hand over her smiling mouth. Two minutes passed in silence.
"You might come for once," said Pelagea.
"What for?" sighed Yegor, taking off his cap and wiping his red forehead
with his hand. "There is no object in my coming. To go for an hour or
two is only waste of time, it's simply upsetting you, and to live
continually in the village my soul could not endure.... You know
yourself I am a pampered man.... I want a bed to sleep in, good tea to
drink, and refined conversation.... I want all the niceties, while you
live in poverty and dirt in the village.... I couldn't stand it for a
day. Suppose there were an edict that I must live with you, I should
either set fire to the hut or lay hands on myself. From a boy I've had
this love for ease; there is no help for it."
"Where are you living now?"
"With the gentleman here, Dmitry Ivanitch, as a huntsman. I furnish his
table with game, but he keeps me... more for his pleasure than
anything."
"That's not proper work you're doing, Yegor Vlassitch.... For other
people it's a pastime, but with you it's like a trade... like real
work."
"You don't understand, you silly," said Yegor, gazing gloomily at the
sky. "You have never understood, and as long as you live you will never
understand what sort of man I am.... You think of me as a foolish man,
gone to the bad, but to anyone who understands I am the best shot there
is in the whole district. The gentry feel that, and they have even
printed things about me in a magazine. There isn't a man to be compared
with me as a sportsman.... And it is not because I am pampered and proud
that I look down upon your village work. From my childhood, you know, I
have never had any calling apart from guns and dogs. If they took away
my gun, I used to go out with the fishing-hook, if they took the hook I
caught things with my hands. And I went in for horse-dealing too, I used
to go to the fairs when I had the money, and you know that if a peasant
goes in for being a sportsman, or a horse-dealer, it's good-bye to the
plough. Once the spirit of freedom has taken a man you will never root
it out of him. In the same way, if a gentleman goes in for being an
actor or for any other art, he will never make an official or a
landowner. You are a woman, and you do not understand, but one must
understand that."
"I understand, Yegor Vlassitch."
"You don't understand if you are going to cry...."
"I... I'm not crying," said Pelagea, turning away. "It's a sin, Yegor
Vlassitch! You might stay a day with luckless me, anyway. It's twelve
years since I was married to you, and... and... there has never once
been love between us!... I... I am not crying."
"Love..." muttered Yegor, scratching his hand. "There can't be any love.
It's only in name we are husband and wife; we aren't really. In your
eyes I am a wild man, and in mine you are a simple peasant woman with no
understanding. Are we well matched? I am a free, pampered, profligate
man, while you are a working woman, going in bark shoes and never
straightening your back. The way I think of myself is that I am the
foremost man in every kind of sport, and you look at me with pity.... Is
that being well matched?"
"But we are married, you know, Yegor Vlassitch," sobbed Pelagea.
"Not married of our free will.... Have you forgotten? You have to thank
Count Sergey Paylovitch and yourself. Out of envy, because I shot better
than he did, the Count kept giving me wine for a whole month, and when a
man's drunk you could make him change his religion, let alone getting
married. To pay me out he married me to you when I was drunk.... A
huntsman to a herd-girl! You saw I was drunk, why did you marry me? You
were not a serf, you know; you could have resisted. Of course it was a
bit of luck for a herd-girl to marry a huntsman, but you ought to have
thought about it. Well, now be miserable, cry. It's a joke for the
Count, but a crying matter for you.... Beat yourself against the wall."
A silence followed. Three wild ducks flew over the clearing. Yegor
followed them with his eyes till, transformed into three scarcely
visible dots, they sank down far beyond the forest.
"How do you live?" he asked, moving his eyes from the ducks to Pelagea.
"Now I am going out to work, and in the winter I take a child from the
Foundling Hospital and bring it up on the bottle. They give me a rouble
and a half a month."
"Oh...."
Again a silence. From the strip that had been reaped floated a soft song
which broke off at the very beginning. It was too hot to sing.
"They say you have put up a new hut for Akulina," said Pelagea.
Yegor did not speak.
"So she is dear to you...."
"It's your luck, it's fate!" said the huntsman, stretching. "You must
put up with it, poor thing. But good-bye, I've been chattering long
enough.... I must be at Boltovo by the evening."
