Boris came in on his aunt during the children’s breakfast. Tatiana
Markovna clapped her hands and all but jumped from her chair; the plates
were nearly shaken off the table.
“Borushka, tiresome boy! You have not even written, but descend like a
thunderclap. How you frightened me!”
She took his head in her hands, looked for a full minute into his face,
and would have wept, but she glanced away at his mother’s portrait, and
sighed.
“Well, well!” she seemed to say, but in fact said nothing, but smiled
and wiped away her tears with her handkerchief. “Your mother’s boy,” she
cried, “her very image! See how lovely she was, look, Vassilissa! Do you
remember? Isn’t he like her?”
With youthful appetite Boris devoured coffee, tea, cakes and bread, his
aunt watching all the while.
“Call the people, tell the Starost and everybody that the Master is here,
the real Master, the owner. Welcome, little father, welcome home!” she
said, with an ironic air of humility, laughing and mimicking the
pleasant speech. “Forsake us not with your favour. Tatiana Markovna
insults us, ruins us, take us over into your charge.... Ha! Ha! Here are
the keys, the accounts, at your service, demand a reckoning from the old
lady. Ask her what she has done with the estate money, why the peasants’
huts are in ruins. See how the Malinovka peasants beg in the streets of
the town. Ha! Ha! Under your guardian and uncle in the new estate, I
believe, the peasants wear polished boots and red shirts, and live in
two-storied houses. Well, Sir, why this silence? Why do you not ask for
the accounts? Have your breakfast, and then I will show you everything.”
After breakfast Tatiana Markovna took her sunshade, put on her
thick-soled shoes, covered her head with a light hood, and went to
show Boris the garden.
“Now, Sir, keep your eyes wide open, and if there is anything wrong,
don’t spare your Grandmother. You will see I have just planted out the
beds in front of the house. Veroshka and Marfinka play here under my
eyes, in the sand. One cannot trust any nurse.”
They reached the yard.
“Kirusha, Eromka, Matroshka, where have you all hidden yourselves? One
of you come here.”
Matroshka appeared, and announced that Kirusha and Eromka had gone into
the village to fetch the peasants.
“Here is Matroshka. Do you remember her? What are you staring there for,
fool. Kiss your Master’s hand.”
Matroshka came nearer. “I dare not,” she said.
Boris shyly embraced the girl.
“You have built a new wing to the buildings, Grandmother,” he said.
“You noticed that. Do you remember the old one? It was quite rotten, had
holes in the floors as broad as my hand, and the dirt and the soot! And
now look!”
They went into the new wing. His aunt showed Boris the alterations in
the stables, the horses and the separate space for fowls, the laundry
and byres.
“Here is the new kitchen which I built detached so that the kitchen
range is outside the house, and the servants have more room. Now each
has his own corner. Here is the pantry, there the new ice-cellar. What
are you standing there for?” she said, turning to Matrona. “Go and tell
Egorka to run into the village and say to the Starost that we are going
over there.”
In the garden his aunt showed him every tree and every bush, led him
through the alleys, looked down from the top of the precipice into the
brushwood, and went with him into the village. It was a warm day, and
the winter corn waved gently in the pleasant breeze.
“Here is my nephew, Boris Pavlovich,” she said to the Starost. “Are you
getting in the hay while the warm weather lasts? We are sure to have
rain before long after this heat. Here is the Master, the real Master,
my nephew,” she said, turning to the peasants. “Have you seen him before,
Garashka? Take a good look at him. Is that your calf in the rye,
Iliusha?” she said in passing to a peasant, while her attention already
wandered to the pond.
“There they are again, hanging out the clothes on the trees,” she
remarked angrily to the village elder. “I have given orders for a line
to be fixed. Tell blind Agasha so. It is she that likes to hang her
things out on the willows. The branches will break....”
“We haven’t a line long enough,” answered the Starost sleepily. “We
shall have to buy one in the town.”
“Why did you not tell Vassilissa? She would have let me know. I go into
the town every week, and would have brought a line long ago.”
“I have told her, but she forgets, or says it is not worth while to
bother the Mistress about it.”
Tatiana Markovna made a knot in her handkerchief. She liked it to be
said that nothing could be done without her; a clothes-line, for
instance, could be bought by anybody, but God forbid that she should
trust anybody with money. Although by no means avaricious, she was
sparing with money. Before she brought herself to part with it she was
thoughtful, sometimes angry, but the money once spent, she forgot all
about it and did not like keeping account of it.
Besides the more important arrangements, her life was full of small
matters of business. The maids had to be put to cutting out and sewing,
or to cooking and cleaning. She arranged so that everything was carried
out before her own eyes. She herself did not touch the actual work, but
with the dignity of age she stood with one hand on her hip and the other
pointing out exactly where and how everything was to be done. The
clattering keys opened cupboards, chests, strong boxes, which contained
a profusion of household linen, costly lace yellow with age, diamonds,
destined for the dowry of her nieces, and money. The cupboards where tea,
sugar, coffee and other provisions were kept were in Vassilissa’s charge.
