"Axinia!" boomed Martin Petrovitch, but in such a note that the rooks flew up in a flock from an oat-field near. . . . "Washing your husband's breeches?"
The peasant woman turned at once and bowed very low.
"Yes, sir," sounded her weak voice.
"Ay, ay! Yonder, look," Martin Petrovitch continued, proceeding at a trot alongside a half-rotting wattle fence, "that is my hemp-patch; and that yonder's the peasants'; see the difference? And this here is my garden; the apple-trees I planted, and the willows I planted too. Else there was no timber of any sort here. Look at that, and learn a lesson!"
We turned into the courtyard, shut in by a fence; right opposite the gate, rose an old tumbledown lodge, with a thatch roof, and steps up to it, raised on posts. On one side stood another, rather newer, and with a tiny attic; but it too was a ramshackly affair. "Here you may learn a lesson again," observed Harlov; "see what a little manor-house our fathers lived in; but now see what a mansion I have built myself." This "mansion" was like a house of cards. Five or six dogs, one more ragged and hideous than another, welcomed us with barking. "Sheep-dogs!" observed Martin Petrovitch. "Pure-bred Crimeans! Sh, damned brutes! I'll come and strangle you one after another!" On the steps of the new building, there came out a young man, in a long full nankeen overall, the husband of Martin Petrovitch's elder daughter. Skipping quickly up to the droshky, he respectfully supported his father-in-law under the elbow as he got up, and even made as though he would hold the gigantic feet, which the latter, bending his bulky person forward, lifted with a sweeping movement across the seat; then he assisted me to dismount from my horse.
"Anna!" cried Harlov, "Natalia Nikolaevna's son has come to pay us a visit; you must find some good cheer for him. But where's Evlampia?" (Anna was the name of the elder daughter, Evlampia of the younger.)
"She's not at home; she's gone into the fields to get cornflowers," responded Anna, appearing at a little window near the door.
"Is there any junket?" queried Harlov.
"Yes."
"And cream too?"
"Yes."
"Well, set them on the table, and I'll show the young gentleman my own room meanwhile. This way, please, this way," he added, addressing me, and beckoning with his forefinger. In his own house he treated me less familiarly; as a host he felt obliged to be more formally respectful. He led me along a corridor. "Here is where I abide," he observed, stepping sideways over the threshold of a wide doorway, "this is my room. Pray walk in!"
His room turned out to be a big unplastered apartment, almost empty; on the walls, on nails driven in askew, hung two riding-whips, a three-cornered hat, reddish with wear, a single-barrelled gun, a sabre, a sort of curious horse-collar inlaid with metal plates, and the picture representing a burning candle blown on by the winds. In one corner stood a wooden settle covered with a parti-coloured rug. Hundreds of flies swarmed thickly about the ceiling; yet the room was cool. But there was a very strong smell of that peculiar odour of the forest which always accompanied Martin Petrovitch.
"Well, is it a nice room?" Harlov questioned me.
"Very nice."
"Look-ye, there hangs my Dutch horse-collar," Harlov went on, dropping into his familiar tone again. "A splendid horse-collar! got it by barter off a Jew. Just you look at it!"
"It's a good horse-collar."
"It's most practical. And just sniff it . . . what leather!" I smelt the horse-collar. It smelt of rancid oil and nothing else.
"Now, be seated,--there on the stool; make yourself at home," observed Harlov, while he himself sank on to the settle, and seemed to fall into a doze, shutting his eyes and even beginning to snore. I gazed at him without speaking, with ever fresh wonder; he was a perfect mountain--there was no other word! Suddenly he started.
"Anna!" he shouted, while his huge stomach rose and fell like a wave on the sea; "what are you about? Look sharp! Didn't you hear me?"
"Everything's ready, father; come in," I heard his daughter's voice.
I inwardly marvelled at the rapidity with which Martin Petrovitch's behests had been carried out; and followed him into the drawing-room, where, on a table covered with a red cloth with white flowers on it, lunch was already prepared: junket, cream, wheaten bread, even powdered sugar and ginger. While I set to work on the junket, Martin Petrovitch growled affectionately, "Eat, my friend, eat, my dear boy; don't despise our country cheer," and sitting down again in a corner, again seemed to fall into a doze. Before me, perfectly motionless, with downcast eyes, stood Anna Martinovna, while I saw through the window her husband walking my cob up and down the yard, and rubbing the chain of the snaffle with his own hands. VII
MY mother did not like Harlov's elder daughter; she called her a stuck-up thing. Anna Martinovna scarcely ever came to pay us her respects, and behaved with chilly decorum in my mother's presence, though it was by her good offices she had been well educated at a boarding-school, and had been married, and on her wedding-day had received a thousand roubles and a yellow Turkish shawl, the latter, it is true, a trifle the worse for wear. She was a woman of medium height, thin, very brisk and rapid in her movements, with thick fair hair and a handsome dark face, on which the pale-blue narrow eyes showed up in a rather strange but pleasing way. She had a straight thin nose, her lips were thin too, and her chin was like the loop-end of a hair-pin. No one looking at her could fail to think: "Well, you are a clever creature--and a spiteful one, too!" And for all that, there was something attractive about her too. Even the dark moles, scattered "like buck-wheat" over her face, suited her and increased the feeling she inspired. Her hands thrust into her kerchief, she was slily watching me, looking downwards (I was seated, while she was standing). A wicked little smile strayed about her lips and her cheeks and in the shadow of her long eyelashes. "Ugh, you pampered little fine gentleman!" this smile seemed to express. Every time she drew a breath, her nostrils slightly distended--this, too, was rather strange. But all the same, it seemed to me that were Anna Martinovna to love me, or even to care to kiss me with her thin cruel lips, I should simply bound up to the ceiling with delight. I knew she was very severe and exacting, that the peasant women and girls went in terror of her--but what of that? Anna Martinovna secretly excited my imagination . . . though after all, I was only fifteen then,--and at that age! . . .
Martin Petrovitch roused himself again. "Anna!" he shouted, "you ought to strum something on the pianoforte . . . young gentlemen are fond of that."
I looked round; there was a pitiful semblance of a piano in the room.
"Yes, father," responded Anna Martinovna. "Only what am I to play the young gentleman? He won't find it interesting."
"Why, what did they teach you at your young ladies' seminary?"
"I've forgotten everything--besides, the notes are broken."
Anna Martinovna' s voice was very pleasant, resonant and rather plaintive--like the note of some birds of prey.
"Very well," said Martin Petrovitch, and he lapsed into dreaminess again. "Well," he began once more, "wouldn't you like, then, to see the threshing-floor, and have a look round? Volodka will escort you.--Hi, Volodka!" he shouted to his son-in-law, who was still pacing up and down the yard with my horse, "take the young gentleman to the threshing-floor. . . and show him my farming generally. But I must have a nap! So! good-bye!"
He went out and I after him. Anna Martinovna at once set to work rapidly, and, as it were, angrily, clearing the table. In the doorway, I turned and bowed to her. But she seemed not to notice my bow, and only smiled again, more maliciously than before.