A Lear of the Steppes, etc.

Harlov shook his head. ‘Talk away! Me believe you! Never again! You’ve murdered all trust in my heart! You’ve murdered everything! I was an eagle, and became a worm for you … and you, – would you even crush the worm? Have done! I loved you, you know very well, – but now you are no daughter to me, and I’m no father to you … I’m a doomed man! Don’t meddle! As for you, fire away, coward, mighty man of valour!’ Harlov bellowed suddenly at Sletkin. ‘Why is it you keep aiming and don’t shoot? Are you mindful of the law; if the recipient of a gift commits an attempt upon the life of the giver,’ Harlov enunciated distinctly, ‘then the giver is empowered to claim everything back again? Ha, ha! don’t be afraid, law-abiding man! I’d make no claims. I’ll make an end of everything myself… Here goes!’

‘Father!’ for the last time Evlampia besought him.

‘Silence!’

‘Martin Petrovitch! brother, be generous and forgive!’ faltered Souvenir.

‘Father! dear father!’

‘Silence, bitch!’ shouted Harlov. At Souvenir he did not even glance, – he merely spat in his direction.

XXVII

At that instant, Kvitsinsky, with all his retinue – in three carts – appeared at the gates. The tired horses panted, the men jumped out, one after another, into the mud.

‘Aha!’ Harlov shouted at the top of his voice. ‘An army … here it comes, an army! A whole army they’re sending against me! Capital! Only I give warning – if any one comes up here to me on the roof, I’ll send him flying down, head over heels! I’m an inhospitable master; I don’t like visitors at wrong times! No indeed!’

He was hanging with both hands on to the front rafters of the roof, the so-called standards of the gable, and beginning to shake them violently. Balancing on the edge of the garret flooring, he dragged them, as it were, after him, chanting rhythmically like a bargeman, ‘One more pull! one more! o-oh!’

Sletkin ran up to Kvitsinsky and was beginning to whimper and pour out complaints… The latter begged him ‘not to interfere,’ and proceeded to carry out the plan he had evolved. He took up his position in front of the house, and began, by way of diversion, to explain to Harlov that what he was about was unworthy of his rank…

‘One more pull! one more!’ chanted Harlov.

… ‘That Natalia Nikolaevna was greatly displeased at his proceedings, and had not expected it of him…’

‘One more pull! one more! o-oh!’ Harlov chanted … while, meantime, Kvitsinsky had despatched the four sturdiest and boldest of the stable-boys to the other side of the house to clamber up the roof from behind. Harlov, however, detected the plan of attack; he suddenly left the standards and ran quickly to the back part of the roof. His appearance was so alarming that the two stable-boys who had already got up to the garret, dropped instantly back again to the ground by the water-pipe, to the great glee of the serf boys, who positively roared with laughter. Harlov shook his fist after them and, going back to the front part of the house, again clutched at the standards and began once more loosening them, singing again, like a bargeman.

Suddenly he stopped, stared…

‘Maximushka, my dear! my friend!’ he cried; ‘is it you?’

I looked round… There, actually, was Maximka, stepping out from the crowd of peasants. Grinning and showing his teeth, he walked forward. His master, the tailor, had probably let him come home for a holiday.

‘Climb up to me, Maximushka, my faithful servant,’ Harlov went on; ‘together let us rid ourselves of evil Tartar folk, of Lithuanian thieves!’

Maximka, still grinning, promptly began climbing up the roof… But they seized him and pulled him back – goodness knows why; possibly as an example to the rest; he could hardly have been much aid to Martin Petrovitch.

‘Oh, all right! Good!’ Harlov pronounced, in a voice of menace, and again he took hold of the standards.

‘Vikenty Osipovitch! with your permission, I’ll shoot,’ Sletkin turned to Kvitsinsky; ‘more to frighten him, see, than anything; my gun’s only charged with snipe-shot.’ But Kvitsinsky had not time to answer him, when the front couple of standards, viciously shaken in Harlov’s iron hands, heeled over with a loud crack and crashed into the yard; and with it, not able to stop himself, came Harlov too, and fell with a heavy thud on the earth. Every one shuddered and drew a deep breath… Harlov lay without stirring on his breast, and on his back lay the top central beam of the roof, which had come down with the falling gable’s timbers.

