“A fine little fellow, a fine little fellow!” murmured my uncle taking
his hand away from my lips, and patting my head. “So your name is
Andrusha? Well, well—yes—upon my word and honour. Do you go to school?”
My mother began to enumerate my triumphs of learning and behaviour,
adding to them and exaggerating as all mothers do, while I walked at my
uncle’s side and did not cease from bowing deeply according to the
ceremonial we had agreed upon. When my mother began hinting that with my
remarkable attainments it would not be amiss for me to enter the
military academy at the expense of the state, and when, according to our
plan, I should have burst into tears and implored the patronage of my
uncle, that relative suddenly stopped short and threw up his hands in
astonishment.
“Heavens and earth, who is that?” he exclaimed.
Down the garden path came Tatiana, the wife of our manager, Theodore
Petrovitch. She was carrying a white starched skirt and a long ironing
board, and as she passed us she blushed and glanced shyly at our guest
from under her long lashes.
“Worse and worse!” said my uncle under his breath, looking tenderly
after her. “Why, sister, one can’t take a step here without encountering
some surprise, upon my word and honour!”
Not every one would have called Tatiana beautiful. She was a small,
plump woman of twenty, graceful, black-eyed, and always rosy and sweet,
but in all her face and figure there was not one strong feature, not one
bold line for the eye to rest upon. It was as if in making her Nature
had lacked confidence and inspiration. Tatiana was shy and timid and
well behaved. She glided quietly along, saying little, seldom laughing;
her life was as even and smooth as her face and her neatly brushed hair.
My uncle half-closed his eyes and smiled as he watched her. My mother
looked intently at his smiling face and grew serious.
“Oh, brother, why have you never married?” she sighed.
“I have never married because——”
“Why not?” asked my mother softly.
“What shall I say? Because things did not turn out that way. When I was
young I worked too hard to have time for enjoying life, and then, when I
wanted to live—behold! I had put fifty years behind me! I was too slow.
However, this is a tedious subject for conversation!”
My mother and uncle sighed simultaneously, and walked on together while
I stayed behind, and ran to find my tutor in order to share my
impressions with him. Pobedimski was standing in the middle of the
courtyard gazing majestically at the sky.
“He is obviously an enlightened man,” he said, wagging his head. “I hope
we shall become friends.”
An hour later my mother came to us.
“Oh, boys, I’m in terrible trouble!” she began with a sigh. “My brother
has brought a valet with him, you know, and he is not the sort of man,
heaven help him, whom one can put in the hall or the kitchen, he
absolutely must have a room of his own. Look here, my children, couldn’t
you move into the wing with Theodore and give the valet your room?”
We answered that we should be delighted to do so, for, we thought, life
in the wing would be much freer than in the house under the eyes of my
mother.
“Yes, I’m terribly worried!” my mother continued. “My brother says he
doesn’t want to have his dinner at noon, but at seven as they do in the
city. I am almost distracted. Why, by seven the dinner in the stove will
be burned to a crisp. The truth is men know nothing about housekeeping,
even if they are very clever. Oh, misery me, I shall have to have two
dinners cooked every day! You must have yours at noon as you always do,
children, and let the old lady wait until seven for her brother.”
My mother breathed a profound sigh, told me to please my uncle whom God
had brought here especially for my benefit, and ran into the kitchen.
Pobedimski and I moved into the wing that very same day. We were put in
a passage between the hall and the manager’s bedroom.
In spite of my uncle’s arrival and our change of quarters, our days
continued to trickle by in their usual way, more drowsily and
monotonously than we had expected. We were excused from our lessons
“because of our guest.” Pobedimski, who never read or did anything, now
spent most of his time sitting on his bed absorbed in thought, with his
long nose in the air. Every now and then he would get up, try on his new
suit, sit down again, and continue his meditations. One thing only
disturbed him, and that was the flies, whom he slapped unmercifully with
the palms of his hands. After dinner he would generally “rest,” causing
keen anguish to the whole household by his snores. I played in the
garden from morning till night, or else sat in my room making kites.
During the first two or three weeks we saw little of my uncle. He stayed
in his room and worked for days on end, heeding neither the flies nor
the heat.
