When she had gone Pyotr Petrovitch began to tell me about her. The
girl was, he said, of good family, and her name was Lidia Voltchaninov,
and the estate on which she lived with her mother and sister, like
the village on the other side of the pond, was called Shelkovka.
Her father had once held an important position in Moscow, and had
died with the rank of privy councillor. Although they had ample
means, the Voltchaninovs lived on their estate summer and winter
without going away. Lidia was a teacher in the Zemstvo school in
her own village, and received a salary of twenty-five roubles a
month. She spent nothing on herself but her salary, and was proud
of earning her own living.
"An interesting family," said Byelokurov. "Let us go over one day.
They will be delighted to see you."
One afternoon on a holiday we thought of the Voltchaninovs, and
went to Shelkovka to see them. They--the mother and two daughters
--were at home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, who at one time
had been handsome, but now, asthmatic, depressed, vague, and
over-feeble for her years, tried to entertain me with conversation
about painting. Having heard from her daughter that I might come
to Shelkovka, she had hurriedly recalled two or three of my landscapes
which she had seen in exhibitions in Moscow, and now asked what I
meant to express by them. Lidia, or as they called her Lida, talked
more to Byelokurov than to me. Earnest and unsmiling, she asked him
why he was not on the Zemstvo, and why he had not attended any of
its meetings.
"It's not right, Pyotr Petrovitch," she said reproachfully. "It's
not right. It's too bad."
"That's true, Lida--that's true," the mother assented. "It isn't
right."
"Our whole district is in the hands of Balagin," Lida went on,
addressing me. "He is the chairman of the Zemstvo Board, and he has
distributed all the posts in the district among his nephews and
sons-in-law; and he does as he likes. He ought to be opposed. The
young men ought to make a strong party, but you see what the young
men among us are like. It's a shame, Pyotr Petrovitch!"
The younger sister, Genya, was silent while they were talking of
the Zemstvo. She took no part in serious conversation. She was not
looked upon as quite grown up by her family, and, like a child, was
always called by the nickname of Misuce, because that was what she
had called her English governess when she was a child. She was all
the time looking at me with curiosity, and when I glanced at the
photographs in the album, she explained to me: "That's uncle . . .
that's god-father," moving her finger across the photograph. As she
did so she touched me with her shoulder like a child, and I had a
close view of her delicate, undeveloped chest, her slender shoulders,
her plait, and her thin little body tightly drawn in by her sash.
We played croquet and lawn tennis, we walked about the garden, drank
tea, and then sat a long time over supper. After the huge empty
room with columns, I felt, as it were, at home in this small snug
house where there were no oleographs on the walls and where the
servants were spoken to with civility. And everything seemed to me
young and pure, thanks to the presence of Lida and Misuce, and there
was an atmosphere of refinement over everything. At supper Lida
talked to Byelokurov again of the Zemstvo, of Balagin, and of school
libraries. She was an energetic, genuine girl, with convictions,
and it was interesting to listen to her, though she talked a great
deal and in a loud voice--perhaps because she was accustomed to
talking at school. On the other hand, Pyotr Petrovitch, who had
retained from his student days the habit of turning every conversation
into an argument, was tedious, flat, long-winded, and unmistakably
anxious to appear clever and advanced. Gesticulating, he upset a
sauce-boat with his sleeve, making a huge pool on the tablecloth,
but no one except me appeared to notice it.
It was dark and still as we went home.
"Good breeding is shown, not by not upsetting the sauce, but by not
noticing it when somebody else does," said Byelokurov, with a sigh.
"Yes, a splendid, intellectual family! I've dropped out of all
decent society; it's dreadful how I've dropped out of it! It's all
through work, work, work!"
He talked of how hard one had to work if one wanted to be a model
farmer. And I thought what a heavy, sluggish fellow he was! Whenever
he talked of anything serious he articulated "Er-er" with intense
effort, and worked just as he talked--slowly, always late and
behind-hand. I had little faith in his business capacity if only
from the fact that when I gave him letters to post he carried them
about in his pocket for weeks together.
"The hardest thing of all," he muttered as he walked beside me--
"the hardest thing of all is that, work as one may, one meets with
no sympathy from any one. No sympathy!"