XXVIII

They ran up to Harlov, rolled the beam off him, turned him over on his back. His face was lifeless, there was blood about his mouth; he did not seem to breathe. ‘The breath is gone out of him,’ muttered the peasants, standing about him. They ran to the well for water, brought a whole bucketful, and drenched Harlov’s head. The mud and dust ran off his face, but he looked as lifeless as ever. They dragged up a bench, set it in the house itself, and with difficulty raising the huge body of Martin Petrovitch, laid it there with the head to the wall. The page Maximka approached, fell on one knee, and, his other leg stretched far behind him, in a theatrical way, supported his former master’s arm. Evlampia, pale as death, stood directly facing her father, her great eyes fastened immovably upon him. Anna and Sletkin did not come near him. All were silent, all, as it were, waited for something. At last we heard broken, smacking noises in Harlov’s throat, as though he were swallowing… Then he feebly moved one, his right, hand (Maximka supported the left), opened one, the right eye, and slowly gazing about him, as though drunken with some fearful drunkenness, groaned, articulated, stammering, ‘I’m sma-ashed …’ and as though after a moment’s thought, added, ‘here it is, the ra … aven co … olt!’ The blood suddenly gushed thickly from his mouth … his whole body began to quiver…

‘The end!’ I thought… But once more Harlov opened the same eye (the left eyelid lay as motionless as on a dead man’s face), and fixing it on Evlampia, he articulated, hardly above a breath, ‘Well, daugh … ter … you, I do not…’

Kvitsinsky, with a sharp motion of his hand, beckoned to the priest, who was still standing on the step… The old man came up, his narrow cassock clinging about his feeble knees. But suddenly there was a sort of horrible twitching in Harlov’s legs and in his stomach too; an irregular contraction passed upwards over his face. Evlampia’s face seemed quivering and working in the same way. Maximka began crossing himself… I was seized with horror; I ran out to the gates, squeezed myself close to them, not looking round. A minute later a soft murmur ran through the crowd, behind my back, and I understood that Martin Petrovitch was no more.

His skull had been fractured by the beam and his ribs injured, as it appeared at the post-mortem examination.

XXIX

What had he wanted to say to her as he lay dying? I asked myself as I went home on my cob: ‘I do not … forgive,’ or ‘do not … pardon.’ The rain had come on again, but I rode at a walking pace. I wanted to be alone as long as possible; I wanted to give myself up to my reflections, unchecked. Souvenir had gone back in one of the carts that had come with Kvitsinsky. Young and frivolous as I was at that time, the sudden sweeping change (not in mere details only) that is invariably called forth in all hearts by the coming of death – expected or unexpected, it makes no difference! – its majesty, its gravity, and its truthfulness could not fail to impress me. I was impressed too, … but for all that, my troubled, childish eyes noted many things at once; they noted how Sletkin, hurriedly and furtively, as though it were something stolen, popped the gun out of sight; how he and his wife became, both of them, instantly the object of a sort of unspoken but universal aloofness. To Evlampia, though her fault was probably no less than her sister’s, this aloofness did not extend. She even aroused a certain sympathy, when she fell at her dead father’s feet. But that she too was guilty, that was none the less felt by all. ‘The old man was wronged,’ said a grey-haired peasant with a big head, leaning, like some ancient judge, with both hands and his beard on a long staff; ‘on your soul lies the sin! You wronged him!’ That saying was at once accepted by every one as the final judgment. The peasants’ sense of justice found expression in it, I felt that at once. I noticed too that, at the first, Sletkin did not dare to give directions. Without him, they lifted up the body and carried it into the other house. Without asking him, the priest went for everything needful to the church, while the village elder ran to the village to send off a cart and horse to the town. Even Anna Martinovna did not venture to use her ordinary imperious tone in ordering the samovar to be brought, ‘for hot water, to wash the deceased.’ Her orders were more like an entreaty, and she was answered rudely…

I was absorbed all the while by the question, What was it exactly he wanted to say to his daughter? Did he want to forgive her or to curse her? Finally I decided that it was – forgiveness.

Three days later, the funeral of Martin Petrovitch took place. The cost of the ceremony was undertaken by my mother, who was deeply grieved at his death, and gave orders that no expense was to be spared. She did not herself go to the church, because she was unwilling, as she said, to set eyes on those two vile hussies and that nasty little Jew. But she sent Kvitsinsky, me, and Zhitkov, though from that time forward she always spoke of the latter as a regular old woman. Souvenir she did not admit to her presence, and was furious with him for long after, saying that he was the murderer of her friend. He felt his disgrace acutely; he was continually running, on tiptoe, up and down the room, next to the one where my mother was; he gave himself up to a sort of scared and abject melancholy, shuddering and muttering, ‘d’rectly!’

