"Vasilyevna, get in!"
And suddenly it all vanished. The barrier was slowly rising. Marya Vasilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The carriage with the four horses crossed the railway track, Semyon followed. The guard at the crossing took off his cap.
"And this is Vyazovye. Here we are."
1897
At Home
T
H E Donetz Railroad. A cheerless station, quiet and lonely, gleaming white on the steppe, with walls hot from the sun, with not a speck of shade and, it ap- pears, with not a single human being. The train which brought you here has left; the sound of it is scarcely audible and at last dies away. The neighborhood of the station is deserted, and there are no carriages but your own. You get into it—this is so pleasant after the train —and you roll along the road through the steppe, and by degrees, a landscape unfolds such as one does not see near Moscow—immense, endless, fascinating in its monotony. The steppe, the steppe, and nothing else; in the distance an ancient grave-mound or a vvindmill; oxcarts laden with coal file by. Birds fly singly low over the plain and the monotonous beat of their wings in- duces a drowsiness. It is hot. An hour or two passes, and still the steppe, the steppe, and still in the distance the grave-mound. The driver rambles on telling you some long-drawn-out, irrelevant tale, frequently pointing at something with his whip, and tranquillity takes posses- sion of your soul, you are loath to think of the past. . . .
A troika had been sent to fetch Vera Ivanovna Kar- dina. The driver put in her bags and started setting the harness to rights.
"Everything is just as it used to be," said Vera, look- ing about her. "I was a little girl when I was here last, some ten years ago. I remember old Boris came to fetch me then. Is he still living?"
The driver made no reply, but gave her a sour, pe- culiarly Ukrainian look and climbed onto the box.
It was a drive of twenty miles from the station, and Vera too yielded to the fascination of the steppe, forgot the past and thought only of how spacious and uncon- fined this region was. Healthy, clever, beautiful, and young—she was only twenty-three—she had hitherto lacked nothing but just this space and freedom.
The steppe, the steppe . . . The horses trotted along, the sun rose higher and higher, and it seemed to Vera that never in her childhood had the steppe been so rich, so luxuriant in June; the field flowers were in bloom, yellow, green, lilac, white, and a fragrance rose from them and from the warmed earth, and there were strange blue birds along the road. Vera had long since lost the habit of praying, but now, struggling with drowsiness, she murmured, "Lord, grant that I may be happy here."
There was a sweet feeling of serenity in her heart, and she felt as though she would have been glad to go on driving like that all her life, looking at the steppe.
Suddenly they reached a deep ravine overgrown with oak saplings and alders. One felt a breath of moisture in the air—there must have been a stream at the bottom. On the near side, at the very edge of the ravine, a flock of partridge rose noisily. Vera remembered that in former days they used to go to this ravine for evening walks; so the house must be near. And now she could actually see the poplars, the barn; black smoke was ris- ing a little way off—they were burning old straw. And there was Aunt Dasha coming to meet her and waving her handkerchief. Grandfather was on the terrace. Oh, dear, what a joyl
"My darling, my darling!" shrieked her aunt as though she were in hysterics. "Our real mistress has come! You understand, you are our mistress, our queen! Here everything is yours! My darling, my beauty, I am not your aunt but your obedient slave!"
Vera had no relatives but her aunt and her grand- father; her mother had long been dead; her father, an engineer, had died three months before in Kazan on his way to Siberia. Her grandfather had a big gray beard, was stout, red-faced and asthmatic, and he thrust out his stomach as he walked leaning on a cane. Her aunt, a lady of forty-two or so, who wore a fashionable dress with sleeves puffed at the shoulders and was tightly laced at the waist, evidently tried to look young and was still anxious to attract men; she walked mincingly, her back twitching as she went.
''Will you love us?" she asked, embracing Vera. "You are not proud?"
In accordance with her grandfather's wish a thanks- giving service was held, then they spent a long while over dinner, and Vera's new life began. She was given the best room, all the rugs in the house were put in it, and a great many flowers; and when at night she lay down in her cozy, wide, very soft bed and covered her- self with a silk quilt that smelled of old clothes long stored away, she laughed out loud with pleasure. Aunt Dasha came in for a minute to wish her good night.
"Here you are home, thank God," she said, sitting down on the bed. "As you see, we are very well off, couldn't be better. There is only one thing: your grand- father is in a bad way! A bad way, indeed. He is short of breath and he is getting senile. And remember how robust, how vigorous he used to bel What a man he was! In former days, if a servant displeased him or any- thing else went wrong, he would jump up at once and shout, 'Twenty-five strokes! Flog him! Hard!' But now he has drawn in his horns and never opens his mouth. And besides, times have changed, darling; one mayn't strike servants nowadays. Of course, why should one? But, on the other hand, they have to be held in."
"And are they beaten now, Auntie?" asked Vera.
"The steward hits them sometimes, but I never do, bless their hearts! And your grandfather sometimes lifts his stick from old habit, but he never strikes them." Aunt Dasha yawned and made the sign of the cross over her mouth and her right ear.
"It isn't dull here?" Vera inquired.
"What shall I say? There are no landowners here- abouts, they don't live here now, but iron works have been built all over the place, darling, and there are lots of engineers, doctors, and mine superintendents. Of course, we have private theatricals and concerts, but most of the time it's cards. They call on us, too. Dr. Neshchapov, from the iron works, comes to see us— such a handsome interesting man! He has fallen in love with your photograph. I made up my mind: he is meant for Verochka. He is young, handsome, well-to-do—a good match, in a word. But of course, you are a fine catch, too. You are of good family; the property is mortgaged, it is true, but it is in good order and not neglected; there is my share in it, but it will all come to you—1 am your obedient slave. And my brother, your late father, has left you fifteen thousand rubles . . • But I see you can't keep your eyes open. Sleep, my child."
The next day Vera spent a long time walking round the house. The garden, which was old and inattractive, lying inconveniently on a slope, had no paths and was completely neglected: it was apparently regarded as superfluous. There were numbers of grass snakes in it. Hoopoes flew about under the trees caUing "Oo-too- toot!" in a tone which suggested that they were trying to remind people of something. At the bottom of the hill there was a stream, overgrown with tall reeds, and half a mile beyond it was the viUage. From the garden Vera went out into the fields; looking into the distance, thinking of her new life on lier native heath, she kept trying to grasp what was in store for her. The spacious- ness, the lovely calm of the steppe, told her that happi- ness was near at hand and that, perhaps, it was here already. In fact, thousands of people would have said: "What happiness to be young, healthy, well-educated and to live on one's own estate!" At the same time, the endless plain, monotonous, without a single living soul, frightened her, and at moments it was clear to her that this quiet green monster would swallow up her life and reduce it to nothingness. She was young, elegant, fond of life; she had graduated from an aristocratic boarding- school, had learned to speak three languages, had read a great deal, had traveled with her father—and could it be that she had done all this only in the end to settle down on a remote farm lost in the steppe, and day after day wander from the garden into the fields and fiom the fields into the garden, having nothing to do, and then sit at home listening to her grandfather's heavy breathing? What could she do? Where could she go? She found no answer, and as she was returning home she doubted whether she would be happy here, and thought that riding from the station was far more in- teresting than living here.