In the morning, after coffee, when she had given her orders for the farm,
Tatiana Markovna sat down at her bureau to her accounts, then sat by the
window and looked out into the field, watched the labourers, saw what
was going on in the yard, and sent Yakob or Vassilissa when there was
anything of which she disapproved.
When necessary she drove into the town to the market hall, or to make
visits, but never was long away, returning always in time for the midday
meal. She herself received many guests; she liked to be dispensing
hospitality from morning to night.
When in winter afternoons she sat by the stove, she was silent and
thoughtful, and liked everything around her quiet. Summer afternoons she
spent in the garden, when she put on her gardening gloves and took a
spade, a rake, or a watering can, by way of obtaining a little exercise.
Then she spent the evening at the tea-table in the company of Tiet
Nikonich Vatutin, her oldest and best friend and adviser.
Tiet Nikonich was a gentleman of birth and breeding. He owned in the
province two or three hundred “souls”--he did not exactly know how many,
and never attended to his estate, but left his peasants to do as they
liked, and to pay him what dues they pleased. Shyly, and without
counting it, he took the money they brought him, put it in his bureau,
and signed to them to go where they pleased. He had been in the army,
and old people remembered him as a handsome young officer, a modest,
frank young man. In his youth he often visited his mother on the estate,
and spent his leave with her. Eventually he took his discharge, and then
built himself a little grey house in the town with three windows on to
the street, and there established himself.
Although he had only received a moderate education in the cadet school,
he liked to read, occupying himself chiefly with politics and natural
science. In his speech, his manners and his gait he betrayed a gentle
shyness, never obtruded his dignity, but was ready to show it if
necessity arose. However intimate he might be with anyone, he always
maintained a certain courtesy and reserve in word and gesture. He bowed
to the Governor or a friend or a new acquaintance with the same
old-fashioned politeness, drawing back one foot as he did so. In the
street he addressed ladies with uncovered head, was the first to pick up
a handkerchief or bring a footstool. If there were young girls in a house
he visited he came armed with a pound of bonbons, a bunch of flowers,
and tried to suit his conversation to their age, their tastes and their
occupations. He always maintained his delicate politeness, tinged with
the respectful manner of a courtier of the old school. When ladies were
present he always wore his frock-coat. He neither smoked, nor used
perfume, nor tried to make himself look younger, but was always spotless,
and distinguished in his dress. His clothes were simple but dazzlingly
neat. His nankeen trousers were freshly pressed, and his blue frock-coat
looked as if it had come straight from the tailor. In spite of his fifty
years, he had, with his perruque and his shaven chin, the air of a fresh,
rosy-cheeked young man. With all his narrow means he gave the impression
of wealth and good breeding, and put down his hundred roubles as if he
had thousands to throw about.
For Tatiana Markovna he showed a respectful friendship, but one so
devoted and ardent that it was evident from his manner that he loved her
beyond all others. But although he was her daily guest he gave no sign
of intimacy before strangers.
She showed great friendship for him, but there was more vivacity in her
tone. Those who remembered them when they were young, said she had been
a very beautiful girl. When she had thrown on her shawl and sat looking
meditatively before her, she resembled a family portrait in the gallery
of the old house. Occasionally there came over her moods which betrayed
pride and a desire for domination; when this happened her face wore an
earnest, dreamy expression, as if she were leading another life far from
the small details of her actual existence.
Hardly a day went by that Tiet Nikonich did not bring some present for
Grandmother or the little girls, a basket of strawberries, oranges,
peaches, always the earliest on the market.
At one time it had been rumoured in the town--a rumour long since
stilled--that Tiet Nikonich had loved Tatiana Markovna and Tatiana
Markovna him, but that her parents had chosen another husband for her.
She refused to assent, and remained unmarried. What truth there was in
this, none knew but herself. But every day he came to her, either at
midday or in the evening.
He liked to talk over with her what was going on in the world, who was
at war, and with whom, and why. He knew why bread was cheap in Russia;
the names of all the noble houses; he knew by heart the names of all the
ministers and the men in high commands and their past history; he could
tell why one sea lay at a higher tide than another; he was the first to
know what the English or the French had invented, and whether the
inventions were useful or not. If there was any business to be arranged
in the law courts, Tiet Nikonich arranged it, and sometimes concealed
the sums that he spent in so doing. If he was found out, she scolded him;
he could not conceal his confusion, begged her pardon, kissed her hand,
and took his leave.
Tatiana Markovna was always at loggerheads with the bureaucracy of the
neighbourhood. If soldiers were to be billeted on her, the roads to be
improved, or the taxes collected, she complained of outrage, argued and
refused to pay. She would hear nothing about the public interest. In her
opinion everyone had his own business to mind. She strongly objected to
the police, and especially to the Superintendent, who was in her view a
robber. More than once Tiet Nikonich tried, without success, to
reconcile her to the doctrine of the public interest; he had to be
content if she was reconciled with the officials and the police.
This was the patriarchal, peaceful atmosphere which young Raisky
absorbed. Grandmother and the little girls were mother and sisters to
him, and Tiet Nikonich the ideal uncle.