His extraordinary power of sitting as if glued to his desk appeared to
us something in the nature of an inexplicable trick. To lazybones like
ourselves, who did not know the meaning of systematic work, his industry
appeared positively miraculous. Getting up at nine, he would sit down at
his desk, and not move until dinner time. After dinner he would go to
work once more, and work until late at night. Whenever I peeped into his
room through the keyhole I invariably saw the same scene. My uncle would
be sitting at his desk and working. His work consisted of writing with
one hand while turning over the pages of a book with the other, and
strange as it may seem, he constantly wriggled all over, swinging one
foot like a pendulum, whistling and nodding his head in time to the
music he made. His appearance at these times was extraordinarily
frivolous and careless, more as if he were playing at naughts and
crosses than working. Each time I looked in I saw him wearing a dashing
little coat and a dandified necktie, and each time, even through the
keyhole, I could smell a sweet feminine perfume. He emerged from his
room only to dine, and then ate scarcely anything.
“I can’t understand my brother,” my mother complained. “Every day I have
a turkey or some pigeons killed especially for him, and stew some fruits
for him myself, and yet he drinks a little bouillon and eats a piece of
meat no larger than my finger, after which he leaves the table at once.
If I beg him to eat more he comes back and drinks a little milk. What is
there in milk? It is slop, nothing more! He will die of eating that kind
of food! If I try to persuade him to change his ways, he only laughs and
makes a joke of it! No, children, our fare doesn’t suit him!”
Our evenings passed much more pleasantly than our days. As a rule the
setting sun and the long shadows falling across the courtyard found
Tatiana, Pobedimski, and me seated on the porch of our wing. We did not
speak until darkness fell—what could we talk about when everything had
already been said? There had been one novelty, my uncle’s arrival, but
that theme had soon become exhausted as well as the others. My tutor
constantly kept his eyes fixed on Tatiana’s face and fetched one deep
sigh after another. At that time I did not understand the meaning of
those sighs, and did not seek to inquire into their cause, but they
explain much to me now.
When the shadows had merged into thick, black darkness Theodore would
come home from the hunt or the field. This Theodore seemed to me to be a
wild and even fearsome man. He was the son of a Russianised gipsy, and
was swarthy and dark with large black eyes and a tangled curly beard,
and he was never spoken of by our peasants as anything but “the demon.”
There was a great deal of the gipsy in him beside his appearance. For
instance, he never could stay at home, and would vanish for days at a
time, hunting in the forest or roaming in the fields. He was gloomy,
passionate, taciturn, and fearless, and could never be brought to
acknowledge the authority of any one. He spoke gruffly to my mother,
addressed me familiarly as “thou,” and treated Pobedimski’s learning
with contempt, but we forgave him everything, because we considered that
he had a morbidly excitable nature. My mother liked him in spite of his
gipsy ways, for he was ideally honest and hard working. He loved his
Tatiana passionately, in gipsy style, but his love was a thing of gloom,
almost of suffering. He never caressed her in our presence, and only
stared at her fiercely with his mouth all awry.
On coming back from the fields he would furiously slam down his gun on
the floor of his room, and come out on the porch to take his seat beside
his wife. When he had rested a while he would ask her a few questions
about the housekeeping, and then relapse into silence.
“Let’s sing!” I used to suggest.
My tutor would tune his guitar, and in a thick, deaconly voice would
drone: “In Level Valleys.” We would all chime in. My tutor sang bass,
Theodore an almost inaudible tenor, and I contralto in tune with
Tatiana.
When all the sky was strewn with stars, and the frogs’ voices were
hushed, our supper would be brought to us from the kitchen, and we would
go into the house and fall to. My tutor and the gipsy ate ravenously,
munching so loudly that it was hard to tell whether the noise came from
the bones they were crunching or the cracking of their jaws. Tatiana and
I, on the contrary, could scarcely manage to finish our portions. After
supper our wing of the house would sink into deep slumber.
One evening at the end of May we were sitting on the porch waiting for
our supper. Suddenly a shadow flitted toward us, and Gundasoff appeared
as if he had sprung from the ground. He stared at us for a long time,
and then waved his hands and laughed gaily.
“How idyllic!” he cried. “Singing and dreaming under the moon! It is
beautiful, upon my word and honour! May I sit here and dream with you?”
We silently looked at one another. My uncle sat down on the lowest step,
yawned, and gazed at the sky. Pobedimski, who had long been intending to
have a conversation with this “new person,” was delighted at the
opportunity that now presented itself, and was the first to break the
silence. He had only one subject for learned discussions, and that was
the epizooty. It sometimes happens that, out of a crowd of thousands of
persons with whom one is thrown, one face alone remains fixed in the
memory, and so it was with Pobedimski. Out of all he had learned at the
Veterinary College he remembered only one sentence:
“Epizooty is the cause of much loss to the peasant farmers. Every
community should join hands with the state in fighting this disease.”
