"What does this mean?" I asked myself. "Pobedimski must have complained to them about Theodore, and they have come to fetch him away to prison."
But the problem was not so easily solved. The policeman and the police captain were evidently but the forerunners of some one more important still, for five minutes had scarcely elapsed before a coach drove into our gate. It flashed by me so quickly that, as I glanced in at the window, I could only catch a glimpse of a red beard.
Lost in conjectures and foreseeing some disaster, I ran into the house. The first person I met in the hall was my mother. Her face was pale, and she was staring with horror at a door from behind which came the sound of men's voices. Some guests had arrived unexpectedly and at the very height of her headache.
"Who is here, mamma?" I asked.
"Sister!" we heard my uncle call. "Do give the governor and the rest of us a bite to eat ! "
"That's easier said than done!" whispered my mother, collapsing with horror. "What can I give them at such short notice ? I shall be disgraced in my declining years ! "
My mother clasped her head with her hands and hurried into the kitchen. The unexpected arrival of the governor had turned the whole farm upside down. A cruel holocaust immediately began to take place. Ten hens were killed and five turkeys and eight ducks, and in the hurly-burly the old gander was beheaded, the ancestor of all our flock and the favourite of my mother. The coachman and the cook seemed to have gone mad, and frantically slaughtered every bird they could lay hands upon without regard to its age or breed. A pair of my precious turtle doves, as dear to me as the gander was to my mother, were sacrified to make a gravy. It was long before I forgave the governor their death.
That evening, when the governor and his suite had dined until they could eat no more, and had climbed into their carriages and driven away, I went into the house to look at the remains of the feast. Glancing into the drawing-room from the hall, I saw my mother there with my uncle. My uncle was shrugging his shoulders, and nervously pacing round and round the room with his hands behind his back. My mother looked exhausted and very much thinner. She was sitting on the sofa following my uncle's movements with eyes of suffering.
"I beg your pardon, sister, but one cannot behave like that ! I introduced the governor to you, and you did not even shake hands with him ! You quite embarrassed the poor man. Yes, it was most unseemly. Simplicity is all very pretty, but even simplicity must not be carried too far, upon my word and honour— And then that dinner ! How could you serve a dinner like that? What was that dish-rag you gave us for the fourth course?"
"That was duck with apple sauce," answered my mother faintly.
"Duck! Forgive me, sister, but—but—I have an attack of indigestion ! I'm ill !"
My uncle pulled a sour, tearful face and continued.
"The devil the governor had to come here to see me ! Much I wanted a visit from him ! Ouch—oh, my indigestion ! I—I can't work and I can't sleep. I'm completely run down. I don't see how in the world you can exist here in this wilderness without anything to do ! There now, the pain is commencing in the pit of my stomach !"
My uncle knit his brows and walked up and down more swiftly than ever.
"Brother," asked my mother softly. "How much does it cost to go abroad ? "
"Three thousand roubles at least !" wailed my uncle. "I should certainly go, but where can I get the money ? I haven't a copeck ! Ouch, what a pain !"
My uncle stopped in his walk and gazed with anguish through the window at the grey, cloudy sky.
Silence fell. My mother fixed her eyes for a long time on the icon as if she were debating something, and then burst into tears and exclaimed:
"I'll let you have three thousand, brother!"
Three days later the majestic trunks were sent to the station, and behind them rolled the carriage containing the privy councillor. He had wept as he bade farewell to my mother, and had held her hand to his lips for a long time. As he climbed into the carriage his face had shone with childish joy. Radiant and happy, he had settled himself more comfortably in his seat, kissed his hand to my weeping mother, and suddenly and unexpectedly turned his regard to me. The utmost astonishment had appeared on his features—
"What boy is this?" he had asked.
As my mother had always assured me that God had sent my uncle to us for my especial benefit, this question gave her quite a turn. But I was not thinking about the question. As I looked at my uncle's happy face I felt, for some reason, very sorry for him. I could not endure it, and jumped up into the carriage to embrace this man, so frivolous, so weak, and so human. As I looked into his eyes I wanted to say something pleasant, so I asked him:
"Uncle, were you ever in a battle?"
"Oh, my precious boy!" laughed my uncle kissing me. " My precious boy, upon my word and honour ! How natural and true to life it all is, upon my word and honour!"
The carriage moved away. I followed it with my eyes, and long after it had disappeared I still heard ringing in my ears that farewell, "Upon my word and honour!"
THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR
[trans. by Constance Garnett]
AT the beginning of April in 1870 my mother, Klavdia Arhipovna, the widow of a lieutenant, received from her brother Ivan, a privy councillor in Petersburg, a letter in which, among other things, this passage occurred: “My liver trouble forces me to spend every summer abroad, and as I have not at the moment the money in hand for a trip to Marienbad, it is very possible, dear sister, that I may spend this summer with you at Kotchuevko… .”
On reading the letter my mother turned pale and began trembling all over; then an expression of mingled tears and laughter came into her face. She began crying and laughing. This conflict of tears and laughter always reminds me of the flickering and spluttering of a brightly burning candle when one sprinkles it with water. Reading the letter once more, mother called together all the household, and in a voice broken with emotion began explaining to us that there had been four Gundasov brothers: one Gundasov had died as a baby; another had gone to the war, and he, too, was dead; the third, without offence to him be it said, was an actor; the fourth…
“The fourth has risen far above us,” my mother brought out tearfully. “My own brother, we grew up together; and I am all of a tremble, all of a tremble!… A privy councillor with the rank of a general! How shall I meet him, my angel brother? What can I, a foolish, uneducated woman, talk to him about? It’s fifteen years since I’ve seen him! Andryushenka,” my mother turned to me, “you must rejoice, little stupid! It’s a piece of luck for you that God is sending him to us!”
After we had heard a detailed history of the Gundasovs, there followed a fuss and bustle in the place such as I had been accustomed to see only before Christmas and Easter. The sky above and the water in the river were all that escaped; everything else was subjected to a merciless cleansing, scrubbing, painting. If the sky had been lower and smaller and the river had not flowed so swiftly, they would have scoured them, too, with bath-brick and rubbed them, too, with tow. Our walls were as white as snow, but they were whitewashed; the floors were bright and shining, but they were washed every day. The cat Bobtail (as a small child I had cut off a good quarter of his tail with the knife used for chopping the sugar, and that was why he was called Bobtail) was carried off to the kitchen and put in charge of Anisya; Fedka was told that if any of the dogs came near the front-door “God would punish him.” But no one was so badly treated as the poor sofas, easy-chairs, and rugs! They had never, before been so violently beaten as on this occasion in preparation for