Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (465 page)

The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end, quite regardless of the trivality or insignificance of his subject.

In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem’yanych. I could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by his butler, Il’ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.

‘So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!’ I said.

‘No, Serezha, I have not.’

‘Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and shaking your head! It’s disgusting!’

‘My dear boy, I’m going to drop everything... The doctors have forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it’s unhealthy to drop habits all at once... It must be done gradually...

I looked at the Count’s unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the butler in yellow shoes. I looked at the dark-browed Pole, who from the very first moment for some reason had appeared to me to be a scoundrel and a blackguard. I looked at the one-eyed muzhik, who stood there at attention, and a feeling of dread and of oppression came over me... I suddenly wanted to leave this dirty atmosphere, having first opened the Count’s eyes to the unlimited antipathy I felt for him... There was a moment when I was ready to rise and depart... But I did not go away... I was prevented (I’m ashamed to confess it!) by physical laziness...

‘Give me a glass of vodka, too!’ I said to Il’ya.

Long shadows began to be cast on the avenue and on the open space where we were sitting...

The distant croaking of frogs, the cawing of crows and the singing of orioles greeted the setting of the sun. A gay evening was just beginning...

‘Tell Urbenin to sit down,’ I whispered to the Count. ‘He’s standing before you like a boy.’

‘Oh, I never thought of that! Pëtr Egorych,’ the Count addressed his bailiff, ‘sit down, please! Why are you standing there?’

Urbenin sat down, casting a grateful glance at me. He who was always healthy and gay appeared to me now to be ill and dull. His face seemed wrinkled and sleepy, his eyes looked at us lazily and as if unwillingly.

‘Well, Pëtr Egorych, what’s new here? Any pretty girls, eh?’ Karnéev asked him. isn’t there something special... something out of the common?’

‘It’s always the same, your Excellency...’

‘Are there no new... nice little girls, Pëtr Egorych?’

The virtuous Pëtr Egorych blushed.

‘I don’t know, your Excellency... I don’t occupy myself with that ‘

‘There are, your Excellency,’ broke in the deep bass voice of one-eyed Kuz’ma, who had been silent all the time. ‘And quite worth notice, too.’

‘Are they pretty?’

‘There are all sorts, your Excellency, for all tastes... There are dark ones and fair ones - all sorts...’

‘O, ho! Stop a minute... I remember you now... My former Leporello, a sort of secretary... Your name’s Kuz’ma, I think?’

‘Yes, your Excellency...’

‘I remember, I remember... Well, and what have you now in view? Something new, all peasant girls?’

‘Mostly peasants, of course, but there are finer ones, too...’

‘Where have you found finer ones...’ Il’ya asked, winking at Kuz’ma.

‘At Easter the postman’s sister-in-law came to stay with him... Nastasia Ivanovna... A girl all on springs. She’s good enough to eat, but money is wanted... Cheeks like peaches, and all the rest as good... There’s something finer than that, too. It’s only waiting for you, your Excellency. Young, plump, jolly... a beauty! Such a beauty, your Excellency, as you’ve scarcely found in Petersburg...’

‘Who is it?’

‘Olenka, the forester Skvortsov’s daughter.’

Urbenin’s chair cracked under him. Supporting himself with his hands on the table, purple in the face, the bailiff rose slowly and turned towards the one-eyed Kuz’ma. The expression on his face of dullness and fatigue had given place to one of great anger.

‘Hold your tongue, serf!’ he grumbled. ‘One-eyed vermin! Say what you please, but don’t talk about respectable people!’

‘I’m not speaking of you, Pëtr Egorych,’ Kuz’ma said imperturbably.

‘I’m not talking about myself, blockhead! Besides... Forgive me, your Excellency,’ the bailiff turned to the Count, ‘forgive me for making a scene, but I would beg your Excellency to forbid your Leporello, as you were pleased to call him, to extend his zeal to persons who are worthy of all respect!’

‘I don’t understand...’ the Count lisped naively. ‘He has said nothing very offensive.’

Insulted and excited to a degree, Urbenin went away from the table and stood with his side towards us. With his arms crossed on his breast and his eyes blinking, hiding his purple face from us behind the branches of the bushes, he stood plunged in thought.

Had not this man a presentiment that in the near future his moral feelings would have to suffer offences a thousand times more bitter?

‘I don’t understand what has offended him!’ the Count whispered in my ear. ‘What a caution! There was nothing offensive in what was said.’

After two years of sober living, the glass of vodka acted on me in a slightly intoxicating manner. A feeling of lightness, of pleasure, was diffused in my brain and through my whole body. Added to this, I began to feel the coolness of evening, which little by little was supplanting the sultriness of the day. I proposed to take a stroll. The Count and his new Polish friend had their coats brought from the house, and we set off. Urbenin followed us.

CHAPTER III

The Count’s gardens in which we were walking demand special description for their lushness and splendour. 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 avenue already mentioned 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 had been barbarously abandoned, given over to thieves who attacked the trees with their axes, and to 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 troubled nobody else, but not 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 length and finished at the end in a yellow stone pavilion, which at one time had contained a refreshment room, billiards, skittles and other games. We wandered, somewhat aimlessly, towards this pavilion. At its door we were confronted by a reptile whose appearance 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 crumbling 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. A man’s sting 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 speed of lightning vanished into a crevice between two stones. When we entered the pavilion we were confronted by another creature. Lying on the torn and faded cloth of the old billiard table 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 dirty pig!’ Urbenin sighed.

‘Isn’t that our gardener, Tricher?’ the Count asked.

‘The very same... 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 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 dreadful and not so dreadful 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 whole of the lake’s magnificent extent, and grasp its 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 the 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 what looked like a patch of red, which attracted our attention. ‘What a beautiful vision!’ the Count exclaimed, catching hold of my hand. ‘Look! How charming! Who is this girl? 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, 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 disturbed her.

‘Such a young face, and what a figure!’ 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 I felt a surge of warmth in my heart. 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 this 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 gaze 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 man of iron 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.’

I looked back. The girl in red had not moved, but was looking after us.

Poor, fair little head! Did I think on that quiet, peaceful May evening that she would afterwards become the heroine of my troubled romance?