The Count's gardens in which we were walking are worthy of special
description owing to their striking luxuriousness. From a botanical or
an economical point of view, and in many other ways, they are richer
and grander than any other gardens I have ever seen. Besides the
above-mentioned avenue with its green vaults, you found in them
everything that capricious indulgence can demand from pleasure
gardens. You found here every variety of indigenous and foreign fruit
tree, beginning with the wild cherry and plum and finishing with
apricots that were the size of a goose's egg. You came across mulberry
trees, barberry bushes, and even olive trees at every step. . . . Here
there were half-ruined, moss-grown grottoes, fountains, little ponds
destined for goldfish and tame carp, hillocks, pavilions and costly
conservatories. . . . And all this rare luxury which had been
collected by the hands of grandfathers and fathers, all this wealth of
large, full roses, poetical grottoes and endless avenues, was
barbarously abandoned to neglect, and given over to the power of
weeds, the thievish hatchet and the rooks who unceremoniously built
their ugly nests on the branches of rare trees! The lawful possessor
of all this wealth walked beside me, and the muscles of his lean,
satiated face were no more moved by the sight of this neglect, this
crying human slovenliness, than if he had not been the owner of these
gardens. Once only, by way of making some remark, he said to his
bailiff that it would not be a bad thing if the paths were sanded. He
noticed the absence of the sand that was not wanted by anybody, but he
did not notice the bare trees that had been frozen in the hard
winters, or the cows that were walking about in the garden. In reply
to his remark, Urbenin said it would require ten men to keep the
garden in order, and as his Excellency was not pleased to reside on
his estate, the outlay on the garden would be a useless and
unproductive luxury. The Count, of course, agreed with this argument.
“Besides, I must confess I have no time for it!” Urbenin said with a
wave of the hand. “All the summer in the fields, and in winter selling
the corn in town. . . . There's no time for gardens here!”
The charm of the principal, the so-called “main avenue,” consisted in
its old broad-spreading limes, and in the masses of tulips that
stretched out in two variegated borders at each side of its whole
length and finished at the end in a yellow spot. This was a yellow
stone pavilion, which at one time had contained a refreshment room,
billiards, skittles and other games. We wandered, without any object,
towards this pavilion. At its door we were met by a live creature
which somewhat unsettled the nerves of my companion, who was never
very courageous.
“A snake!” the Count shrieked, seizing me by the hand and turning
pale. “Look!”
The Pole stepped back, and then stood stock still with his arms
outstretched as if he wanted to bar the way for the apparition. On the
upper step of the half-crumbled stone stair there lay a young snake of
our ordinary Russian species. When it saw us it raised its head and
moved. The Count shrieked again and hid behind me.
“Don't be afraid, your Excellency. . . .” Urbenin said lazily as he
placed his foot on the first step.
“But if it bites?”
“It won't bite. Besides, the danger from the bite of these snakes is
much exaggerated. I was once bitten by an old snake, and, as you see,
I didn't die. The sting of a man is worse than a snake's!” Urbenin
said with a sigh, wishing to point a moral.
Indeed, the bailiff had not had time to mount two or three steps
before the snake stretched out to its full length, and with the
rapidity of lightning vanished into a crevice between two stones. When
we entered the pavilion we saw another living creature. Lying on the
torn and faded cloth of the old billiard table there was an elderly
man of middle height in a blue jacket, striped trousers, and a jockey
cap. He was sleeping sweetly and quietly. Around his toothless gaping
mouth and on his pointed nose flies were making themselves at home.
Thin as a skeleton, with an open mouth, lying there immovable, he
looked like a corpse that had only just been brought in from the
mortuary to be dissected.
“Franz!” said Urbenin, poking him. “Franz!”
After being poked five or six times, Franz shut his mouth, sat up,
looked round at us, and lay down again. A minute later his mouth was
again open and the flies that were walking about his nose were again
disturbed by the slight vibration of his snores.
“He's asleep, the lewd swine!” Urbenin sighed.
“Is he not our gardener, Tricher?” the Count asked.
“No other. . . . That's how he is every day . . . He sleeps like a
dead man all day and plays cards all night. I was told he gambled last
night till six in the morning.”
“What do they play?”
“Games of hazard. . . . Chiefly stukolka.”
“Well, such gentlemen work badly. They draw their wages for nothing!”
“It was not to complain, your Excellency,” Urbenin hastened to say,
“that I told you this, or to express my dissatisfaction; it was
only. . . . I am only sorry that so capable a man is a slave to his
passions. He really is a hard-working man, capable too. . . . He does
not receive wages for nothing.”
We glanced again at the gambler Franz and left the pavilion. We then
turned towards the garden gate and went into the fields.
There are but few novels in which the garden gate does not play an
important part. If you have not noticed this, you have only to inquire
of my man Polycarp, who in his lifetime has swallowed multitudes of
terrible and not terrible novels, and he will doubtless confirm this
insignificant but characteristic fact.
My novel has also not escaped the inevitable garden gate. But my gate
is different from others in this, that my pen will have to lead
through it many unfortunate and scarcely any happy people; and even
this in a direction contrary to the one found in other novels. And
what is worse, I had once to describe this gate not as a novel-writer
but as an examining magistrate. In my novel more criminals than lovers
will pass through it.