In church, and during the procession, Sletkin struck me as having recovered his self-possession. He gave directions and bustled about in his old way, and kept a greedy look-out that not a superfluous farthing should be spent, though his own pocket was not in question. Maximka, in a new Cossack dress, also a present from my mother, gave vent to such tenor notes in the choir, that certainly no one could have any doubts as to the sincerity of his devotion to the deceased. Both the sisters were duly attired in mourning, but they seemed more stupefied than grieved, especially Evlampia. Anna wore a meek, Lenten air, but made no attempt to weep, and was continually passing her handsome, thin hand over her hair and cheek. Evlampia seemed deep in thought all the time. The universal, unbending alienation, condemnation, which I had noticed on the day of Harlov’s death, I detected now too on the faces of all the people in the church, in their actions and their glances, but still more grave and, as it were, impersonal. It seemed as though all those people felt that the sin into which the Harlov family had fallen – this great sin – had gone now before the presence of the one righteous Judge, and that for that reason, there was no need now for them to trouble themselves and be indignant. They prayed devoutly for the soul of the dead man, whom in life they had not specially liked, whom they had feared indeed. Very abruptly had death overtaken him.

‘And it’s not as though he had been drinking heavily, brother,’ said one peasant to another, in the porch.

‘Nay, without drink he was drunken indeed,’ responded the other.

‘He was cruelly wronged,’ the first peasant repeated the phrase that summed it up.

‘Cruelly wronged,’ the others murmured after him.

‘The deceased was a hard master to you, wasn’t he?’ I asked a peasant, whom I recognised as one of Harlov’s serfs.

‘He was a master, certainly,’ answered the peasant, ‘but still … he was cruelly wronged!’

‘Cruelly wronged…’ I heard again in the crowd.

At the grave, too, Evlampia stood, as it were, lost. Thoughts were torturing her … bitter thoughts. I noticed that Sletkin, who several times addressed some remark to her, she treated as she had once treated Zhitkov, and worse still.

Some days later, there was a rumour all over our neighbourhood, that Evlampia Martinovna had left the home of her fathers for ever, leaving all the property that came to her to her sister and brother-in-law, and only taking some hundreds of roubles… ‘So Anna’s bought her out, it seems!’ remarked my mother; ‘but you and I, certainly,’ she added, addressing Zhitkov, with whom she was playing picquet – he took Souvenir’s place, ‘are not skilful hands!’ Zhitkov looked dejectedly at his mighty palms… ‘Hands like that! Not skilful!’ he seemed to be saying to himself…

Soon after, my mother and I went to live in Moscow, and many years passed before it was my lot to behold Martin Petrovitch’s daughters again.

XXX

But I did see them again. Anna Martinovna I came across in the most ordinary way.

After my mother’s death I paid a visit to our village, where I had not been for over fifteen years, and there I received an invitation from the mediator (at that time the process of settling the boundaries between the peasants and their former owners was taking place over the whole of Russia with a slowness not yet forgotten) to a meeting of the other landowners of our neighbourhood, to be held on the estate of the widow Anna Sletkin. The news that my mother’s ‘nasty little Jew,’ with the prune-coloured eyes, no longer existed in this world, caused me, I confess, no regret whatever. But it was interesting to get a glimpse of his widow. She had the reputation in the neighbourhood of a first-rate manager. And so it proved; her estate and homestead and the house itself (I could not help glancing at the roof; it was an iron one) all turned out to be in excellent order; everything was neat, clean, tidied-up, where needful – painted, as though its mistress were a German. Anna Martinovna herself, of course, looked older. But the peculiar, cold, and, as it were, wicked charm which had once so fascinated me had not altogether left her. She was dressed in rustic fashion, but elegantly. She received us, not cordially – that word was not applicable to her – but courteously, and on seeing me, a witness of that fearful scene, not an eyelash quivered. She made not the slightest reference to my mother, nor her father, nor her sister, nor her husband.

She had two daughters, both very pretty, slim young things, with charming little faces and a bright and friendly expression in their black eyes. There was a son, too, a little like his father, but still a boy to be proud of! During the discussions between the landowners, Anna Martinovna’s attitude was composed and dignified, she showed no sign of being specially obstinate, nor specially grasping. But none had a truer perception of their own interests than she of hers; none could more convincingly expound and defend their rights. All the laws ‘pertinent to the case,’ even the Minister’s circulars, she had thoroughly mastered. She spoke little, and in a quiet voice, but every word she uttered was to the point. It ended in our all signifying our agreement to all her demands, and making concessions, which we could only marvel at ourselves. On our way home, some of the worthy landowners even used harsh words of themselves; they all hummed and hawed, and shook their heads.

