night, Terenty comes to them, makes the sign of the cross over them, and
puts bread under their heads. And no one sees his love. It is seen only
by the moon which floats in the sky and peeps caressingly through the
holes in the wall of the deserted barn.
BOYS "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."
SHROVE TUESDAY
"PAVEL VASSILITCH!" cries Pelageya Ivanovna, waking her husband. "Pavel
Vassilitch! You might go and help Styopa with his lessons, he is sitting
crying over his book. He can't understand something again!"
Pavel Vassilitch gets up, makes the sign of the cross over his mouth as
he yawns, and says softly: "In a minute, my love!"
The cat who has been asleep beside him gets up too, straightens out its
tail, arches its spine, and half-shuts its eyes. There is stillness. . .
. Mice can be heard scurrying behind the wall-paper. Putting on his
boots and his dressing-gown, Pavel Vassilitch, crumpled and frowning
from sleepiness, comes out of his bedroom into the dining-room; on his
entrance another cat, engaged in sniffing a marinade of fish in the
window, jumps down to the floor, and hides behind the cupboard.
"Who asked you to sniff that!" he says angrily, covering the fish with a
sheet of newspaper. "You are a pig to do that, not a cat. . . ."
From the dining-room there is a door leading into the nursery. There, at
a table covered with stains and deep scratches, sits Styopa, a high-
school boy in the second class, with a peevish expression of face and
tear-stained eyes. With his knees raised almost to his chin, and his
hands clasped round them, he is swaying to and fro like a Chinese idol
and looking crossly at a sum book.
"Are you working?" asks Pavel Vassilitch, sitting down to the table and
yawning. "Yes, my boy. . . . We have enjoyed ourselves, slept, and eaten
pancakes, and to-morrow comes Lenten fare, repentance, and going to
work. Every period of time has its limits. Why are your eyes so red? Are
you sick of learning your lessons? To be sure, after pancakes, lessons
are nasty to swallow. That's about it."
"What are you laughing at the child for?" Pelageya Ivanovna calls from
the next room. "You had better show him instead of laughing at him.
He'll get a one again to-morrow, and make me miserable."
"What is it you don't understand?" Pavel Vassilitch asks Styopa.
"Why this . . . division of fractions," the boy answers crossly. "The
division of fractions by fractions. . . ."
"H'm . . . queer boy! What is there in it? There's nothing to understand
in it. Learn the rules, and that's all. . . . To divide a fraction by a
fraction you must multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the
denominator of the second, and that will be the numerator of the
quotient. . . . In this case, the numerator of the first fraction. . .
."
"I know that without your telling me," Styopa interrupts him, flicking a
walnut shell off the table. "Show me the proof."
"The proof? Very well, give me a pencil. Listen. . . . Suppose we want
to divide seven eighths by two fifths. Well, the point of it is, my boy,
that it's required to divide these fractions by each other. . . . Have
they set the samovar?"
"I don't know."
"It's time for tea. . . . It's past seven. Well, now listen. We will
look at it like this. . . . Suppose we want to divide seven eighths not
by two fifths but by two, that is, by the numerator only. We divide it,
what do we get?
"Seven sixteenths."
"Right. Bravo! Well, the trick of it is, my boy, that if we . . . so if
we have divided it by two then. . . . Wait a bit, I am getting muddled.
I remember when I was at school, the teacher of arithmetic was called
Sigismund Urbanitch, a Pole. He used to get into a muddle over every
lesson. He would begin explaining some theory, get in a tangle, and turn
crimson all over and race up and down the class-room as though someone
were sticking an awl in his back, then he would blow his nose half a
dozen times and begin to cry. But you know we were magnanimous to him,
we pretended not to see it. 'What is it, Sigismund Urbanitch?' we used
to ask him. 'Have you got toothache?' And what a set of young ruffians,
regular cut-throats, we were, but yet we were magnanimous, you know!
There weren't any boys like you in my day, they were all great hulking
fellows, great strapping louts, one taller than another. For instance,
in our third class, there was Mamahin. My goodness, he was a solid chap!
You know, a regular maypole, seven feet high. When he moved, the floor
shook; when he brought his great fist down on your back, he would knock
the breath out of your body! Not only we boys, but even the teachers
were afraid of him. So this Mamahin used to . . ."
Pelageya Ivanovna's footsteps are heard through the door. Pavel
Vassilitch winks towards the door and says:
"There's mother coming. Let's get to work. Well, so you see, my boy," he
says, raising his voice. "This fraction has to be multiplied by that
one. Well, and to do that you have to take the numerator of the first
fraction. . ."
"Come to tea!" cries Pelageya Ivanovna. Pavel Vassilitch and his son
abandon arithmetic and go in to tea. Pelageya Ivanovna is already
sitting at the table with an aunt who never speaks, another aunt who is
deaf and dumb, and Granny Markovna, a midwife who had helped Styopa into
the world. The samovar is hissing and puffing out steam which throws
flickering shadows on the ceiling. The cats come in from the entry
sleepy and melancholy with their tails in the air. . . .
