'People are better, though,' observed the bailiff.
'How, better?'
'They're cleverer.'
'Cleverer they may be, lad, true enough, but what's the good of that? What fine use is cleverness to people on the verge of ruin? You don't need brains to perish. What's a hunter want brains for, if there's no game to shoot anyway? What I think is, God's made folk cleverer, but He's taken away their strength, that's what. Folks have become feeble, exceeding feeble. Now I know I'm not worth a groat, I'm the lowliest peasant in the whole village, but all the same, I've got strength, lad. You think: I'm in my sixties, but I mind the herd fair weather and foul, and I do nightwatching for a couple of kopecks, and I don't fall asleep or feel the cold, but if you was to put my son, who's cleverer than me, in my place, why, next day he'd be asking for a rise, or going to the doctor. Ye-s ... I eat nothing but bread - "give us this day our daily bread", it says - and my father ate nothing but bread, and my grandfather before him, but the peasants these days, they've got to have tea and vodka and white loaves, they've got to sleep from dusk till dawn, go to doctors, and be pampered in every way. And why? Because they've grown feeble, they haven't the strength to stick things out. They don't want to fall asleep, but their eyes start aching and that's that.'
'It's true,' Meliton agreed. 'The peasant's good for nothing these days.'
'Might as well admit it, we get worser every year. And take the gentry now — they've grown feebler than the peasants even. Gents these days have learnt everything, they know things they'd be better off not knowing— and what good does it do? They make you sorry to look on 'em . . . Skinny, weedy, like some Frenchie or Magyar, there's no presence to them, no dignity — they're only gents in name. Poor creatures, they've no place in the world, no work to do, you can't make out what they do want. Either they sit around with a rod catching fish, or they're flat on their backs reading books, or they're hanging about with the peasants trying to put ideas in their heads; and those as are starving take jobs as clerks. So they idle their time away and never think ofgetting down to a proper job of work. Half the gents in theold days were generals, but nowadays they're just — dross!'
'They're badly off these days,' Meliton said.
'And the reason is, God's taken their strength away. You can't go against God.'
Meliton stared fixedly before him again. After thinking a while, he sighed the way staid, sober-minded people do, wagged his head, and said:
■ 'And you know why all this is? Because we sin so much, we've forgotten God . .. so now the time's come for it all to end. You can't expect the world to last for ever anyway, can you? Enough's enough.'
The shepherd sighed and, as iftocut short a conversation that he found disagreeable, he moved away from the birch and began count- ing the cattle over silently.
'Hey-hey, halloo!' he shouted. 'Hey-hey! Damn you, where d'you think you're all going? What the devil's made them go into the firs? Halloa-loa-loa !'
He scowled and went over to the bushes to gather the herd together. Meliton rose and ambled quietly along the edge of the wood. As he walked, he stared at the ground beneath his feet: he was still trying to think of at least something that had not yet been touched by death. Again bright flecks crcpt ovcr the slanting bands of rain; they d.mccd into the tops of the trces, and mcltcd away in thcir wet foliage. Lady discovered a hcdgchog undcr a hush and tricd to attract her mastcr's attention to it by howling and barking.
'Have an eclipse reccntly, did you?' the shepherd callcd out from behind thc hushes.
'We did!' rcplied Mcliton.
'Thought as much, pcople evcrywhere arc complaining there was one. So there's disorder in the hcavenstoo, brother! And no wondcr . . . Hey-hcy! Hup!'
Whcn he had drivcn the hcrd hack out of the wood, the shepherd I cant against a birch, looked up at thc sky, calmly took his pipe out of his smock and started to play. As bcfore, he played mechanically, producing no more than five or six notes; he might havc been handling the pipe for thc first timc in his life, thc sounds issued so uncertainly, haphazardly and tunelcssly; hut for Meliton, who was still thinking of the downfall of the world, his playing seemcd to contain something desperately mournful and harrowing, which he would rather not have heard. The highest, shrillest notes, which trcmbled, thcn broke off abruptly, seemed to be sobbing inconsol- ably, as though the pipe were sick, or frightened; whilst the lowest reminded him for somc reason of the mist itself, the forbidding trees and the grey sky. The music seemed to go with the weather, thc old man, and what he had bcen talking about.
Meliton felt an urge to complain. He went over to the old man and, gazing at his sad, quizzical face and at the reed-pipe, mumbled:
'And life's got harder, too, old friend. Life's barely livable, what with the bad harvests, the poverty . . . the cattle sickness all the time, illness . . . We're at the end of our tether.'
The bailiff's pudgy face flushed crimson and took on a woeful, womanish expression. He twiddled his fingers in the air as though groping for words to convey his indeterminate feelings, and con- tinued:
'I've got eight children and a wife to support, my mother's still alive . . . and all I get is ten roubles a month without board. The poverty's made my wife a proper shrew . . . and I'm always hitting the bottle. Really I'm a steady,sober-minded sortofchap, I've had an education. I ought to be sitting in the quiet of my home, but all day I spend wandering about with my gun, like a stray dog, because I can't abide it, I loathe my own home!'
Realising that his tongue was babbling something totally different from what he had intended to tell the old man, the bailiffgave up and said with bitterness:
'If the world's going to perish, then the sooner the better! There's no point in hanging about and making people suffer for nothing . ..'
The old man took the pipe away from his lips and, screwing up one eye, looked down its small mouthpiece. His face was sad, and covered with large splashes like tears. He smiled and said:
'It's a pity though, brother! Oh Lord the pity of it! The earth, the forest, tbe sky . . . animals - they've all been created and fashioned, haven't they, there's a sense running through it all. And it's all to come to naught. But it's the people I feel sorriest for.'
A heavy squall of rain rustled through the wood towards where they were standing. Meliton looked in the direction of the sound, did up all the buttons of his coat, and said:
'I'm off to the village. Cheerio, gaffer. What's your name?' 'Poor Luke.'
'Well, goodbye, Luke! Thanks for the conversation. Lady -ici!' Meliton left the shepherd, sauntered along the edge of the wood and then down to a meadow, which gradually turned into marsh. The water squelched beneath his boots, and the russet-headed sedge, whose stems were still green and lush, bowed earthwards as though afraid of being trodden on. Beyond the marsh, on the banks of the Peschanka of which the old man had spoken, stood a line ofwillows, and beyond the willows the squire's threshing-barn showed blue through the mist. One could sense the proximity of that cheerless time which nothing can avert, when the fields become dark and the earth is muddy and chill; when the weeping willow seems to be sadder than ever and the tears trickle down her trunk; when only the cranes can flee from the all-pervading disaster and even they, as though afraid of offending morose nature by declaring their happi- ness, fill the skies with mournful, melancholy song.