‘Ah, she’s got brains that woman!’ said one.

‘A tricky baggage!’ put in another less delicate proprietor. ‘Smooth in word, but cruel in deed!’

‘And a screw into the bargain!’ added a third; ‘not a glass of vodka nor a morsel of caviare for us – what do you think of that?’

‘What can one expect of her?’ suddenly croaked a gentleman who had been silent till then, ‘every one knows she poisoned her husband!’

To my astonishment, nobody thought fit to controvert this awful and certainly unfounded charge! I was the more surprised at this, as, in spite of the slighting expressions I have reported, all of them felt respect for Anna Martinovna, not excluding the indelicate landowner. As for the mediator, he waxed positively eloquent.

‘Put her on a throne,’ he exclaimed, ‘she’d be another Semiramis or Catherine the Second! The discipline among her peasants is a perfect model… The education of her children is model! What a head! What brains!’

Without going into the question of Semiramis and Catherine, there was no doubt Anna Martinovna was living a very happy life. Ease, inward and external, the pleasant serenity of spiritual health, seemed the very atmosphere about herself, her family, all her surroundings. How far she had deserved such happiness … that is another question. Such questions, though, are only propounded in youth. Everything in the world, good and bad, comes to man, not through his deserts, but in consequence of some as yet unknown but logical laws which I will not take upon myself to indicate, though I sometimes fancy I have a dim perception of them.

XXXI

I questioned the mediator about Evlampia Martinovna, and learnt that she had been lost sight of completely ever since she left home, and probably ‘had departed this life long ago.’

So our worthy mediator expressed himself … but I am convinced that I have seen Evlampia, that I have come across her. This was how it was.

Four years after my interview with Anna Martinovna, I was spending the summer at Murino, a little hamlet near Petersburg, a well-known resort of summer visitors of the middle class. The shooting was pretty decent about Murino at that time, and I used to go out with my gun almost every day. I had a companion on my expeditions, a man of the tradesman class, called Vikulov, a very sensible and good-natured fellow; but, as he said of himself, of no position whatever. This man had been simply everywhere, and everything! Nothing could astonish him, he knew everything – but he cared for nothing but shooting and wine. Well, one day we were on our way home to Murino, and we chanced to pass a solitary house, standing at the cross-roads, and enclosed by a high, close paling. It was not the first time I had seen the house, and every time it excited my curiosity. There was something about it mysterious, locked-up, grimly-dumb, something suggestive of a prison or a hospital. Nothing of it could be seen from the road but its steep, dark, red-painted roof. There was only one pair of gates in the whole fence; and these seemed fastened and never opened. No sound came from the other side of them. For all that, we felt that some one was certainly living in the house; it had not at all the air of a deserted dwelling. On the contrary, everything about it was stout, and tight, and strong, as if it would stand a siege!

‘What is that fortress?’ I asked my companion. ‘Don’t you know?’

Vikulov gave a sly wink. ‘A fine building, eh? The police-captain of these parts gets a nice little income out of it!’

‘How’s that?’

‘I’ll tell you. You’ve heard, I daresay, of the Flagellant dissenters – that do without priests, you know?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s there that their chief mother lives.’

‘A woman?’

‘Yes – the mother; a mother of God, they say.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘I tell you, it is so. She is a strict one, they say… A regular commander-in-chief! She rules over thousands! I’d take her, and all these mothers of God… But what’s the use of talking?’

He called his Pegashka, a marvellous dog, with an excellent scent, but with no notion of setting. Vikulov was obliged to tie her hind paws to keep her from running so furiously.

