"Tell me, my good friend, tell me," cried my mother, directly she saw him, "what ever has happened to you? I thought yesterday, upon my word I did Mercy on us! I thought, 'Hasn't our old friend gone right off his head?'"
"I've not gone off my head, madam," answered Martin Petrovitch; "I'm not that sort of man. But I want to consult with you."
"What about?"
"I'm only in doubt, whether it will be agreeable to you in this same contingency----"
"Speak away, speak away, my good sir, but more simply. Don't alarm me! What's this same contingency? Speak more plainly. Or is it your melancholy come upon you again?"
Harlov scowled. "No, it's not melancholy--that comes upon me in the new moon; but allow me to ask you, madam, what do you think about death?"
My mother was taken aback. "About what?"
"About death. Can death spare any one whatever in this world?"
"What have you got in your head, my good friend? Who of us is immortal? For all you're born a giant, even to you there'll be an end in time."
"There will! oh, there will!" Harlov assented and he looked downcast. "I've had a vision come to me in my dreams," he brought out at last.
"What are you saying?" my mother interrupted him.
"A vision in my dreams," he repeated--"I'm a seer of visions, you know!"
"You!"
"I. Didn't you know it?" Harlov sighed. "Well, so. . . . Over a week ago, madam, I lay down, on the very last day of eating meat before St. Peter's fast-day; I lay down after dinner to rest a bit, well, and so I fell asleep, and dreamed a raven colt ran into the room to me. And this colt began sporting about and grinning. Black as a beetle was the raven colt." Harlov ceased.
"Well?" said my mother.
"And all of a sudden this same colt turns round, and gives me a kick in the left elbow, right in the funny bone. . . . I waked up; my arm would not move nor my leg either. Well, thinks I, it's paralysis; however, I worked them up and down, and got them to move again; only there were shooting pains in the joints a long time, and there are still. When I open my hand, the pains shoot through the joints."
"Why, Martin Petrovitch, you must have lain upon your arm somehow and crushed it."
"No, madam; pray, don't talk like that! It was an intimation . . . referring to my death, I mean."
"Well, upon my word," my mother was beginning.
"An intimation. Prepare thyself man, as 'twere to say. And therefore, madam, here is what I have to announce to you, without a moment's delay. Not wishing," Harlov suddenly began shouting, "that the same death should come upon me, the servant of God, unawares, I have planned in my own mind this: to divide--now during my lifetime--my estate between my two daughters, Anna and Evlampia, according as God Almighty directs me--" Martin Petrovitch stopped, groaned, and added, "without a moment's delay."
"Well, that would be a good idea," observed my mother; "though I think you have no need to be in a hurry."
"And seeing that herein I desire," Harlov continued, raising his voice still higher, "to be observant of all due order and legality, so humbly beg your young son, Dmitri Semyonovitch--I would not venture, madam, to trouble you--I beg the said Dmitri Semyonovitch, your son, and I claim of my kinsman, Bitchkov, as a plain duty, to assist at the ratification of the formal act and transference of possession to my two daughters--Anna, married, and Evlampia, spinster. Which act will be drawn up in readiness the day after to-morrow at twelve o'clock, at my own place, Eskovo, also called Kozulkino, in the presence of the ruling authorities and functionaries, who are thereto invited."
Martin Petrovitch with difficulty reached the end of this speech, which he had obviously learnt by heart, and which was interspersed with frequent sighs. . . . He seemed to have no breath left in his chest; his pale face was crimson again, and he several times wiped the sweat off it.
"So you've already composed the deed dividing your property?" my mother queried. "When did you manage that?"
"I managed it . . . oh! Neither eating, nor drinking----"
"Did you write it yourself?"
"Volodka . . . oh! helped."
"And have you forwarded a petition?"
"I have, and the chamber has sanctioned it, and notice has been given to the district court, and the temporary division of the local court has . . . oh! . . . been notified to be present."
My mother laughed. "I see, Martin Petrovitch, you've made every arrangement already--and how quickly. You've not spared money, I should say?"
"No, indeed, madam."
"Well, well. And you say you want to consult with me. Well, my little Dmitri can go; and I'll send Souvenir with him, and speak to Kvitsinsky. . . . But you haven't invited Gavrila Fedulitch?"
"Gavrila Fedulitch--Mr. Zhitkov--has had notice . . . from me also. As a betrothed, it was only fitting."
Martin Petrovitch had obviously exhausted all the resources of his eloquence. Besides, it always seemed to me that he did not look altogether favourably on the match my mother had made for his daughter; possibly, he had expected a more advantageous marriage for his darling Evlampia.
He got up from his chair, and made a scrape with his foot. "Thank you for your consent."
"Where are you off to?" asked my mother. "Stay a bit; I'll order some lunch to be served you."
"Much obliged," responded Harlov. "But I cannot. . . . Oh! I must get home."
He backed and was about to move sideways, as his habit was, through the door.
"Stop, stop a minute," my mother went on. "Can you possibly mean to make over the whole of your property without reserve to your daughters?"
"Certainly, without reserve."
"Well, but how about yourself--where are you going to live?"
Harlov positively flung up his hands in amazement. "You ask where? In my house, at home, as I've lived hitherto . . . so hence-forward. Whatever difference could there be?"
"You have such confidence in your daughters and your son-in-law, then?"
"Were you pleased to speak of Volodka? A poor stick like him? Why, I can do as I like with him, whatever it is . . . what authority has he? As for them, my daughters, that is, to care for me till I'm in the grave, to give me meat and drink, and clothe me. . . . Merciful heavens! it's their first duty. I shall not long be an eyesore to them. Death's not over the hills--it's upon my shoulders."
"Death is in God's hands," observed my mother; "though that is their duty, to be sure. Only pardon me, Martin Petrovitch; your elder girl, Anna, is well known to be proud and imperious, and--well--the second has a fierce look. . . ."
"Natalia Nikolaevna!" Harlov broke in, "why do you say that? . . . Why, as though they . . . My daughters . . . Why, as though I . . . Forget their duty? Never in their wildest dreams . . . Offer opposition? To whom? Their parent . . . Dare to do such a thing? Have they not my curse to fear? They've passed their life long in fear and in submission--and all of a sudden . . . Good Lord!"
Harlov choked, there was a rattle in his throat.
"Very well, very well," my mother made haste to soothe him; "only I don't understand all the same what has put it into your head to divide the property up now. It would have come to them afterwards, in any case. I imagine it's your melancholy that's at the bottom of it all."
"Eh, ma'am," Harlov rejoined, not without vexation, "you will keep coming back to that. There is, maybe, a higher power at work in this, and you talk of melancholy. I thought to do this, madam, because in my own person, while still in life, I wish to decide in my presence, who is to possess what, and with what I will reward each, so that they may possess, and feel thankfulness, and carry out my wishes, and what their father and benefactor has resolved upon, they may accept as a bountiful gift."