Yegor rose, stretched himself, and slung his gun over his shoulder;
Pelagea got up.
"And when are you coming to the village?" she asked softly.
"I have no reason to, I shall never come sober, and you have little to
gain from me drunk; I am spiteful when I am drunk. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch."
Yegor put his cap on the back of his head and, clicking to his dog, went
on his way. Pelagea stood still looking after him.... She saw his moving
shoulder-blades, his jaunty cap, his lazy, careless step, and her eyes
were full of sadness and tender affection.... Her gaze flitted over her
husband's tall, lean figure and caressed and fondled it.... He, as
though he felt that gaze, stopped and looked round.... He did not speak,
but from his face, from his shrugged shoulders, Pelagea could see that
he wanted to say something to her. She went up to him timidly and looked
at him with imploring eyes.
"Take it," he said, turning round.
He gave her a crumpled rouble note and walked quickly away.
"Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch," she said, mechanically taking the rouble.
He walked by a long road, straight as a taut strap. She, pale and
motionless as a statue, stood, her eyes seizing every step he took. But
the red of his shirt melted into the dark colour of his trousers, his
step could not be seen, and the dog could not be distinguished from the
boots. Nothing could be seen but the cap, and... suddenly Yegor turned
off sharply into the clearing and the cap vanished in the greenness.
"Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch," whispered Pelagea, and she stood on tiptoe
to see the white cap once more.
HAPPINESS
A FLOCK of sheep was spending the night on the broad steppe road that is
called the great highway. Two shepherds were guarding it. One, a
toothless old man of eighty, with a tremulous face, was lying on his
stomach at the very edge of the road, leaning his elbows on the dusty
leaves of a plantain; the other, a young fellow with thick black
eyebrows and no moustache, dressed in the coarse canvas of which cheap
sacks are made, was lying on his back, with his arms under his head,
looking upwards at the sky, where the stars were slumbering and the
Milky Way lay stretched exactly above his face.
The shepherds were not alone. A couple of yards from them in the dusk
that shrouded the road a horse made a patch of darkness, and, beside it,
leaning against the saddle, stood a man in high boots and a short full-
skirted jacket who looked like an overseer on some big estate. Judging
from his upright and motionless figure, from his manners, and his
behaviour to the shepherds and to his horse, he was a serious,
reasonable man who knew his own value; even in the darkness signs could
be detected in him of military carriage and of the majestically
condescending expression gained by frequent intercourse with the gentry
and their stewards.
The sheep were asleep. Against the grey background of the dawn, already
beginning to cover the eastern part of the sky, the silhouettes of sheep
that were not asleep could be seen here and there; they stood with
drooping heads, thinking. Their thoughts, tedious and oppressive, called
forth by images of nothing but the broad steppe and the sky, the days
and the nights, probably weighed upon them themselves, crushing them
into apathy; and, standing there as though rooted to the earth, they
noticed neither the presence of a stranger nor the uneasiness of the
dogs.
The drowsy, stagnant air was full of the monotonous noise inseparable
from a summer night on the steppes; the grasshoppers chirruped
incessantly; the quails called, and the young nightingales trilled
languidly half a mile away in a ravine where a stream flowed and willows
grew.
The overseer had halted to ask the shepherds for a light for his pipe.
He lighted it in silence and smoked the whole pipe; then, still without
uttering a word, stood with his elbow on the saddle, plunged in thought.
The young shepherd took no notice of him, he still lay gazing at the sky
while the old man slowly looked the overseer up and down and then asked:
"Why, aren't you Panteley from Makarov's estate?"
"That's myself," answered the overseer.
"To be sure, I see it is. I didn't know you--that is a sign you will be
rich. Where has God brought you from?"
"From the Kovylyevsky fields."
"That's a good way. Are you letting the land on the part-crop system?"
"Part of it. Some like that, and some we are letting on lease, and some
for raising melons and cucumbers. I have just come from the mill."
A big shaggy old sheep-dog of a dirty white colour with woolly tufts
about its nose and eyes walked three times quietly round the horse,
trying to seem unconcerned in the presence of strangers, then all at
once dashed suddenly from behind at the overseer with an angry aged
growl; the other dogs could not refrain from leaping up too.
