tree, and had run out into the yard to watch the coachman
and the shepherd heaping up a mound of snow, but this time neither he
nor Tchetchevitsin took any notice of the coloured paper, neither did
they once visit the stables. They sat by a window whispering together,
and then opened an atlas and fell to studying it.
“First, we must go to Perm,” whispered Tchetchevitsin. “Then to Tyumen,
then to Tomsk, and then—then to Kamschatka. From there the Eskimos will
take us across Behring Strait in their canoes, and then—we shall be in
America! There are a great many wild animals there.”
“Where is California?” asked Volodia.
“California is farther down. If once we can get to America, California
will only be round the corner. We can make our living by hunting and
highway robbery.”
All day Tchetchevitsin avoided the girls, and, if he met them, looked at
them askance. After tea in the evening he was left alone with them for
five minutes. To remain silent would have been awkward, so he coughed
sternly, rubbed the back of his right hand with the palm of his left,
looked severely at Katia, and asked:
“Have you read Mayne Reid?”
“No, I haven’t—But tell me, can you skate?”
Tchetchevitsin became lost in thought once more and did not answer her
question. He only blew out his cheeks and heaved a sigh as if he were
very hot. Once more he raised his eyes to Katia’s face and said:
“When a herd of buffalo gallop across the pampas the whole earth
trembles and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh.”
Tchetchevitsin smiled wistfully and added:
“And Indians attack trains, too. But worst of all are the mosquitoes and
the termites.”
“What are they?”
“Termites look something like ants, only they have wings. They bite
dreadfully. Do you know who I am?”
“You are Mr. Tchetchevitsin!”
“No, I am Montezuma Hawkeye, the invincible chieftain.”
Masha, the youngest of the girls, looked first at him and then out of
the window into the garden, where night was already falling, and said
doubtfully:
“We had Tchetchevitsa (lentils) for supper last night.”
The absolutely unintelligible sayings of Tchetchevitsin, his continual
whispered conversations with Volodia, and the fact that Volodia never
played now and was always absorbed in thought—all this seemed to the
girls to be both mysterious and strange. Katia and Sonia, the two oldest
ones, began to spy on the boys, and when Volodia and his friend went to
bed that evening, they crept to the door of their room and listened to
the conversation inside. Oh! what did they hear? The boys were planning
to run away to America in search of gold! They were all prepared for the
journey and had a pistol ready, two knives, some dried bread, a
magnifying-glass for lighting fires, a compass, and four roubles. The
girls discovered that the boys would have to walk several thousand
miles, fighting on the way with savages and tigers, and that they would
then find gold and ivory, and slay their enemies. Next, they would turn
pirates, drink gin, and at last marry beautiful wives and settle down to
cultivate a plantation. Volodia and Tchetchevitsin both talked at once
and kept interrupting one another from excitement. Tchetchevitsin called
himself “Montezuma Hawkeye,” and Volodia “my Paleface Brother.”
“Be sure you don’t tell mamma!” said Katia to Sonia as they went back to
bed. “Volodia will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell
mamma she won’t let him go!”
Tchetchevitsin spent the day before Christmas Eve studying a map of Asia
and taking notes, while Volodia roamed about the house refusing all
food, his face looking tired and puffy as if it had been stung by a bee.
He stopped more than once in front of the icon in the nursery and
crossed himself saying:
“O Lord, forgive me, miserable sinner! O Lord, help my poor, unfortunate
mother!”
Toward evening he burst into tears. When he said good night he kissed
his father and mother and sisters over and over again. Katia and Sonia
realized the significance of his actions, but Masha, the youngest,
understood nothing at all. Only when her eye fell upon Tchetchevitsin
did she grow pensive and say with a sigh:
“Nurse says that when Lent comes we must eat peas and Tchetchevitsa.”
Early on Christmas Eve Katia and Sonia slipped quietly out of bed and
went to the boys’ room to see them run away to America. They crept up to
their door.
“So you won’t go?” asked Tchetchevitsin angrily. “Tell me, you won’t
go?”
“Oh, dear!” wailed Volodia, weeping softly. “How can I go? I’m so sorry
for mamma!”
“Paleface Brother, I beg you to go! You promised me yourself that you
would. You told me yourself how nice it would be. Now, when everything
is ready, you are afraid!”
“I—I’m not afraid. I—I am sorry for mamma.”
“Tell me, are you going or not?”
“I’m going, only—only wait a bit, I want to stay at home a little while
longer!”
“If that is the case, I’ll go alone!” Tchetchevitsin said with decision.
“I can get along perfectly well without you. I want to hunt and fight
tigers! If you won’t go, give me my pistol!”
Volodia began to cry so bitterly that his sisters could not endure the
sound and began weeping softly themselves. Silence fell.
“Then you won’t go?” demanded Tchetchevitsin again.
“I—I’ll go.”
“Then get dressed!”
And to keep up Volodia’s courage, Tchetchevitsin began singing the
praises of America. He roared like a tiger, he whistled like a
steamboat, he scolded, and promised to give Volodia all the ivory and
gold they might find.
The thin, dark boy with his bristling hair and his freckles seemed to
the girls to be a strange and wonderful person. He was a hero to them, a
man without fear, who could roar so well that, through the closed door,
one might really mistake him for a tiger or a lion.
When the girls were dressing in their own room, Katia cried with tears
in her eyes:
“Oh, I’m so frightened!”
All was quiet until the family sat down to dinner at two o’clock, and
then it suddenly appeared that the boys were not in the house. Inquiries
were made in the servants’ quarters and at the stables, but they were
not there. A search was made in the village, but they could not be
found. At tea time they were still missing, and when the family had to
sit down to supper without them, mamma was terribly anxious and was even
crying. That night another search was made in the village and men were
sent down to the river with lanterns. Heavens, what an uproar arose!
Next morning the policeman arrived and went into the dining-room to
write something. Mamma was crying.
Suddenly, lo and behold! a posting sleigh drove up to the front door
with clouds of steam rising from its three white horses.
“Volodia is here!” cried some one in the courtyard.
“Voloditchka is here!” shrieked Natalia, rushing into the dining-room.
My Lord barked “Bow, wow, wow!” in his deep voice.
It seemed that the boys had been stopped at the hotel in the town, where
they had gone about asking every one where they could buy gunpowder. As
he entered the hall, Volodia burst into tears and flung his arms round
his mother’s neck. The girls trembled with terror at the thought of what
would happen next, for they heard papa call Volodia and Tchetchevitsin
into his study and begin talking to them. Mamma wept and joined in the
talk.
“Do you think it was right?” papa asked, chiding them. “I hope to
goodness they won’t find it out at school, because, if they do, you will
certainly be expelled. Be ashamed of yourself, Master Tchetchevitsin!
You are a bad boy. You are a mischief-maker and your parents will punish
you. Do you think it was right to run away? Where did you spend the
night?”
“In the station!” answered Tchetchevitsin proudly.
Volodia was put to bed, and a towel soaked in vinegar was laid on his
head. A telegram was despatched, and next day a lady arrived,
Tchetchevitsin’s mamma, who took her son away.
As Tchetchevitsin departed his face looked haughty and stern. He said
not a word as he took his leave of the girls, but in a copy-book of
Katia’s he wrote these words for remembrance:
“Montezuma Hawkeye.”