Before saying this to Gundasoff, my tutor cleared his throat three
times, and excitedly wrapped his cape around him. When my uncle had been
informed concerning the epizooty, he made a noise in his nose that
sounded like a laugh.
“How charming, upon my word and honour!” he said under his breath,
staring at us as if we were maniacs. “This is indeed life! This is real
nature! Why don’t you say something, Pelagia?” he asked of Tatiana.
Tatiana grew confused and coughed.
“Go on talking, friends! Sing! Play! Don’t waste a moment! That rascal
time goes fast and waits for no man. Upon my word and honour, old age
will be upon you before you know it. It will be too late to enjoy life
then; so come, Pelagia, don’t sit there and say nothing!”
At this point our supper was brought from the kitchen. My uncle went
into the house with us, and ate five curd fritters and a duck’s wing for
company. He kept his eyes fixed on us while he despatched his supper; we
all filled his heart with enthusiasm and emotion. Whatever silliness
that unforgettable tutor of mine was guilty of, whatever Tatiana did,
was lovely and charming in his eyes. When Tatiana quietly took her
knitting into a corner after supper, his eyes never left her little
fingers, and he babbled without a moment’s pause.
“Friends, you must hurry and begin to enjoy life as fast as you can!” he
said. “For heaven’s sake, don’t sacrifice the present to the future! You
have youth and health and passion now, and the future is deceitful—a
vapour! As soon as your twentieth year knocks at the door, then begin to
live!”
Tatiana dropped a needle. My uncle jumped up, picked it up, and handed
it to her with a bow, at which I realised for the first time that there
was some one in the world with manners more polished than Pobedimski’s.
“Yes,” my uncle continued. “Fall in love! Marry! Be silly! Silliness is
much more healthy and natural than our toiling and striving to be
sensible.”
My uncle talked much and long, and I sat on a trunk in a corner
listening to him and dozing. I felt hurt because he had never once paid
the least attention to me. He left our wing of the house at two o’clock
that night, when I had given up the battle, and sunk into profound
slumber.
From that time on my uncle came to us every evening. He sang with us and
sat with us each night until two o’clock, chatting without end always of
the same thing. He ceased his evening and nocturnal labours, and by the
end of July, when the privy councillor had learned to eat my mother’s
turkeys and stewed fruits, his daytime toil was also abandoned. My uncle
had torn himself away from his desk and had entered into “real life.” By
day he walked about the garden whistling and keeping the workmen from
their work by making them tell him stories. If he caught sight of
Tatiana he would run up to her, and, if she were carrying anything,
would offer to carry it for her, which always embarrassed her
dreadfully.
The farther summer advanced toward autumn the more absent-minded and
frivolous and lively my uncle became. Pobedimski lost all his illusions
about him.
“He is too one-sided,” he used to say. “Nothing about him shows that he
stands on the highest rung of the official hierarchic ladder. He can’t
even talk properly. He says ‘upon my word and honour’ after every word.
No, I don’t like him!”
A distinct change came over my tutor and Theodore from the time that my
uncle began to visit us in our wing. Theodore stopped hunting and began
to come home early. He grew more silent and stared more ferociously than
ever at his wife. My tutor stopped talking of the epizooty in my uncle’s
presence, and now frowned and even smiled derisively at sight of him.
“Here comes our little hop o’my thumb!” he once growled, seeing my uncle
coming toward our part of the house.
This change in the behaviour of both men I explained by the theory that
Gundasoff had hurt their feelings. My absent-minded uncle always
confused their names, and on the day of his departure had not learned
which was my tutor, and which was Tatiana’s husband. Tatiana herself he
sometimes called Nastasia, sometimes Pelagia, sometimes Evdokia. Full of
affectionate enthusiasm as he was for us all, he laughed at us and
treated us as if we had been children. All this, of course, might easily
have offended the young men. But, as I now see, this was not a question
of lacerated feelings; sentiments much more delicate were involved.
One night, I remember, I was sitting on the trunk contending with my
longing for sleep. A heavy glue seemed to have fallen on my eyelids, and
my body was drooping sideways, exhausted by a long day’s playing, but I
tried to conquer my sleepiness, for I wanted to see what was going on.