"Have some jam with your tea, Markovna," says Pelageya Ivanovna,
addressing the midwife. "To-morrow the great fast begins. Eat well to-
day."
Markovna takes a heaped spoonful of jam hesitatingly as though it were a
powder, raises it to her lips, and with a sidelong look at Pavel
Vassilitch, eats it; at once her face is overspread with a sweet smile,
as sweet as the jam itself.
"The jam is particularly good," she says. "Did you make it yourself,
Pelageya Ivanovna, ma'am?"
"Yes. Who else is there to do it? I do everything myself. Styopotchka,
have I given you your tea too weak? Ah, you have drunk it already. Pass
your cup, my angel; let me give you some more."
"So this Mamahin, my boy, could not bear the French master," Pavel
Vassilitch goes on, addressing his son. "'I am a nobleman,' he used to
shout, 'and I won't allow a Frenchman to lord it over me! We beat the
French in 1812!' Well, of course they used to thrash him for it . . .
thrash him dre-ead-fully, and sometimes when he saw they were meaning to
thrash him, he would jump out of window, and off he would go! Then for
five or six days afterwards he would not show himself at the school. His
mother would come to the head-master and beg him for God's sake: 'Be so
kind, sir, as to find my Mishka, and flog him, the rascal!' And the
head-master would say to her: 'Upon my word, madam, our five porters
aren't a match for him!'"
"Good heavens, to think of such ruffians being born," whispers Pelageya
Ivanovna, looking at her husband in horror. "What a trial for the poor
mother!"
A silence follows. Styopa yawns loudly, and scrutinises the Chinaman on
the tea-caddy whom he has seen a thousand times already. Markovna and
the two aunts sip tea carefully out of their saucers. The air is still
and stifling from the stove. . . . Faces and gestures betray the sloth
and repletion that comes when the stomach is full, and yet one must go
on eating. The samovar, the cups, and the table-cloth are cleared away,
but still the family sits on at the table. . . . Pelageya Ivanovna is
continually jumping up and, with an expression of alarm on her face,
running off into the kitchen, to talk to the cook about the supper. The
two aunts go on sitting in the same position immovably, with their arms
folded across their bosoms and doze, staring with their pewtery little
eyes at the lamp. Markovna hiccups every minute and asks:
"Why is it I have the hiccups? I don't think I have eaten anything to
account for it . . . nor drunk anything either. . . . Hic!"
Pavel Vassilitch and Styopa sit side by side, with their heads touching,
and, bending over the table, examine a volume of the "Neva" for 1878.
"'The monument of Leonardo da Vinci, facing the gallery of Victor
Emmanuel at Milan.' I say! . . . After the style of a triumphal arch. .
. . A cavalier with his lady. . . . And there are little men in the
distance. . . ."
"That little man is like a schoolfellow of mine called Niskubin," says
Styopa.
"Turn over. . . . 'The proboscis of the common house-fly seen under the
microscope.' So that's a proboscis! I say--a fly. Whatever would a bug
look like under a microscope, my boy? Wouldn't it be horrid!"
The old-fashioned clock in the drawing-room does not strike, but coughs
ten times huskily as though it had a cold. The cook, Anna, comes into
the dining-room, and plumps down at the master's feet.
"Forgive me, for Christ's sake, Pavel Vassilitch!" she says, getting up,
flushed all over.
"You forgive me, too, for Christ's sake," Pavel Vassilitch responds
unconcernedly.
In the same manner, Anna goes up to the other members of the family,
plumps down at their feet, and begs forgiveness. She only misses out
Markovna to whom, not being one of the gentry, she does not feel it
necessary to bow down.
Another half-hour passes in stillness and tranquillity. The "Neva" is by
now lying on the sofa, and Pavel Vassilitch, holding up his finger,
repeats by heart some Latin verses he has learned in his childhood.
Styopa stares at the finger with the wedding ring, listens to the
unintelligible words, and dozes; he rubs his eyelids with his fists, and
they shut all the tighter.
"I am going to bed . . ." he says, stretching and yawning.
"What, to bed?" says Pelageya Ivanovna. "What about supper before the
fast?"
"I don't want any."
"Are you crazy?" says his mother in alarm. "How can you go without your
supper before the fast? You'll have nothing but Lenten food all through
the fast!"
Pavel Vassilitch is scared too.
"Yes, yes, my boy," he says. "For seven weeks mother will give you
nothing but Lenten food. You can't miss the last supper before the
fast."
"Oh dear, I am sleepy," says Styopa peevishly.
"Since that is how it is, lay the supper quickly," Pavel Vassilitch
cries in a fluster. "Anna, why are you sitting there, silly? Make haste
and lay the table."
Pelageya Ivanovna clasps her hands and runs into the kitchen with an
expression as though the house were on fire.
"Make haste, make haste," is heard all over the house. "Styopotchka is
sleepy. Anna! Oh dear me, what is one to do? Make haste."
Five minutes later the table is laid. Again the cats, arching their
spines, and stretching themselves with their tails in the air, come into
the dining-room. . . . The family begin supper. . . . No one is hungry,
everyone's stomach is overfull, but yet they must eat.
THE OLD HOUSE (A Story told by a Houseowner)