His words sank into my memory. I sometimes went out of my way to pass by the mysterious house. One day I had just got up to it, when suddenly – wonderful to relate! – a bolt grated in the gates, a key creaked in the lock, then the gates themselves slowly parted, there appeared a large horse’s head, with a plaited forelock under a decorated yoke, and slowly there rolled into the road a small cart, like those driven by horse-dealers, and higglers. On the leather cushion of the cart, near to me, sat a peasant of about thirty, of a remarkably handsome and attractive appearance, in a neat black smock, and a black cap, pulled down low on his forehead. He was carefully driving the well-fed horse, whose sides were as broad as a stove. Beside the peasant, on the far side of the cart, sat a tall woman, as straight as an arrow. Her head was covered by a costly-looking black shawl. She was dressed in a short jerkin of dove-coloured velvet, and a dark blue merino skirt; her white hands she held discreetly clasped on her bosom. The cart turned on the road to the left, and brought the woman within two paces of me; she turned her head a little, and I recognised Evlampia Harlov. I knew her at once, I did not doubt for one instant, and indeed no doubt was possible; eyes like hers, and above all that cut of the lips – haughty and sensual – I had never seen in any one else. Her face had grown longer and thinner, the skin was darker, here and there lines could be discerned; but, above all, the expression of the face was changed! It is difficult to do justice in words to the self-confidence, the sternness, the pride it had gained! Not simply the serenity of power – the satiety of power was visible in every feature. The careless glance she cast at me told of long years of habitually meeting nothing but reverent, unquestioning obedience. That woman clearly lived surrounded, not by worshippers, but by slaves. She had clearly forgotten even the time when any command, any desire of hers, was not carried out at the instant! I called her loudly by her name and her father’s; she gave a faint start, looked at me a second time, not with alarm, but with contemptuous wrath, as though asking – ‘Who dares to disturb me?’ and barely parting her lips, uttered a word of command. The peasant sitting beside her started forward, with a wave of his arm struck the horse with the reins – the horse set off at a strong rapid trot, and the cart disappeared.

Since then I have not seen Evlampia again. In what way Martin Petrovitch’s daughter came to be a Holy Virgin in the Flagellant sect I cannot imagine. But, who knows, very likely she has founded a sect which will be called – or even now is called – after her name, the Evlampieshtchin sect? Anything may be, anything may come to pass.

And so this is what I had to tell you of my Lear of the Steppes, of his family and his doings.

The story-teller ceased, and we talked a little longer, and then parted, each to his home.

Weimar, 1870.

FAUST

A STORY IN NINE LETTERS

Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren (Faust, Part I.)

FIRST LETTER

FROM PAVEL ALEXANDROVITCH B… TO SEMYON NIKOLAEVITCH V…

M – Village, 6th June 1850.

I have been here for three days, my dear fellow, and, as I promised, I take up my pen to write to you. It has been drizzling with fine rain ever since the morning; I can’t go out; and I want a little chat with you, too. Here I am again in my old home, where – it’s a dreadful thing to say – I have not been for nine long years. Really, as you may fancy, I have become quite a different man. Yes, utterly different, indeed; do you remember, in the drawing-room, the little tarnished looking-glass of my great-grandmother’s, with the queer little curly scrolls in the corners – you always used to be speculating on what it had seen a hundred years ago – directly I arrived, I went up to it, and I could not help feeling disconcerted. I suddenly saw how old and changed I had become in these last years. But I am not alone in that respect. My little house, which was old and tottering long ago, will hardly hold together now, it is all on the slant, and seems sunk into the ground. My dear Vassilievna, the housekeeper (you can’t have forgotten her; she used to regale you with such capital jam), is quite shrivelled up and bent; when she saw me, she could not call out, and did not start crying, but only moaned and choked, sank helplessly into a chair, and waved her hand. Old Terenty has some spirit left in him still; he holds himself up as much as ever, and turns out his feet as he walks. He still wears the same yellow nankeen breeches, and the same creaking goatskin slippers, with high heels and ribbons, which touched you so much sometimes, … but, mercy on us! – how the breeches flap about his thin legs nowadays! how white his hair has grown! and his face has shrunk up into a sort of little fist. When he speaks to me, when he begins directing the servants, and giving orders in the next room, it makes me laugh and feel sorry for him. All his teeth are gone, and he mumbles with a whistling, hissing sound. On the other hand, the garden has got on wonderfully. The modest little plants of lilac, acacia, and honeysuckle (do you remember, we planted them together?) have grown into splendid, thick bushes. The birches, the maples – all that has spread out and grown tall; the avenues of lime-trees are particularly fine. I love those avenues, I love the tender grey, green colour, and the delicate fragrance of the air under their arching boughs; I love the changing net-work of rings of light on the dark earth – there is no sand here, you know. My favourite oak sapling has grown into a young oak tree. Yesterday I spent more than an hour in the middle of the day on a garden bench in its shade. I felt very happy. All about me the grass was deliciously luxuriant; a rich, soft, golden light lay upon everything; it made its way even into the shade … and the birds one could hear! You’ve not forgotten, I expect, that birds are a passion of mine? The turtle-doves cooed unceasingly; from time to time there came the whistle of the oriole; the chaffinch uttered its sweet little refrain; the blackbirds quarrelled and twittered; the cuckoo called far away; suddenly, like a mad thing, the woodpecker uttered its shrill cry. I listened and listened to this subdued, mingled sound, and did not want to move, while my heart was full of something between languor and tenderness.