It was nearly midnight. Gentle, rosy, and meek as ever, Tatiana was
sitting at a little table sewing a shirt for her husband. From one
corner of the room Theodore was staring sternly and gloomily at her, in
another corner sat Pobedimski snorting angrily, his head half buried in
his high coat collar. My uncle was walking up and down plunged in
thought. Silence reigned, broken only by the rustling of the linen in
Tatiana’s hands. Suddenly my uncle stopped in front of Tatiana, and
said:
“Oh, you are all so young and fresh and good, and you live so peacefully
in this quiet place that I envy you! I have grown so fond of this life
of yours that, upon my honour, my heart aches when I remember that some
day I shall have to leave it all.”
Sleep closed my eyes and I heard no more. I was awakened by a bang, and
saw my uncle standing in front of Tatiana, looking at her with emotion.
His cheeks were burning.
“My life is over and I have not lived,” he was saying. “Your young face
reminds me of my lost youth, and I should be happy to sit here looking
at you until I died. I should like to take you with me to St.
Petersburg.”
“Why?” demanded Theodore in a hoarse voice.
“I should like to put you under a glass case on my desk; I should
delight in contemplating you, and showing you to my friends. Do you
know, Pelagia, that we don’t have people like you where I live? We have
wealth and fame and sometimes beauty, but we have none of this natural
life and this wholesome peacefulness——”
My uncle sat down in front of Tatiana and took her hand.
“So you won’t come with me to St. Petersburg?” he laughed. “Then at
least let me take this hand away with me, this lovely little hand! You
won’t? Very well then, little miser, at least allow me to kiss it!”
I heard a chair crack. Theodore sprang to his feet and strode toward his
wife with a heavy, measured tread. His face was ashy grey and quivering.
He raised his arm and brought his fist down on the table with all his
might, saying in a muffled voice:
“I won’t allow it!”
At the same moment Pobedimski jumped out of his chair, and with a face
as pale and angry as the other’s, he also advanced toward Tatiana and
banged the table with his fist.
“I—I won’t allow it!” he cried.
“What? What’s the matter,” asked my uncle in astonishment.
“I won’t allow it!” Theodore repeated, with another blow on the table.
My uncle jumped up and abjectly blinked his eyes. He wanted to say
something, but surprise and fright held him tongue-tied. He gave an
embarrassed smile and pattered out of the room with short, senile steps,
leaving his hat behind him. When my startled mother came into the room a
few moments later, Theodore and Pobedimski were still banging the table
with their fists like blacksmiths hammering an anvil, and shouting:
“I won’t allow it!”
“What has happened here?” demanded my mother. “Why has my brother
fainted? What is the matter?”
When she saw the frightened Tatiana and her angry husband, my mother
must have guessed what had been going on, for she sighed and shook her
head.
“Come, come, stop thumping the table!” she commanded. “Stop, Theodore!
And what are you hammering for, Gregory Pobedimski? What business is
this of yours?”
Pobedimski recollected himself and blushed. Theodore glared intently
first at him and then at his wife, and began striding up and down the
room. After my mother had gone, I saw something that for a long time
after I took to be a dream. I saw Theodore seize my tutor, raise him in
the air, and fling him out of the door.
When I awoke next morning my tutor’s bed was empty. To my inquiries, my
nurse replied in a whisper that he had been taken to the hospital early
that morning, to be treated for a broken arm. Saddened by this news, and
recalling yesterday’s scandal, I went out into the courtyard. The day
was overcast. The sky was covered with storm-clouds, and a strong wind
was blowing across the earth, whirling before it dust, feathers, and
scraps of paper. One could feel the approaching rain, and bad humour was
obvious in both men and beasts. When I went back to the house I was told
to walk lightly, and not to make a noise because my mother was ill in
bed with a headache. What could I do? I went out of the front gate, and,
sitting down on a bench, tried to make out the meaning of what I had
seen the night before. The road from our gate wound past a blacksmith’s
shop and around a damp meadow, turning at last into the main highway. I
sat and looked at the telegraph poles around which the dust was
whirling, and at the sleepy birds sitting on the wires until, suddenly,
such ennui overwhelmed me that I burst into tears.
A dusty char-à-banc came along the highway filled with townspeople who
were probably on a pilgrimage to some shrine. The char-à-banc was
scarcely out of sight before a light victoria drawn by a pair of horses
appeared. Standing up in the carriage and holding on to the coachman’s
belt was the rural policeman. To my intense surprise the victoria turned
into our road and rolled past me through the gate. While I was still
seeking an answer to the riddle of the policeman’s appearance at our
farm, a troika trotted up harnessed to a landau, and in the landau sat
the captain of police pointing out our gate to his coachman.
