A year has gone by since then. Byelovzorov is still living at his aunt's, and still talking of going back to Petersburg. He has grown as broad as he is long in the country. His aunt--who could have imagined such a thing?-- idolises him, and the young girls of the neighbourhood are falling in love with him....
Many of her old friends have given up going to Tatyana Borissovna's.
XVI
DEATH
I have a neighbour, a young landowner and a young sportsman. One fine July morning I rode over to him with a proposition that we should go out grouse-shooting together. He agreed. 'Only let's go,' he said, 'to my underwoods at Zusha; I can seize the opportunity to have a look at Tchapligino; you know my oakwood; they're felling timber there.' 'By all means.' He ordered his horse to be saddled, put on a green coat with bronze buttons, stamped with a boar's head, a game-bag embroidered in crewels, and a silver flask, slung a new-fangled French gun over his shoulder, turned himself about with some satisfaction before the looking-glass, and called his dog, Hope, a gift from his cousin, an old maid with an excellent heart, but no hair on her head. We started. My neighbour took with him the village constable, Arhip, a stout, squat peasant with a square face and jaws of antediluvian proportions, and an overseer he had recently hired from the Baltic provinces, a youth of nineteen, thin, flaxen- haired, and short-sighted, with sloping shoulders and a long neck, Herr Gottlieb von der Kock. My neighbour had himself only recently come into the property. It had come to him by inheritance from an aunt, the widow of a councillor of state, Madame Kardon-Kataev, an excessively stout woman, who did nothing but lie in her bed, sighing and groaning. We reached the underwoods. 'You wait for me here at the clearing,' said Ardalion Mihalitch (my neighbour) addressing his companions. The German bowed, got off his horse, pulled a book out of his pocket--a novel of Johanna Schopenhauer's, I fancy--and sat down under a bush; Arhip remained in the sun without stirring a muscle for an hour. We beat about among the bushes, but did not come on a single covey. Ardalion Mihalitch announced his intention of going on to the wood. I myself had no faith, somehow, in our luck that day; I, too, sauntered after him. We got back to the clearing. The German noted the page, got up, put the book in his pocket, and with some difficulty mounted his bob-tailed, broken-winded mare, who neighed and kicked at the slightest touch; Arhip shook himself, gave a tug at both reins at once, swung his legs, and at last succeeded in starting his torpid and dejected nag. We set off.
I had been familiar with Ardalion Mihalitch's wood from my childhood. I had often strolled in Tchapligino with my French tutor, Monsieur Desire Fleury, the kindest of men (who had, however, almost ruined my constitution for life by dosing me with Leroux's mixture every evening). The whole wood consisted of some two or three hundred immense oaks and ash-trees. Their stately, powerful trunks were magnificently black against the transparent golden green of the nut bushes and mountain-ashes; higher up, their wide knotted branches stood out in graceful lines against the clear blue sky, unfolding into a tent overhead; hawks, honey-buzzards and kestrels flew whizzing under the motionless tree-tops; variegated wood-peckers tapped loudly on the stout bark; the blackbird's bell-like trill was heard suddenly in the thick foliage, following on the ever-changing note of the gold-hammer; in the bushes below was the chirp and twitter of hedge-warblers, siskins, and peewits; finches ran swiftly along the paths; a hare would steal along the edge of the wood, halting cautiously as he ran; a squirrel would hop sporting from tree to tree, then suddenly sit still, with its tail over its head. In the grass among the high ant-hills under the delicate shade of the lovely, feathery, deep-indented bracken, were violets and lilies of the valley, and funguses, russet, yellow, brown, red and crimson; in the patches of grass among the spreading bushes red strawberries were to be found.... And oh, the shade in the wood! In the most stifling heat, at mid-day, it was like night in the wood: such peace, such fragrance, such freshness.... I had spent happy times in Tchapligino, and so, I must own, it was with melancholy feelings I entered the wood I knew so well. The ruinous, snowless winter of 1840 had not spared my old friends, the oaks and the ashes; withered, naked, covered here and there with sickly foliage, they struggled mournfully up above the young growth which 'took their place, but could never replace them.' [Footnote: In 1840 there were severe frosts, and no snow fell up to the very end of December; all the wintercorn was frozen, and many splendid oak- forests were destroyed by that merciless winter. It will be hard to replace them; the productive force of the land is apparently diminishing; in the 'interdicted' wastelands (visited by processions with holy images, and so not to be touched), instead of the noble trees of former days, birches and aspens grow of themselves; and, indeed, they have no idea among us of planting woods at all.--_Author's Note_.]
