'Really!--how old are you?'
'God knows.'
'Your sight's failing, I expect.'
'What?'
'Your sight's failing, I daresay?'
'Yes, it's failing. At times I can hear nothing.'
'Then how can you be a watchman, eh?'
'Oh, my elders know about that.'
'Elders!' I thought, and I gazed not without compassion at the poor old
man. He fumbled about, pulled out of his bosom a bit of coarse bread,
and began sucking it like a child, with difficulty moving his sunken
cheeks.
I walked in the direction of the copse, turned to the right, kept on,
kept right on as the old man had advised me, and at last got to a large
village with a stone church in the new style, _i.e._ with columns, and
a spacious manor-house, also with columns. While still some way off I
noticed through the fine network of falling rain a cottage with a deal
roof, and two chimneys, higher than the others, in all probability the
dwelling of the village elder; and towards it I bent my steps in the
hope of finding, in this cottage, a samovar, tea, sugar, and some not
absolutely sour cream. Escorted by my half-frozen dog, I went up the
steps into the outer room, opened the door, and instead of the usual
appurtenances of a cottage, I saw several tables, heaped up with
papers, two red cupboards, bespattered inkstands, pewter boxes of
blotting sand weighing half a hundred-weight, long penholders, and so
on. At one of the tables was sitting a young man of twenty with a
swollen, sickly face, diminutive eyes, a greasy-looking forehead, and
long straggling locks of hair. He was dressed, as one would expect, in
a grey nankin coat, shiny with wear at the waist and the collar.
'What do you want?' he asked me, flinging his head up like a horse
taken unexpectedly by the nose.
'Does the bailiff live here... or--'
'This is the principal office of the manor,' he interrupted. 'I'm the
clerk on duty.... Didn't you see the sign-board? That's what it was put
up for.'
'Where could I dry my clothes here? Is there a samovar anywhere in the
village?'
'Samovars, of course,' replied the young man in the grey coat with
dignity; 'go to Father Timofey's, or to the servants' cottage, or else
to Nazar Tarasitch, or to Agrafena, the poultry-woman.'
'Who are you talking to, you blockhead? Can't you let me sleep, dummy!'
shouted a voice from the next room.
'Here's a gentleman's come in to ask where he can dry himself.'
'What sort of a gentleman?'
'I don't know. With a dog and a gun.'
A bedstead creaked in the next room. The door opened, and there came in
a stout, short man of fifty, with a bull neck, goggle-eyes,
extraordinarily round cheeks, and his whole face positively shining
with sleekness.
'What is it you wish?' he asked me.
'To dry my things.'
'There's no place here.'
'I didn't know this was the counting-house; I am willing, though, to
pay...'
'Well, perhaps it could be managed here,' rejoined the fat man; 'won't
you come inside here?' (He led me into another room, but not the one he
had come from.) 'Would this do for you?'
'Very well.... And could I have tea and milk?'
'Certainly, at once. If you'll meantime take off your things and rest,
the tea shall be got ready this minute.'
'Whose property is this?'
'Madame Losnyakov's, Elena Nikolaevna.'
He went out I looked round: against the partition separating my room
from the office stood a huge leather sofa; two high-backed chairs, also
covered in leather, were placed on both sides of the solitary window
which looked out on the village street. On the walls, covered with a
green paper with pink patterns on it, hung three immense oil paintings.
One depicted a setter-dog with a blue collar, bearing the inscription:
'This is my consolation'; at the dog's feet flowed a river; on the
opposite bank of the river a hare of quite disproportionate size with
ears cocked up was sitting under a pine tree. In another picture two
old men were eating a melon; behind the melon was visible in the
distance a Greek temple with the inscription: 'The Temple of
Satisfaction.' The third picture represented the half-nude figure of a
woman in a recumbent position, much fore-shortened, with red knees and
very big heels. My dog had, with superhuman efforts, crouched under the
sofa, and apparently found a great deal of dust there, as he kept
sneezing violently. I went to the window. Boards had been laid across
the street in a slanting direction from the manor-house to the
counting-house--a very useful precaution, as, thanks to our rich black
soil and the persistent rain, the mud was terrible. In the grounds of
the manor-house, which stood with its back to the street, there was the
constant going and coming there always is about manor-houses: maids in
faded chintz gowns flitted to and fro; house-serfs sauntered through
the mud, stood still and scratched their spines meditatively; the
constable's horse, tied up to a post, lashed his tail lazily, and with
his nose high up, gnawed at the hedge; hens were clucking; sickly
turkeys kept up an incessant gobble-gobble. On the steps of a dark
crumbling out-house, probably the bath-house, sat a stalwart lad with a
guitar, singing with some spirit the well-known ballad:
'I'm leaving this enchanting spot
To go into the desert.'
The fat man came into the room.
'They're bringing you in your tea,' he told me, with an affable smile.
The young man in the grey coat, the clerk on duty, laid on the old
card-table a samovar, a teapot, a tumbler on a broken saucer, a jug of
cream, and a bunch of Bolhovo biscuit rings. The fat man went out.
'What is he?' I asked the clerk; 'the steward?'
'No, sir; he was the chief cashier, but now he has been promoted to be
head-clerk.'
'Haven't you got a steward, then?'
'No, sir. There's an agent, Mihal Vikulov, but no steward.'
'Is there a manager, then?'
'Yes; a German, Lindamandol, Karlo Karlitch; only he does not manage
the estate.'
'Who does manage it, then?'
'Our mistress herself.'
'You don't say so. And are there many of you in the office?'
The young man reflected.
'There are six of us.'
'Who are they?' I inquired.
'Well, first there's Vassily Nikolaevitch, the head cashier; then
Piotr, one clerk; Piotr's brother, Ivan, another clerk; the other Ivan,
a clerk; Konstantin Narkizer, another clerk; and me here--there's a lot
of us, you can't count all of them.'
'I suppose your mistress has a great many serfs in her house?'
'No, not to say a great many.'
'How many, then?'
'I dare say it runs up to about a hundred and fifty.'
We were both silent for a little.
'I suppose you write a good hand, eh?' I began again.
The young man grinned from ear to ear, went into the office and brought
in a sheet covered with writing.
'This is my writing,' he announced, still with the same smile on his
face.
I looked at it; on the square sheet of greyish paper there was written,
in a good bold hand, the following document:--