"Lie down, you damned brute," cried the old man, raising himself on his
elbow; "blast you, you devil's creature."
When the dogs were quiet again, the old man resumed his former attitude
and said quietly:
"It was at Kovyli on Ascension Day that Yefim Zhmenya died. Don't speak
of it in the dark, it is a sin to mention such people. He was a wicked
old man. I dare say you have heard."
"No, I haven't."
"Yefim Zhmenya, the uncle of Styopka, the blacksmith. The whole district
round knew him. Aye, he was a cursed old man, he was! I knew him for
sixty years, ever since Tsar Alexander who beat the French was brought
from Taganrog to Moscow. We went together to meet the dead Tsar, and in
those days the great highway did not run to Bahmut, but from Esaulovka
to Gorodishtche, and where Kovyli is now, there were bustards'
nests--there was a bustard's nest at every step. Even then I had noticed
that Yefim had given his soul to damnation, and that the Evil One was in
him. I have observed that if any man of the peasant class is apt to be
silent, takes up with old women's jobs, and tries to live in solitude,
there is no good in it, and Yefim from his youth up was always one to
hold his tongue and look at you sideways, he always seemed to be sulky
and bristling like a cock before a hen. To go to church or to the tavern
or to lark in the street with the lads was not his fashion, he would
rather sit alone or be whispering with old women. When he was still
young he took jobs to look after the bees and the market gardens. Good
folks would come to his market garden sometimes and his melons were
whistling. One day he caught a pike, when folks were looking on, and it
laughed aloud, 'Ho-ho-ho-ho!'"
"It does happen," said Panteley.
The young shepherd turned on his side and, lifting his black eyebrows,
stared intently at the old man.
"Did you hear the melons whistling?" he asked.
"Hear them I didn't, the Lord spared me," sighed the old man, "but folks
told me so. It is no great wonder... the Evil One will begin whistling
in a stone if he wants to. Before the Day of Freedom a rock was humming
for three days and three nights in our parts. I heard it myself. The
pike laughed because Yefim caught a devil instead of a pike."
The old man remembered something. He got up quickly on to his knees and,
shrinking as though from the cold, nervously thrusting his hands into
his sleeves, he muttered in a rapid womanish gabble:
"Lord save us and have mercy upon us! I was walking along the river bank
one day to Novopavlovka. A storm was gathering, such a tempest it was,
preserve us Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven.... I was hurrying on as best I
could, I looked, and beside the path between the thorn bushes--the thorn
was in flower at the time--there was a white bullock coming along. I
wondered whose bullock it was, and what the devil had sent it there for.
It was coming along and swinging its tail and moo-oo-oo! but would you
believe it, friends, I overtake it, I come up close--and it's not a
bullock, but Yefim--holy, holy, holy! I make the sign of the cross while
he stares at me and mutters, showing the whites of his eyes; wasn't I
frightened! We came alongside, I was afraid to say a word to him--the
thunder was crashing, the sky was streaked with lightning, the willows
were bent right down to the water--all at once, my friends, God strike me
dead that I die impenitent, a hare ran across the path... it ran and
stopped, and said like a man: 'Good-evening, peasants.' Lie down, you
brute!" the old man cried to the shaggy dog, who was moving round the
horse again. "Plague take you!"
"It does happen," said the overseer, still leaning on the saddle and not
stirring; he said this in the hollow, toneless voice in which men speak
when they are plunged in thought.
"It does happen," he repeated, in a tone of profundity and conviction.
"Ugh, he was a nasty old fellow," the old shepherd went on with somewhat
less fervour. "Five years after the Freedom he was flogged by the
commune at the office, so to show his spite he took and sent the throat
illness upon all Kovyli. Folks died out of number, lots and lots of
them, just as in cholera...."
"How did he send the illness?" asked the young shepherd after a brief
silence.
"We all know how, there is no great cleverness needed where there is a
will to it. Yefim murdered people with viper's fat. That is such a
poison that folks will die from the mere smell of it, let alone the
fat."
"That's true," Panteley agreed.