Some trees, still covered with leaves below, fling their lifeless, ruined branches upwards, as it were, in reproach and despair; in others, stout, dead, dry branches are thrust out of the midst of foliage still thick, though with none of the luxuriant abundance of old; others have fallen altogether, and lie rotting like corpses on the ground. And--who could have dreamed of this in former days?--there was no shade--no shade to be found anywhere in Tchapligino! 'Ah,' I thought, looking at the dying trees: 'isn't it shameful and bitter for you?'... Koltsov's lines recurred to me:
'What has become Of the mighty voices, The haughty strength, The royal pomp? Where now is the Wealth of green?...
'How is it, Ardalion Mihalitch,' I began, 'that they didn't fell these trees the very next year? You see they won't give for them now a tenth of what they would have done before.'
He merely shrugged his shoulders.
'You should have asked my aunt that; the timber merchants came, offered money down, pressed the matter, in fact.'
'_Mein Gott! mein Gott!_' Von der Kock cried at every step. 'Vat a bity, vat a bity!'
'What's a bity!' observed my neighbour with a smile.
'That is; how bitiful, I meant to say.'
What particularly aroused his regrets were the oaks lying on the ground--and, indeed, many a miller would have given a good sum for them. But the constable Arhip preserved an unruffled composure, and did not indulge in any lamentations; on the contrary, he seemed even to jump over them and crack his whip on them with a certain satisfaction.
We were getting near the place where they were cutting down the trees, when suddenly a shout and hurried talk was heard, following on the crash of a falling tree, and a few instants after a young peasant, pale and dishevelled, dashed out of the thicket towards us.
'What is it? where are you running?' Ardalion Mihalitch asked him.
He stopped at once.
'Ah, Ardalion Mihalitch, sir, an accident!'
'What is it?'
'Maksim, sir, crushed by a tree.'
'How did it happen?... Maksim the foreman?'
'The foreman, sir. We'd started cutting an ash-tree, and he was standing looking on.... He stood there a bit, and then off he went to the well for some water--wanted a drink, seemingly--when suddenly the ash-tree began creaking and coming straight towards him. We shout to him: 'Run, run, run!'.... He should have rushed to one side, but he up and ran straight before him.... He was scared, to be sure. The ash-tree covered him with its top branches. But why it fell so soon, the Lord only knows!... Perhaps it was rotten at the core.'
'And so it crushed Maksim?'
'Yes, sir.'
'To death?'
'No, sir, he's still alive--but as good as dead; his arms and legs are crushed. I was running for Seliverstitch, for the doctor.'
Ardalion Mihalitch told the constable to gallop to the village for Seliverstitch, while he himself pushed on at a quick trot to the clearing.... I followed him.
We found poor Maksim on the ground. The peasants were standing about him. We got off our horses. He hardly moaned at all; from time to time he opened his eyes wide, looked round, as it were, in astonishment, and bit his lips, fast turning blue.... The lower part of his face was twitching; his hair was matted on his brow; his breast heaved irregularly: he was dying. The light shade of a young lime-tree glided softly over his face.
We bent down to him. He recognised Ardalion Mihalitch.
'Please sir,' he said to him, hardly articulately, 'send... for the priest... tell... the Lord... has punished me... arms, legs, all smashed... to-day's... Sunday... and I... I... see... didn't let the lads off... work.'
