I HAVE seen a great many houses in my time, little and big, new and
old, built of stone and of wood, but of one house I have kept a
very vivid memory. It was, properly speaking, rather a cottage than
a house--a tiny cottage of one story, with three windows, looking
extraordinarily like a little old hunchback woman with a cap on.
Its white stucco walls, its tiled roof, and dilapidated chimney,
were all drowned in a perfect sea of green. The cottage was lost
to sight among the mulberry-trees, acacias, and poplars planted by
the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of its present occupants.
And yet it is a town house. Its wide courtyard stands in a row with
other similar green courtyards, and forms part of a street. Nothing
ever drives down that street, and very few persons are ever seen
walking through it.
The shutters of the little house are always closed; its occupants
do not care for sunlight--the light is no use to them. The windows
are never opened, for they are not fond of fresh air. People who
spend their lives in the midst of acacias, mulberries, and nettles
have no passion for nature. It is only to the summer visitor that
God has vouchsafed an eye for the beauties of nature. The rest of
mankind remain steeped in profound ignorance of the existence of
such beauties. People never prize what they have always had in
abundance. "What we have, we do not treasure," and what's more we
do not even love it.
The little house stands in an earthly paradise of green trees with
happy birds nesting in them. But inside . . . alas . . . ! In summer,
it is close and stifling within; in winter, hot as a Turkish bath,
not one breath of air, and the dreariness! . . .
The first time I visited the little house was many years ago on
business. I brought a message from the Colonel who was the owner
of the house to his wife and daughter. That first visit I remember
very distinctly. It would be impossible, indeed, to forget it.
Imagine a limp little woman of forty, gazing at you with alarm and
astonishment while you walk from the passage into the parlour. You
are a stranger, a visitor, "a young man"; that's enough to reduce
her to a state of terror and bewilderment. Though you have no dagger,
axe, or revolver in your hand, and though you smile affably, you
are met with alarm.
"Whom have I the honour and pleasure of addressing?" the little
lady asks in a trembling voice.
I introduced myself and explained why I had come. The alarm and
amazement were at once succeeded by a shrill, joyful "Ach!" and she
turned her eyes upwards to the ceiling. This "Ach!" was caught up
like an echo and repeated from the hall to the parlour, from the
parlour to the kitchen, and so on down to the cellar. Soon the whole
house was resounding with "Ach!" in various voices.
Five minutes later I was sitting on a big, soft, warm lounge in the
drawing-room listening to the "Ach!" echoing all down the street.
There was a smell of moth powder, and of goatskin shoes, a pair of
which lay on a chair beside me wrapped in a handkerchief. In the
windows were geraniums, and muslin curtains, and on the curtains
were torpid flies. On the wall hung the portrait of some bishop,
painted in oils, with the glass broken at one corner, and next to
the bishop a row of ancestors with lemon-coloured faces of a gipsy
type. On the table lay a thimble, a reel of cotton, and a half-knitted
stocking, and paper patterns and a black blouse, tacked together,
were lying on the floor. In the next room two alarmed and fluttered
old women were hurriedly picking up similar patterns and pieces of
tailor's chalk from the floor.
"You must, please, excuse us; we are dreadfully untidy," said the
little lady.
While she talked to me, she stole embarrassed glances towards the
other room where the patterns were still being picked up. The door,
too, seemed embarrassed, opening an inch or two and then shutting
again.
"What's the matter?" said the little lady, addressing the door.
_"Où est mon cravatte lequel mon père m'avait envoyé de Koursk?"_
asked a female voice at the door.
_"Ah, est-ce que, Marie . . . que_. . . Really, it's impossible
. . . . _Nous avons donc chez nous un homme peu connu de nous._ Ask
Lukerya."
"How well we speak French, though!" I read in the eyes of the little
lady, who was flushing with pleasure.
Soon afterwards the door opened and I saw a tall, thin girl of
nineteen, in a long muslin dress with a gilt belt from which, I
remember, hung a mother-of-pearl fan. She came in, dropped a curtsy,
and flushed crimson. Her long nose, which was slightly pitted with
smallpox, turned red first, and then the flush passed up to her
eyes and her forehead.
"My daughter," chanted the little lady, "and, Manetchka, this is a
young gentleman who has come," etc.
I was introduced, and expressed my surprise at the number of paper
patterns. Mother and daughter dropped their eyes.
"We had a fair here at Ascension," said the mother; "we always buy
materials at the fair, and then it keeps us busy with sewing till
the next year's fair comes around again. We never put things out
to be made. My husband's pay is not very ample, and we are not able
to permit ourselves luxuries. So we have to make up everything
ourselves."
"But who will ever wear such a number of things? There are only two
of you?"
"Oh . . . as though we were thinking of wearing them! They are not
to be worn; they are for the trousseau!"