"The lads wanted to kill him at the time, but the old people would not
let them. It would never have done to kill him; he knew the place where
the treasure is hidden, and not another soul did know. The treasures
about here are charmed so that you may find them and not see them, but
he did see them. At times he would walk along the river bank or in the
forest, and under the bushes and under the rocks there would be little
flames, little flames... little flames as though from brimstone. I have
seen them myself. Everyone expected that Yefim would show people the
places or dig the treasure up himself, but he--as the saying is, like a
dog in the manger--so he died without digging it up himself or showing
other people."
The overseer lit a pipe, and for an instant lighted up his big
moustaches and his sharp, stern-looking, and dignified nose. Little
circles of light danced from his hands to his cap, raced over the saddle
along the horse's back, and vanished in its mane near its ears.
"There are lots of hidden treasures in these parts," he said.
And slowly stretching, he looked round him, resting his eyes on the
whitening east and added:
"There must be treasures."
"To be sure," sighed the old man, "one can see from every sign there are
treasures, only there is no one to dig them, brother. No one knows the
real places; besides, nowadays, you must remember, all the treasures are
under a charm. To find them and see them you must have a talisman, and
without a talisman you can do nothing, lad. Yefim had talismans, but
there was no getting anything out of him, the bald devil. He kept them,
so that no one could get them."
The young shepherd crept two paces nearer to the old man and, propping
his head on his fists, fastened his fixed stare upon him. A childish
expression of terror and curiosity gleamed in his dark eyes, and seemed
in the twilight to stretch and flatten out the large features of his
coarse young face. He was listening intently.
"It is even written in the Scriptures that there are lots of treasures
hidden here," the old man went on; "it is so for sure... and no mistake
about it. An old soldier of Novopavlovka was shown at Ivanovka a
writing, and in this writing it was printed about the place of the
treasure and even how many pounds of gold was in it and the sort of
vessel it was in; they would have found the treasures long ago by that
writing, only the treasure is under a spell, you can't get at it."
"Why can't you get at it, grandfather?" asked the young man.
"I suppose there is some reason, the soldier didn't say. It is under a
spell... you need a talisman."
The old man spoke with warmth, as though he were pouring out his soul
before the overseer. He talked through his nose and, being unaccustomed
to talk much and rapidly, stuttered; and, conscious of his defects, he
tried to adorn his speech with gesticulations of the hands and head and
thin shoulders, and at every movement his hempen shirt crumpled into
folds, slipped upwards and displayed his back, black with age and
sunburn. He kept pulling it down, but it slipped up again at once. At
last, as though driven out of all patience by the rebellious shirt, the
old man leaped up and said bitterly:
"There is fortune, but what is the good of it if it is buried in the
earth? It is just riches wasted with no profit to anyone, like chaff or
sheep's dung, and yet there are riches there, lad, fortune enough for
all the country round, but not a soul sees it! It will come to this,
that the gentry will dig it up or the government will take it away. The
gentry have begun digging the barrows.... They scented something! They
are envious of the peasants' luck! The government, too, is looking after
itself. It is written in the law that if any peasant finds the treasure
he is to take it to the authorities! I dare say, wait till you get it!
There is a brew but not for you!"
The old man laughed contemptuously and sat down on the ground. The
overseer listened with attention and agreed, but from his silence and
the expression of his figure it was evident that what the old man told
him was not new to him, that he had thought it all over long ago, and
knew much more than was known to the old shepherd.
"In my day, I must own, I did seek for fortune a dozen times," said the
old man, scratching himself nervously. "I looked in the right places,
but I must have come on treasures under a charm. My father looked for
it, too, and my brother, too--but not a thing did they find, so they died
without luck. A monk revealed to my brother Ilya--the Kingdom of Heaven
be his--that in one place in the fortress of Taganrog there was a
treasure under three stones, and that that treasure was under a charm,
and in those days--it was, I remember, in the year '38--an Armenian used
to live at Matvyeev Barrow who sold talismans. Ilya bought a talisman,
took two other fellows with him, and went to Taganrog. Only when he got
to the place in the fortress, brother, there was a soldier with a gun,
standing at the very spot...."
