In the small room occupied by Nekhliudof stood an old leather sofa
decorated with copper nails, a few chairs of the same description, an
old-fashioned inlaid extension-table with scallops and brass mountings, and
strewn with papers, and an old-fashioned English grand with narrow keys,
broken and twisted.
Between the windows hung a large mirror with an old carved frame gilded. On
the floor, near the table, lay packages of papers, books, and accounts.
This room, on the whole, had a characterless and disorderly appearance; and
this lively disorder presented a sharp contrast with the affectedly
aristocratic arrangement of the other rooms of the great mansion.
When Nekhliudof reached his room, he flung his hat angrily on the table,
and sat down in a chair which stood near the piano, crossed his legs, and
shook his head.
"Will you have lunch, your excellency?" asked a tall, thin, wrinkled old
woman, who entered just at this instant, dressed in a cap, a great
kerchief, and a print dress.
Nekhliudof looked at her for a moment or two in silence, as though
collecting his thoughts.
"No: I don't wish any thing, nurse," said he, and again fell into thought.
The nurse shook her head at him in some vexation, and sighed.
"Eh! Father, Dmitri Nikolayévitch, are you melancholy? Such tribulation
comes, but it will pass away. God knows"....
"I am not melancholy. What have you brought, Malanya Finogenovna?" replied
Nekhliudof, endeavoring to smile.
"Ain't melancholy! can't I see?" the old woman began to say with warmth.
"The whole livelong day to be all sole alone! And you take every thing to
heart so, and look out for every thing; and besides, you scarcely eat any
thing. What's the reason of it? If you'd only go to the city, or visit your
neighbors, as others do! You are young, and the idea of bothering over
things so! Pardon me, little father, I will sit down," pursued the old
nurse, taking a seat near the door. "You see, we have got into such a habit
that we lose fear. Is that the way gentlemen do? There's no good in it. You
are only ruining yourself, and the people are spoiled. That's just like our
people: they don't understand it, that's a fact. You had better go to your
auntie. What she wrote was good sense," said the old nurse, admonishing
him.
Nekhliudof kept growing more and more dejected. His right hand, resting on
his knee, lazily struck the piano, making a chord, a second, a third.
Nekhliudof moved nearer, drew his other hand from his pocket, and began to
play. The chords which he made were sometimes not premeditated, were
occasionally not even according to rule, often remarkable for absurdity,
and showed that he was lacking in musical talent; but the exercise gave him
a certain indefinable melancholy enjoyment.
At every modification in the harmony, he waited with muffled heart-beat for
what would come out of it; and when any thing came, he, in a dark sort of
way, completed with his imagination what was missing.
It seemed to him that he heard a hundred melodies, and a chorus, and an
orchestra simultaneously joining in with his harmony. But his chief
pleasure was in the powerful activity of his imagination; confused and
broken, but bringing up with striking clearness before him the most varied,
mixed, and absurd images and pictures from the past and the future.
Now it presents the puffy figure of Davidka Byélui, timidly blinking his
white eyelashes at the sight of his mother's black fist with its net-work
of veins; his bent back, and huge hands covered with white hairs,
exhibiting a uniform patience and submission to fate, sufficient to
overcome torture and deprivation.
Then he saw the brisk, presuming nurse, and, somehow, seemed to picture her
going through the villages, and announcing to the peasants that they ought
to hide their money from the proprietors; and he unconsciously said to
himself, "Yes, it is necessary to hide money from the proprietors."
Then suddenly there came up before him the fair head of his future wife,
for some reason weeping and leaning on his shoulder in deep grief.
Then he seemed to see Churis's kindly blue eyes looking affectionately at
his pot-bellied little son. Yes, he saw in him a helper and savior, apart
from his son. "That is love," he whispered.
Then he remembered Yukhvanka's mother, remembered the expression of
patience and conciliation which, notwithstanding her prominent teeth and
her irregular features, he recognized on her aged face.
"It must be that I have been the first during her seventy years of life, to
recognize her good qualities," he said to himself, and whispered
"Strange;" but he continued still to drum on the piano, and to listen to
the sounds.
Then he vividly recalled his retreat from the bees, and the expressions on
the faces of Karp and Ignát, who evidently wanted to laugh though they made
believe not look at him. He reddened, and involuntarily glanced at the old
nurse, who still remained sitting by the door, looking at him with silent
attention, occasionally shaking her gray head.
Here, suddenly, he seemed to see a troïka of sleek horses, and Ilyushka's
handsome, robust form, with bright curls, gayly shining, narrow blue eyes,
fresh complexion, and delicate down just beginning to appear on lip and
chin.
He remembered how Ilyushka was afraid that he would not be permitted to go
teaming, and how eagerly he argued in favor of the work that he liked so
well. And he saw the gray early morning, that began with mist, and the
smooth paved road, and the long lines of three-horse wagons, heavily laden
and protected by mats, and marked with big black letters. The stout,
contented, well-fed horses, thundering along with their bells, arching
their backs, and tugging on the traces, pulled in unison up the hill,
forcefully straining on their long-nailed shoes over the smooth road.
As the train of wagons reached the foot of the hill, the postman had
quickly dashed by with jingling bells, which were echoed far and wide by
the great forest extending along on both sides of the road.
"_A-a-aï!_" in a loud, boyish voice, shouts the head driver, who has a
badge on his lambskin cap, and swings his whip around his head.
Beside the front wheel of the front team, the redheaded, cross-looking
Karp is walking heavily in huge boots. In the second team Ilyushka shows
his handsome head, as he sits on the driver's seat playing the bugle. Three
troïka-wagons loaded with boxes, with creaking wheels, with the sound of
bells and shouts, file by. Ilyushka once more hides his handsome face under
the matting, and falls off to sleep.
Now it is a fresh, clear evening. The deal gates open for the weary horses
as they halt in front of the tavern yard; and one after the other, the high
mat-covered teams roll in across the planks that lie at the gates, and come
to rest under the wide sheds.
Ilyushka gayly exchanges greetings with the light-complexioned,
wide-bosomed landlady, who asks, "Have you come far? and will there be many
of you to supper?" and at the same time looks with pleasure on the handsome
lad, with her bright, kindly eyes.
And now, having unharnessed the horses, he goes into the warm house[47]
crowded with people, crosses himself, sits down at the generous wooden
bowl, and enters into lively conversation with the landlady and his
companions.
[Footnote 47: _izbá_.]
And then he goes to bed in the open air, under the stars which gleam down
into the shed. His bed is fragrant hay, and he is near the horses, which,
stamping and snorting, eat their fodder in the wooden cribs. He goes to the
shed, turns toward the east, and after crossing himself thirty times in
succession on his broad brawny chest, and throwing back his bright curls,
he repeats "Our Father" and "Lord have mercy" a score of times, and
wrapping himself, head and all, in his cloak, sleeps the healthy, dreamless
sleep of strong, fresh manhood.
And here he sees in his vision the city of Kief, with its saints and
throngs of priests; Romen, with its merchants and merchandise; he sees
_Odest_, and the distant blue sea studded with white sails, and the city of
Tsar-grad,[48] with its golden palaces, and the white-breasted, dark-browed
Turkish maidens; and thither he flies, lifting himself on invisible wings.
[Footnote 48: Constantinople.]
He flies freely and easily, always farther and farther away, and sees below
him golden cities bathed in clear effulgence, and the blue sky with bright
stars, and a blue sea with white sails; and smoothly and pleasantly he
flies, always farther and farther away....
"Splendid!" whispers Nekhliudof to himself; and the thought, "Why am I not
Ilyushka?" comes to him.