"Ah, _mamam_, what are you saying?" said the daughter, and she
crimsoned again. "Our visitor might suppose it was true. I don't
intend to be married. Never!"
She said this, but at the very word "married" her eyes glowed.
Tea, biscuits, butter, and jam were brought in, followed by raspberries
and cream. At seven o'clock, we had supper, consisting of six
courses, and while we were at supper I heard a loud yawn from the
next room. I looked with surprise towards the door: it was a yawn
that could only come from a man.
"That's my husband's brother, Yegor Semyonitch," the little lady
explained, noticing my surprise. "He's been living with us for the
last year. Please excuse him; he cannot come in to see you. He is
such an unsociable person, he is shy with strangers. He is going
into a monastery. He was unfairly treated in the service, and the
disappointment has preyed on his mind."
After supper the little lady showed the vestment which Yegor
Semyonitch was embroidering with his own hands as an offering for
the Church. Manetchka threw off her shyness for a moment and showed
me the tobacco-pouch she was embroidering for her father. When I
pretended to be greatly struck by her work, she flushed crimson and
whispered something in her mother's ear. The latter beamed all over,
and invited me to go with her to the store-room. There I was shown
five large trunks, and a number of smaller trunks and boxes.
"This is her trousseau," her mother whispered; "we made it all
ourselves."
After looking at these forbidding trunks I took leave of my hospitable
hostesses. They made me promise to come and see them again some
day.
It happened that I was able to keep this promise. Seven years after
my first visit, I was sent down to the little town to give expert
evidence in a case that was being tried there.
As I entered the little house I heard the same "Ach!" echo through
it. They recognised me at once. . . . Well they might! My first
visit had been an event in their lives, and when events are few
they are long remembered.
I walked into the drawing-room: the mother, who had grown stouter
and was already getting grey, was creeping about on the floor,
cutting out some blue material. The daughter was sitting on the
sofa, embroidering.
There was the same smell of moth powder; there were the same patterns,
the same portrait with the broken glass. But yet there was a change.
Beside the portrait of the bishop hung a portrait of the Colonel,
and the ladies were in mourning. The Colonel's death had occurred
a week after his promotion to be a general.
Reminiscences began. . . . The widow shed tears.
"We have had a terrible loss," she said. "My husband, you know, is
dead. We are alone in the world now, and have no one but ourselves
to look to. Yegor Semyonitch is alive, but I have no good news to
tell of him. They would not have him in the monastery on account
of--of intoxicating beverages. And now in his disappointment he
drinks more than ever. I am thinking of going to the Marshal of
Nobility to lodge a complaint. Would you believe it, he has more
than once broken open the trunks and . . . taken Manetchka's trousseau
and given it to beggars. He has taken everything out of two of the
trunks! If he goes on like this, my Manetchka will be left without
a trousseau at all."
"What are you saying, _mamam_?" said Manetchka, embarrassed. "Our
visitor might suppose . . . there's no knowing what he might suppose
. . . . I shall never--never marry."
Manetchka cast her eyes up to the ceiling with a look of hope and
aspiration, evidently not for a moment believing what she said.
A little bald-headed masculine figure in a brown coat and goloshes
instead of boots darted like a mouse across the passage and
disappeared. "Yegor Semyonitch, I suppose," I thought.
I looked at the mother and daughter together. They both looked much
older and terribly changed. The mother's hair was silvered, but the
daughter was so faded and withered that her mother might have been
taken for her elder sister, not more than five years her senior.
"I have made up my mind to go to the Marshal," the mother said to
me, forgetting she had told me this already. "I mean to make a
complaint. Yegor Semyonitch lays his hands on everything we make,
and offers it up for the sake of his soul. My Manetchka is left
without a trousseau."
Manetchka flushed again, but this time she said nothing.
"We have to make them all over again. And God knows we are not so
well off. We are all alone in the world now."
"We are alone in the world," repeated Manetchka.
A year ago fate brought me once more to the little house.
Walking into the drawing-room, I saw the old lady. Dressed all in
black with heavy crape _pleureuses_, she was sitting on the sofa
sewing. Beside her sat the little old man in the brown coat and the
goloshes instead of boots. On seeing me, he jumped up and ran out
of the room.
In response to my greeting, the old lady smiled and said:
_"Je suis charmée de vous revoir, monsieur."_
"What are you making?" I asked, a little later.
"It's a blouse. When it's finished I shall take it to the priest's
to be put away, or else Yegor Semyonitch would carry it off. I store
everything at the priest's now," she added in a whisper.
And looking at the portrait of her daughter which stood before her
on the table, she sighed and said:
"We are all alone in the world."
And where was the daughter? Where was Manetchka? I did not ask. I
did not dare to ask the old mother dressed in her new deep mourning.
And while I was in the room, and when I got up to go, no Manetchka
came out to greet me. I did not hear her voice, nor her soft, timid
footstep. . . .