The little house at which Lavretsky had arrived, and in which Glafira
Petrovna had died two years before, had been built of solid pine
timber in the preceding century. It looked very old, but it was good
for another fifty years or more. Lavretsky walked through all the
rooms, and, to the great disquiet of the faded old flies which clung
to the cornices without moving, their backs covered with white dust,
he had the windows thrown open everywhere. Since the death of Glafira
Petrovna, no one had opened them. Every thing had remained precisely
as it used to be in the house. In the drawing-room the little white
sofas, with their thin legs, and their shining grey coverings, all
worn and rumpled, vividly recalled to mind the times of Catharine. In
that room also stood the famous arm-chair of the late proprietress, a
chair with a high, straight back, in which, even in her old age, she
used always to sit bolt upright. On the wall hung an old portrait
of Fedor's great-grandfather, Andrei Lavretsky. His dark, sallow
countenance could scarcely be distinguished against the cracked and
darkened background. His small, malicious eyes looked out morosely
from beneath the heavy, apparently swollen eyelids. His black hair,
worn without powder, rose up stiff as a brush above his heavy,
wrinkled forehead. From the corner of the portrait hung a dusky wreath
of _immortelles_. "Glafira Petrovna deigned to weave it herself,"
observed Anthony. In the bed-room stood a narrow bedstead, with
curtains of some striped material, extremely old, but of very good
quality. On the bed lay a heap of faded cushions and a thin, quilted
counterpane; and above the bolster hung a picture of the Presentation
of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple, the very picture which the old
lady, when she lay dying, alone and forgotten, pressed for the last
time with lips which were already beginning to grow cold. Near the
window stood a toilet table, inlaid with different kinds of wood and
ornamented with plates of copper, supporting a crooked mirror in
a frame of which the gilding had turned black. In a line with the
bed-room was the oratory, a little room with bare walls; in the corner
stood a heavy case for holding sacred pictures, and on the floor lay
the scrap of carpet, worn threadbare, and covered with droppings from
wax candles, on which Glafira Petrovna used to prostrate herself when
she prayed.
Anton went out with Lavretsky's servant to open the stable and
coach-house doors. In his stead appeared an old woman, almost as old
as himself, her hair covered by a handkerchief, which came down to her
very eyebrows. Her head shook and her eyes seemed dim; but they wore,
also, an expression of zealous obedience, habitual and implicit, and,
at the same time, of a kind of respectful condolence. She kissed
Lavretsky's hand, and then remained near the door, awaiting his
orders. He could not remember what her name was, nor even whether he
had ever seen her before. It turned out that her name was Apraxia.
Some forty years previously, Glafira Petrovna had struck her off the
list of the servants who lived in the house, and had ordered her to
become a poultry-maid. She seldom spoke, seemed half idiotic, and
always wore a servile look. Besides this old couple, and three paunchy
little children in long shirts, Anton's great-grandchildren, there
lived also in the seigniorial household an untaxable[A] moujik, who
had only one arm. He cackled like a black-cock, and was fit for
nothing. Of very little more use was the infirm old hound which had
saluted Lavretsky's return by its barking. For ten whole years it
had been fastened to a heavy chain, purchased by order of Glafira
Petrovna, a burden under which it was now scarcely able to move.
[Footnote A: One who had not received the usual grant of land from the
community, and was not subject to rates like the rest.]
Having examined the house, Lavretsky went out into the garden, and was
well pleased with it. It was all overgrown with steppe grass, with
dandelions, and with gooseberry and raspberry bushes; but there was
plenty of shade in it, a number of old lime-trees growing there, of
singularly large stature, with eccentrically ordered branches. They
had been planted too close together, and a hundred years seemed to
have elapsed since they were pruned. At the end of the garden was a
small, clear lake, surrounded by a fringe of high, reddish-colored
rushes. The traces of a human life that is past soon disappear.
Glafira's manor-house had not yet grown wild, but it seemed to have
become already immersed in that quiet slumber which all that is
earthly sleeps, whenever it is not affected by the restlessness of
humanity.
Lavretsky also went through the village. The women looked at him from
the door-ways of their cottages, each resting her cheek upon her hand.
The men bowed low from afar, the children ran Out of sight, the dogs
barked away at their ease. At last he felt hungry, but he did not
expect his cook and the other servants till the evening. The waggon
bringing provisions from Lavriki had not yet arrived. It was
necessary to have recourse to Anton. The old man immediately made his
arrangements. He caught an ancient fowl, and killed and plucked it.
Apraxia slowly squeezed and washed it, scrubbing it as if it had been
linen for the wash, before putting it into the stewpan. When at
last it was ready, Anton laid the table, placing beside the dish a
three-footed plated salt-cellar, blackened with age, and a cut glass
decanter, with a round glass stopper in its narrow neck. Then, in a
kind of chant, he announced to Lavretsky that dinner was ready, and
took his place behind his master's chair, a napkin wound around
his right hand, and a kind of air of the past, like the odor of
cypress-wood hanging about him. Lavretsky tasted the broth, and took
the fowl out of it. The bird's skin was covered all over with round
blisters, a thick tendon ran up each leg, and the flesh was as tough
as wood, and had a flavor like that which pervades a laundry. After
dinner Lavretsky said that he would take tea if--
"I will bring it in a moment," broke in the old man, and he kept his
promise. A few pinches of tea were found rolled up in a scrap of red
paper. Also a small, but very zealous and noisy little _samovar_[A]
was discovered, and some sugar in minute pieces, which looked as if
they had been all but melted away. Lavretsky drank his tea out of a
large cup. From his earliest childhood he remembered this cup, on
which playing cards were painted, and from which only visitors were
allowed to drink; and now he drank from it, like a visitor.
[Footnote A: Urn.]
Towards the evening came the servants. Lavretsky did not like to sleep
in his aunt's bed, so he had one made up for him in the dining-room.
After putting out the candle, he lay for a long time looking around
him, and thinking what were not joyous thoughts. He experienced the
sensations which every one knows who has had to spend the night
for the first time in a long uninhabited room. He fancied that the
darkness which pressed in upon him from all sides could not accustom
itself to the new tenant--that the very walls of the house were
astonished at him. At last he sighed, pulled the counterpane well over
him, and went to sleep. Anton remained on his legs long after every
one else had gone to bed. For some time he spoke in a whisper to
Apraxia, sighing low at intervals, and three times he crossed himself.
The old servants had never expected that their master would settle
down among them at Vasilievskoe, when he had such a fine estate, with
a well-appointed manor-house close by. They did not suspect what was
really the truth, that Lavriki was repugnant to its owner, that
it aroused in his mind too painful recollections. After they had
whispered to each other enough, Anton took a stick, and struck the
watchman's board, which had long hung silently by the barn. Then
he lay down in the open yard, without troubling himself about any
covering for his white head. The May night was calm and soothing, and
the old man slept soundly.