“What does this mean?” I asked myself. “Pobedimski must have complained
to them about Theodore, and they have come to fetch him away to prison.”
But the problem was not so easily solved. The policeman and the police
captain were evidently but the forerunners of some one more important
still, for five minutes had scarcely elapsed before a coach drove into
our gate. It flashed by me so quickly that, as I glanced in at the
window, I could only catch a glimpse of a red beard.
Lost in conjectures and foreseeing some disaster, I ran into the house.
The first person I met in the hall was my mother. Her face was pale, and
she was staring with horror at a door from behind which came the sound
of men’s voices. Some guests had arrived unexpectedly and at the very
height of her headache.
“Who is here, mamma?” I asked.
“Sister!” we heard my uncle call. “Do give the governor and the rest of
us a bite to eat!”
“That’s easier said than done!” whispered my mother, collapsing with
horror. “What can I give them at such short notice? I shall be disgraced
in my declining years!”
My mother clasped her head with her hands and hurried into the kitchen.
The unexpected arrival of the governor had turned the whole farm upside
down. A cruel holocaust immediately began to take place. Ten hens were
killed and five turkeys and eight ducks, and in the hurly-burly the old
gander was beheaded, the ancestor of all our flock and the favourite of
my mother. The coachman and the cook seemed to have gone mad, and
frantically slaughtered every bird they could lay hands upon without
regard to its age or breed. A pair of my precious turtle doves, as dear
to me as the gander was to my mother, were sacrified to make a gravy. It
was long before I forgave the governor their death.
That evening, when the governor and his suite had dined until they could
eat no more, and had climbed into their carriages and driven away, I
went into the house to look at the remains of the feast. Glancing into
the drawing-room from the hall, I saw my mother there with my uncle. My
uncle was shrugging his shoulders, and nervously pacing round and round
the room with his hands behind his back. My mother looked exhausted and
very much thinner. She was sitting on the sofa following my uncle’s
movements with eyes of suffering.
“I beg your pardon, sister, but one cannot behave like that! I
introduced the governor to you, and you did not even shake hands with
him! You quite embarrassed the poor man. Yes, it was most unseemly.
Simplicity is all very pretty, but even simplicity must not be carried
too far, upon my word and honour——And then that dinner! How could you
serve a dinner like that? What was that dish-rag you gave us for the
fourth course?”
“That was duck with apple sauce,” answered my mother faintly.
“Duck! Forgive me, sister, but—but—I have an attack of indigestion! I’m
ill!”
My uncle pulled a sour, tearful face and continued.
“The devil the governor had to come here to see me! Much I wanted a
visit from him! Ouch—oh, my indigestion! I—I can’t work and I can’t
sleep. I’m completely run down. I don’t see how in the world you can
exist here in this wilderness without anything to do! There now, the
pain is commencing in the pit of my stomach!”
My uncle knit his brows and walked up and down more swiftly than ever.
“Brother,” asked my mother softly. “How much does it cost to go abroad?”
“Three thousand roubles at least!” wailed my uncle. “I should certainly
go, but where can I get the money? I haven’t a copeck! Ouch, what a
pain!”
My uncle stopped in his walk and gazed with anguish through the window
at the grey, cloudy sky.
Silence fell. My mother fixed her eyes for a long time on the icon as if
she were debating something, and then burst into tears and exclaimed:
“I’ll let you have three thousand, brother!”
Three days later the majestic trunks were sent to the station, and
behind them rolled the carriage containing the privy councillor. He had
wept as he bade farewell to my mother, and had held her hand to his lips
for a long time. As he climbed into the carriage his face had shone with
childish joy. Radiant and happy, he had settled himself more comfortably
in his seat, kissed his hand to my weeping mother, and suddenly and
unexpectedly turned his regard to me. The utmost astonishment had
appeared on his features——
“What boy is this?” he had asked.
As my mother had always assured me that God had sent my uncle to us for
my especial benefit, this question gave her quite a turn. But I was not
thinking about the question. As I looked at my uncle’s happy face I
felt, for some reason, very sorry for him. I could not endure it, and
jumped up into the carriage to embrace this man, so frivolous, so weak,
and so human. As I looked into his eyes I wanted to say something
pleasant, so I asked him:
“Uncle, were you ever in a battle?”
“Oh, my precious boy!” laughed my uncle kissing me. “My precious boy,
upon my word and honour! How natural and true to life it all is, upon my
word and honour!”
The carriage moved away. I followed it with my eyes, and long after it
had disappeared I still heard ringing in my ears that farewell, “Upon my
word and honour!”