A sound suddenly broke on the still air, and floated in all directions
over the steppe. Something in the distance gave a menacing bang, crashed
against stone, and raced over the steppe, uttering, "Tah! tah! tah!
tah!" When the sound had died away the old man looked inquiringly at
Panteley, who stood motionless and unconcerned.
"It's a bucket broken away at the pits," said the young shepherd after a
moment's thought.
It was by now getting light. The Milky Way had turned pale and gradually
melted like snow, losing its outlines; the sky was becoming dull and
dingy so that you could not make out whether it was clear or covered
thickly with clouds, and only from the bright leaden streak in the east
and from the stars that lingered here and there could one tell what was
coming.
The first noiseless breeze of morning, cautiously stirring the spurges
and the brown stalks of last year's grass, fluttered along the road.
The overseer roused himself from his thoughts and tossed his head. With
both hands he shook the saddle, touched the girth and, as though he
could not make up his mind to mount the horse, stood still again,
hesitating.
"Yes," he said, "your elbow is near, but you can't bite it. There is
fortune, but there is not the wit to find it."
And he turned facing the shepherds. His stern face looked sad and
mocking, as though he were a disappointed man.
"Yes, so one dies without knowing what happiness is like..." he said
emphatically, lifting his left leg into the stirrup. "A younger man may
live to see it, but it is time for us to lay aside all thought of it."
Stroking his long moustaches covered with dew, he seated himself heavily
on the horse and screwed up his eyes, looking into the distance, as
though he had forgotten something or left something unsaid. In the
bluish distance where the furthest visible hillock melted into the mist
nothing was stirring; the ancient barrows, once watch-mounds and tombs,
which rose here and there above the horizon and the boundless steppe had
a sullen and death-like look; there was a feeling of endless time and
utter indifference to man in their immobility and silence; another
thousand years would pass, myriads of men would die, while they would
still stand as they had stood, with no regret for the dead nor interest
in the living, and no soul would ever know why they stood there, and
what secret of the steppes was hidden under them.
The rooks awakening, flew one after another in silence over the earth.
No meaning was to be seen in the languid flight of those long-lived
birds, nor in the morning which is repeated punctually every twenty-four
hours, nor in the boundless expanse of the steppe.
The overseer smiled and said:
"What space, Lord have mercy upon us! You would have a hunt to find
treasure in it! Here," he went on, dropping his voice and making a
serious face, "here there are two treasures buried for a certainty. The
gentry don't know of them, but the old peasants, particularly the
soldiers, know all about them. Here, somewhere on that ridge [the
overseer pointed with his whip] robbers one time attacked a caravan of
gold; the gold was being taken from Petersburg to the Emperor Peter who
was building a fleet at the time at Voronezh. The robbers killed the men
with the caravan and buried the gold, but did not find it again
afterwards. Another treasure was buried by our Cossacks of the Don. In
the year '12 they carried off lots of plunder of all sorts from the
French, goods and gold and silver. When they were going homewards they
heard on the way that the government wanted to take away all the gold
and silver from them. Rather than give up their plunder like that to the
government for nothing, the brave fellows took and buried it, so that
their children, anyway, might get it; but where they buried it no one
knows."
"I have heard of those treasures," the old man muttered grimly.
"Yes..." Panteley pondered again. "So it is...."
A silence followed. The overseer looked dreamily into the distance, gave
a laugh and pulled the rein, still with the same expression as though he
had forgotten something or left something unsaid. The horse reluctantly
started at a walking pace. After riding a hundred paces Panteley shook
his head resolutely, roused himself from his thoughts and, lashing his
horse, set off at a trot.
The shepherds were left alone.
"That was Panteley from Makarov's estate," said the old man. "He gets a
hundred and fifty a year and provisions found, too. He is a man of
education...."
The sheep, waking up--there were about three thousand of them--began
without zest to while away the time, nipping at the low, half-trampled
grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be
seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur's Grave with its peaked
top. If one clambered up on that tomb one could see the plain from it,
level and boundless as the sky, one could see villages, manor-houses,
the settlements of the Germans and of the Molokani, and a long-sighted
Kalmuck could even see the town and the railway-station. Only from there
could one see that there was something else in the world besides the
silent steppe and the ancient barrows, that there was another life that
had nothing to do with buried treasure and the thoughts of sheep.