"VOLODYA'S come!" someone shouted in the yard.
"Master Volodya's here!" bawled Natalya the cook, running into the
dining-room. "Oh, my goodness!"
The whole Korolyov family, who had been expecting their Volodya
from hour to hour, rushed to the windows. At the front door stood
a wide sledge, with three white horses in a cloud of steam. The
sledge was empty, for Volodya was already in the hall, untying his
hood with red and chilly fingers. His school overcoat, his cap, his
snowboots, and the hair on his temples were all white with frost,
and his whole figure from head to foot diffused such a pleasant,
fresh smell of the snow that the very sight of him made one want
to shiver and say "brrr!"
His mother and aunt ran to kiss and hug him. Natalya plumped down
at his feet and began pulling off his snowboots, his sisters shrieked
with delight, the doors creaked and banged, and Volodya's father,
in his waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, ran out into the hall with
scissors in his hand, and cried out in alarm:
"We were expecting you all yesterday? Did you come all right? Had
a good journey? Mercy on us! you might let him say 'how do you do'
to his father! I am his father after all!"
"Bow-wow!" barked the huge black dog, Milord, in a deep bass, tapping
with his tail on the walls and furniture.
For two minutes there was nothing but a general hubbub of joy. After
the first outburst of delight was over the Korolyovs noticed that
there was, besides their Volodya, another small person in the hall,
wrapped up in scarves and shawls and white with frost. He was
standing perfectly still in a corner, in the shadow of a big fox-lined
overcoat.
"Volodya darling, who is it?" asked his mother, in a whisper.
"Oh!" cried Volodya. "This is--let me introduce my friend Lentilov,
a schoolfellow in the second class. . . . I have brought him to
stay with us."
"Delighted to hear it! You are very welcome," the father said
cordially. "Excuse me, I've been at work without my coat. . . .
Please come in! Natalya, help Mr. Lentilov off with his things.
Mercy on us, do turn that dog out! He is unendurable!"
A few minutes later, Volodya and his friend Lentilov, somewhat dazed
by their noisy welcome, and still red from the outside cold, were
sitting down to tea. The winter sun, making its way through the
snow and the frozen tracery on the window-panes, gleamed on the
samovar, and plunged its pure rays in the tea-basin. The room was
warm, and the boys felt as though the warmth and the frost were
struggling together with a tingling sensation in their bodies.
"Well, Christmas will soon be here," the father said in a pleasant
sing-song voice, rolling a cigarette of dark reddish tobacco. "It
doesn't seem long since the summer, when mamma was crying at your
going . . . and here you are back again. . . . Time flies, my boy.
Before you have time to cry out, old age is upon you. Mr. Lentilov,
take some more, please help yourself! We don't stand on ceremony!"
Volodya's three sisters, Katya, Sonya, and Masha (the eldest was
eleven), sat at the table and never took their eyes off the newcomer.
Lentilov was of the same height and age as Volodya, but not as
round-faced and fair-skinned. He was thin, dark, and freckled; his
hair stood up like a brush, his eyes were small, and his lips were
thick. He was, in fact, distinctly ugly, and if he had not been
wearing the school uniform, he might have been taken for the son
of a cook. He seemed morose, did not speak, and never once smiled.
The little girls, staring at him, immediately came to the conclusion
that he must be a very clever and learned person. He seemed to be
thinking about something all the time, and was so absorbed in his
own thoughts, that, whenever he was spoken to, he started, threw
his head back, and asked to have the question repeated.
The little girls noticed that Volodya, who had always been so merry
and talkative, also said very little, did not smile at all, and
hardly seemed to be glad to be home. All the time they were at tea
he only once addressed his sisters, and then he said something so
strange. He pointed to the samovar and said:
"In California they don't drink tea, but gin."
He, too, seemed absorbed in his own thoughts, and, to judge by the
looks that passed between him and his friend Lentilov, their thoughts
were the same.
After tea, they all went into the nursery. The girls and their
father took up the work that had been interrupted by the arrival
of the boys. They were making flowers and frills for the Christmas
tree out of paper of different colours. It was an attractive and
noisy occupation. Every fresh flower was greeted by the little girls
with shrieks of delight, even of awe, as though the flower had
dropped straight from heaven; their father was in ecstasies too,
and every now and then he threw the scissors on the floor, in
vexation at their bluntness. Their mother kept running into the
nursery with an anxious face, asking:
"Who has taken my scissors? Ivan Nikolaitch, have you taken my
scissors again?"
"Mercy on us! I'm not even allowed a pair of scissors!" their father
would respond in a lachrymose voice, and, flinging himself back in
his chair, he would pretend to be a deeply injured man; but a minute
later, he would be in ecstasies again.
On his former holidays Volodya, too, had taken part in the preparations
for the Christmas tree, or had been running in the yard to look at
the snow mountain that the watchman and the shepherd were building.
But this time Volodya and Lentilov took no notice whatever of the
coloured paper, and did not once go into the stable. They sat in
the window and began whispering to one another; then they opened
an atlas and looked carefully at a map.
"First to Perm . . ." Lentilov said, in an undertone, "from there
to Tiumen, then Tomsk . . . then . . . then . . . Kamchatka. There
the Samoyedes take one over Behring's Straits in boats . . . . And
then we are in America. . . . There are lots of furry animals
there. . . ."
"And California?" asked Volodya.
"California is lower down. . . . We've only to get to America and
California is not far off. . . . And one can get a living by hunting
and plunder."
All day long Lentilov avoided the little girls, and seemed to look
at them with suspicion. In the evening he happened to be left alone
with them for five minutes or so. It was awkward to be silent.
He cleared his throat morosely, rubbed his left hand against his
right, looked sullenly at Katya and asked:
"Have you read Mayne Reid?"