A quarter of an hour later, supporting ourselves on our walking
sticks, we wound our way up the hill to what is known as the “Stone
Grave.” In the surrounding villages there is a legend that under this
heap of stones there reposes the body of a Tartar Khan, who, fearing
that after his death the enemy would desecrate his ashes, had ordered
that a mound of stones was to be made above his body. This legend,
however, is scarcely correct. The layers of stone, their size and
relative position, exclude the possibility of man's hand having had a
part in the formation of this mound. It stands solitary in the midst
of fields and has the aspect of an overturned dome.
From the top of this mound we could see the lake to the whole of its
captivating extent and indescribable beauty. The sun, no longer
reflected in it, had set, leaving behind a broad purple stripe that
illuminated the surroundings with a pleasing rosy-yellow tint. The
Count's manor and homestead with their houses, church and gardens, lay
at our feet, and on the other side of the lake the little village
where it was my fate to live looked grey in the distance. As before,
the surface of the lake was without a ripple. Old Mikhey's little
boats, separated from one another, were hurrying towards the shore.
To the left of my little village the buildings of the railway station
stood out dark beneath the smoke from the engines, and behind us at
the foot of the Stone Grave the road was bordered on either side by
towering old poplars. This road leads to the Count's forest that
extends to the very horizon.
The Count and I stood on the top of the hill. Urbenin and the Pole
being heavy men preferred to wait for us on the road below.
“Who's that cove?” I asked the Count, nodding towards the Pole. “Where
did you pick him up?”
“He's a very nice fellow, Serezha; very nice!” the Count said in an
agitated voice. “You'll soon be the best of friends.”
“Oh, that's not likely! Why does he never speak?”
“He is silent by nature! But he's very clever!”
“But what sort of a man is he?”
“I became acquainted with him in Moscow. He is very nice. You'll hear
all about it afterwards, Serezha; don't ask now. Let's go down.”
We descended the hill and went along the road towards the forest. It
began to be perceptibly darker. The cry of the cuckoo, and the tired
vocal warbles of a possibly youthful nightingale were heard in the
forest.
“Hollo! Hollo! Catch me!” we heard a high-pitched voice of a child
shout as we approached the forest.
A little girl of about five with hair as white as flax, dressed in a
sky-blue frock, ran out of the wood. When she saw us she laughed
aloud, and with a skip and a jump put her arms round Urbenin's knee.
Urbenin lifted her up and kissed her cheek.
“My daughter Sasha!” he said. “Let me introduce her!”
Sasha was pursued out of the wood by a schoolboy of about fifteen,
Urbenin's son. When he saw us he pulled off his cap hesitatingly, put
it on, and pulled it off again. He was followed quietly by a red spot.
This red spot attracted our attention at once. “What a beautiful
apparition!” the Count exclaimed, catching hold of my hand. “Look! How
charming! What girl is this? I did not know that my forests were
inhabited by such naiads!”
I looked round at Urbenin in order to ask him who this girl was, and,
strange to say, it was only at that moment I noticed that he was
terribly drunk. He was as red as a crawfish, he tottered and, seizing
my elbow, he whispered into my ear, exhaling the fumes of spirit on
me:
“Sergey Petrovich, I implore you prevent the Count from making any
further remarks about this girl! He may, from habit say too much; she
is a most worthy person!”
This “most worthy person” was represented by a girl of about nineteen,
with beautiful fair hair, kind blue eyes and long curls. She was
dressed in a bright red frock, made in a fashion that was neither that
of a child nor of a young girl. Her legs, straight as needles, in red
stockings, were shod with tiny shoes that were small as a child's. All
the time I was admiring her she moved about her well-rounded shoulders
coquettishly, as if they were cold or as if my gaze bit her.
“Such a young face, and such developed contours!” whispered the Count,
who from his earliest youth had lost the capacity of respecting women,
and never looked at them otherwise than from the point of view of a
spoilt animal.
I remember that a good feeling was ignited in my breast. I was still a
poet, and in the company of the woods, of a May night, and the first
twinkling of the evening stars, I could only look at a woman as a poet
does. . . . I looked at “the girl in red” with the same veneration I
was accustomed to look upon the forests, the hills and the blue sky. I
still had a certain amount of the sentimentality I had inherited from
my German mother.
“Who is she?” the Count asked.
“She is the daughter of our forester Skvortsov, your Excellency!”
Urbenin replied.
“Is she the Olenka, the one-eyed muzhik spoke of?”
“Yes, he mentioned her name,” the bailiff answered, looking at me with
large, imploring eyes.
The girl in red let us go past her, turning away without taking any
notice of us. Her eyes were looking at something at the side, but I, a
man who knows women, felt her pupils resting on my face.
“Which of them is the Count?” I heard her whisper behind us.
“That one with the long moustache,” the schoolboy answered.
And we heard silvery laughter behind us. It was the laughter of
disenchantment. She had thought that the Count, the owner of these
immense forests and the broad lake, was I, and not that pigmy with the
worn face and long moustache.
I heard a deep sigh issue from Urbenin's powerful breast. That iron
man could scarcely move.
“Dismiss the bailiff,” I whispered to the Count. “He is ill or—drunk.”
“Pëtr Egorych, you seem to be unwell,” the Count said, turning to
Urbenin. “I do not require you just now, so I will not detain you any
longer.”
“Your Excellency need not trouble about me. Thank you for your
attention, but I am not ill.”