Nekhliudof, stooping low, passed through the low gate, under the gloomy
shed, to the apiary, which was situated behind the yard.
A small space, surrounded by straw and a wattled hedge, through the chinks
of which the light streamed, was filled with bee-hives symmetrically
arranged, and covered with shavings, while the golden bees were humming
around them. Every thing was bathed in the warm and brilliant rays of the
July sun.
From the gate a well-trodden footway led through the middle to a wooden
side-building, with a tin-foil image on it gleaming brightly in the sun.
A few orderly young lindens lifting, above the thatched roof of the
neighboring court-yard, their bushy tops, almost audibly rustled their
dark-green, fresh foliage, in unison with the sound of the buzzing bees.
All the shadows from the covered hedge, from the lindens, and from the
hives, fell dark and short on the delicate curling grass springing up
between the planks.
The bent, small figure of the old man, with his gray hair and bald spot
shining in the sun, was visible near the door of a straw-thatched structure
situated among the lindens. When he heard the creaking of the gate, the old
man looked up, and wiping his heated, sweaty face with the flap of his
shirt, and smiling with pleasure, came to meet the prince.
In the apiary it was so comfortable, so pleasant, so warm, so free! The
figure of the gray-haired old man, with thick wrinkles radiating from his
eyes, and wearing wide shoes on his bare feet, as he came waddling along,
good-naturedly and contentedly smiling, to welcome the prince to his own
private possessions, was so ingenuously soothing that Nekhliudof for a
moment forgot the trying impressions of the morning, and his cherished
dream came vividly up before him. He already saw all his peasants just as
prosperous and contented as the old man Dutlof, and all smiling soothingly
and pleasantly upon him, because to him alone they were indebted for their
prosperity and happiness.
"Would you like a net, your excellency? The bees are angry now," said the
old man, taking down from the fence a dirty gingham bag fragrant of honey,
and handing it to the prince. "The bees know me, and don't sting," he
added, with the pleasant smile that rarely left his handsome sunburned
face.
"I don't need it either. Well, are they swarming yet?" asked Nekhliudof,
also smiling, though without knowing why.
"Yes, they are swarming, father, Mitri Mikolayévitch,"[45] replied the old
man, throwing an expression of peculiar endearment into this form of
addressing his bárin by his name and patronymic. "They have only just begun
to swarm; it has been a cold spring, you know."
[Footnote 45: _bátiushka_; Mitri Mikolayévitch, rustic for Dmitri
Nikolayévitch.]
"I have just been reading in a book," began Nekhliudof, defending himself
from a bee which had got entangled in his hair, and was buzzing under his
ear, "that if the wax stands straight on the bars, then the bees swarm
earlier. Therefore such hives as are made of boards ... with cross-b--"
"You don't want to gesticulate; that makes it worse," said the little old
man. "Now don't you think you had better put on the net?"
Nekhliudof felt a sharp pain, but by some sort of childish egotism he did
not wish to give in to it; and so, once more refusing the bag, continued to
talk with the old man about the construction of hives, about which he had
read in "Maison Rustique," and which, according to his idea, ought to be
made twice as large. But another bee stung him in the neck, and he lost the
thread of his discourse and stopped short in the midst of it.
"That's well enough, father, Mitri Mikolayévitch," said the old man,
looking at the prince with paternal protection; "that's well enough in
books, as you say. Yes; maybe the advice is given with some deceit, with
some hidden meaning; but only just let him do as he advises, and we shall
be the first to have a good laugh at his expense. And this happens! How are
you going to teach the bees where to deposit their wax? They themselves put
it on the cross-bar, sometimes straight and sometimes aslant. Just look
here!" he continued, opening one of the nearest hives, and gazing at the
entrance-hole blocked by a bee buzzing and crawling on the crooked comb.
"Here's a young one. It sees; at its head sits the queen, but it lays the
wax straight and sideways, both according to the position of the block,"
said the old man, evidently carried away by his interest in his occupation,
and not heeding the prince's situation. "Now, to-day, it will fly with the
pollen. To-day is warm; it's on the watch," he continued, again covering up
the hive and pinning down with a cloth the crawling bee; and then brushing
off into his rough palm a few of the insects from his wrinkled neck.
The bees did not sting him; but as for Nekhliudof, he could scarcely
refrain from the desire to beat a retreat from the apiary. The bees had
already stung him in three places, and were buzzing angrily on all sides
around his head and neck.
"You have many hives?" he asked as he retreated toward the gate.
"What God has given," replied Dutlof sarcastically. "It is not necessary to
count them, father; the bees don't like it. Now, your excellency, I wanted
to ask a favor of you," he went on to say, pointing to the small posts
standing by the fence. "It was about Osip, the nurse's husband. If you
would only speak to him. In our village it's so hard to act in a neighborly
way; it's not good."
"How so?... Ah, how they sting!" exclaimed the prince, already seizing the
latch of the gate.
"Every year now, he lets his bees out among my young ones. We could stand
it, but strange bees get away their comb and kill them," said the old man,
not heeding the prince's grimaces.
"Very well, by and by; right away," said Nekhliudof. And having no longer
strength of will to endure, he hastily beat a retreat through the gate,
fighting his tormentors with both hands.
"Rub it with dirt. It's nothing," said the old man, coming to the door
after the prince. The prince took some earth, and rubbed the spot where he
had been stung, and reddened as he cast a quick glance at Karp and Ignát,
who did not deign to look at him. Then he frowned angrily.