"No, I haven't. . . . I say, can you skate?"
Absorbed in his own reflections, Lentilov made no reply to this
question; he simply puffed out his cheeks, and gave a long sigh as
though he were very hot. He looked up at Katya once more and said:
"When a herd of bisons stampedes across the prairie the earth
trembles, and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh."
He smiled impressively and added:
"And the Indians attack the trains, too. But worst of all are the
mosquitoes and the termites."
"Why, what's that?"
"They're something like ants, but with wings. They bite fearfully.
Do you know who I am?"
"Mr. Lentilov."
"No, I am Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious."
Masha, the youngest, looked at him, then into the darkness out of
window and said, wondering:
"And we had lentils for supper yesterday."
Lentilov's incomprehensible utterances, and the way he was always
whispering with Volodya, and the way Volodya seemed now to be always
thinking about something instead of playing . . . all this was
strange and mysterious. And the two elder girls, Katya and Sonya,
began to keep a sharp look-out on the boys. At night, when the boys
had gone to bed, the girls crept to their bedroom door, and listened
to what they were saying. Ah, what they discovered! The boys were
planning to run away to America to dig for gold: they had everything
ready for the journey, a pistol, two knives, biscuits, a burning
glass to serve instead of matches, a compass, and four roubles in
cash. They learned that the boys would have to walk some thousands
of miles, and would have to fight tigers and savages on the road:
then they would get gold and ivory, slay their enemies, become
pirates, drink gin, and finally marry beautiful maidens, and make
a plantation.
The boys interrupted each other in their excitement. Throughout the
conversation, Lentilov called himself "Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw,"
and Volodya was "my pale-face brother!"
"Mind you don't tell mamma," said Katya, as they went back to bed.
"Volodya will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell
mamma he won't be allowed to go."
The day before Christmas Eve, Lentilov spent the whole day poring
over the map of Asia and making notes, while Volodya, with a languid
and swollen face that looked as though it had been stung by a bee,
walked about the rooms and ate nothing. And once he stood still
before the holy image in the nursery, crossed himself, and said:
"Lord, forgive me a sinner; Lord, have pity on my poor unhappy
mamma!"
In the evening he burst out crying. On saying good-night he gave
his father a long hug, and then hugged his mother and sisters. Katya
and Sonya knew what was the matter, but little Masha was puzzled,
completely puzzled. Every time she looked at Lentilov she grew
thoughtful and said with a sigh:
"When Lent comes, nurse says we shall have to eat peas and lentils."
Early in the morning of Christmas Eve, Katya and Sonya slipped
quietly out of bed, and went to find out how the boys meant to run
away to America. They crept to their door.
"Then you don't mean to go?" Lentilov was saying angrily. "Speak
out: aren't you going?"
"Oh dear," Volodya wept softly. "How can I go? I feel so unhappy
about mamma."
"My pale-face brother, I pray you, let us set off. You declared you
were going, you egged me on, and now the time comes, you funk it!"
"I . . . I . . . I'm not funking it, but I . . . I . . . I'm sorry
for mamma."
"Say once and for all, are you going or are you not?"
"I am going, only . . . wait a little . . . I want to be at home a
little."
"In that case I will go by myself," Lentilov declared. "I can get
on without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since
that's how it is, give me back my cartridges!"
At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help
crying too. Silence followed.
"So you are not coming?" Lentilov began again.
"I . . . I . . . I am coming!"
"Well, put on your things, then."
And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of
America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding
him, and promising to give him all the ivory and lions' and tigers'
skins.
And this thin, dark boy, with his freckles and his bristling shock
of hair, impressed the little girls as an extraordinary remarkable
person. He was a hero, a determined character, who knew no fear,
and he growled so ferociously, that, standing at the door, they
really might imagine there was a tiger or lion inside. When the
little girls went back to their room and dressed, Katya's eyes were
full of tears, and she said:
"Oh, I feel so frightened!"
Everything was as usual till two o'clock, when they sat down to
dinner. Then it appeared that the boys were not in the house. They
sent to the servants' quarters, to the stables, to the bailiff's
cottage. They were not to be found. They sent into the village--
they were not there.
At tea, too, the boys were still absent, and by supper-time Volodya's
mother was dreadfully uneasy, and even shed tears.
Late in the evening they sent again to the village, they searched
everywhere, and walked along the river bank with lanterns. Heavens!
what a fuss there was!
Next day the police officer came, and a paper of some sort was
written out in the dining-room. Their mother cried. . . .
All of a sudden a sledge stopped at the door, with three white
horses in a cloud of steam.
"Volodya's come," someone shouted in the yard.
"Master Volodya's here!" bawled Natalya, running into the dining-room.
And Milord barked his deep bass, "bow-wow."
It seemed that the boys had been stopped in the Arcade, where they
had gone from shop to shop asking where they could get gunpowder.
Volodya burst into sobs as soon as he came into the hall, and flung
himself on his mother's neck. The little girls, trembling, wondered
with terror what would happen next. They saw their father take
Volodya and Lentilov into his study, and there he talked to them a
long while.
"Is this a proper thing to do?" their father said to them. "I only
pray they won't hear of it at school, you would both be expelled.
You ought to be ashamed, Mr. Lentilov, really. It's not at all the
thing to do! You began it, and I hope you will be punished by your
parents. How could you? Where did you spend the night?"
"At the station," Lentilov answered proudly.
Then Volodya went to bed, and had a compress, steeped in vinegar,
on his forehead.
A telegram was sent off, and next day a lady, Lentilov's mother,
made her appearance and bore off her son.
Lentilov looked morose and haughty to the end, and he did not utter
a single word at taking leave of the little girls. But he took
Katya's book and wrote in it as a souvenir: "Montehomo, the Hawk's
Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious."