“Hush, hush! they may overhear you,” said the servants’ cook, Praskóvia, wiping away her tears with her apron. “Poor orphans! If your mother were only alive”—
Old Frol stood, his head deeply bent, his eyes also twinkling.
“Look here, Pétya, not a word to anyone; to no one,” he said, while Praskóvia placed on the table an earthenware jar full of porridge for Alexander.
He, glowing with health, in his cadet uniform, already had begun to talk about all sorts of matters, while he rapidly emptied the porridge pot. I could hardly make him tell me how he came there at such a late hour. We lived then near the Smolénsk boulevard, within a stone’s throw of the house where our mother died, and the corps of cadets was at the opposite outskirts of Moscow, full five miles away.
He had made a doll out of bedclothes, and had put it in his bed, under the blankets; then he went to the tower, descended from a window, came out unnoticed, and walked the whole distance.
“Were you not afraid at night, in the deserted fields round your corps?” I asked.
“What had I to fear? Only lots of dogs were upon me; I had teased them myself. Tomorrow I shall take my sword with me.”
The coachman and other servants came in and out; they sighed as they looked at us, and took seats at a distance, along the walls, exchanging words in a subdued tone, so as not to disturb us; while we two, in each other’s arms, sat there till midnight, talking about nebulae and Laplace’s hypothesis, the structure of matter, the struggles of the papacy under Boniface VIII with the imperial power, and so on.
From time to time one of the servants would hurriedly run in, saying, “Pétinka, go and show thyself in the hall; they are moving about and may ask for thee.”
I implored Sasha not to come next night; but he came nevertheless—not without having had a scrimmage with the dogs, against whom he had taken his sword. I responded with feverish haste, when, earlier than the day before, I was called once again to the coachman’s house. Alexander had made part of the journey in a cab. The previous night, one of the servants had brought him what he had got from the card-players and asked him to take it. He took some small coin to hire a cab, and so he came earlier than on his first visit.
He intended to come the next night, too, but for some reason it would have been dangerous for the servants, and we decided to part till the autumn. A short “official” note made me understand next day that his nocturnal escapades had passed unnoticed. How terrible would have been the punishment, if they had been discovered! It is awful to think of it: flogging before the corps till he was carried away unconscious on a sheet, and then the degradation to a soldiers’ sons’ battalion—anything was possible, in those times.
What our servants would have suffered for hiding us, if information of the affair had reached our father’s ears, would have been equally terrible; but they knew how to keep secrets, and not to betray one another. They all knew of the visits of Alexander, but none of them whispered a word to anyone of the family. They and I were the only ones in the house who ever knew anything about it.
IV
That same year I made my start as an investigator of popular life. This work brought me one step nearer to our peasants, making me see them under a new light; later, it also helped me a great deal in Siberia.
Every year, in July, on the day of “The Holy Virgin of Kazán,” which was the fête of our church, a pretty large fair was held in Nikólskoye. Tradesmen came from all the neighboring towns, and many thousands of peasants flocked from thirty miles round to our village, which for a couple of days had a most animated aspect. A remarkable description of the village fairs of South Russia had been published that year by the Slavophile Aksakov, and my brother, who was then at the height of his politico-economical enthusiasm, advised me to make a statistical description of our fair, and to determine the returns of goods brought in and sold. I followed his advice, and to my great amazement I really succeeded: my estimate of returns, so far as I can judge now, was not more unreliable than many similar estimates in books of statistics.
Our fair lasted only a little more than twenty-four hours. On the eve of the fête the great open space given to the fair was full of life and animation. Long rows of stalls, to be used for the sale of cottons, ribbons, and all sorts of peasant women’s attire, were hurriedly built. The restaurant, a substantial stone building, was furnished with tables, chairs, and benches, and its floor was strewn over with bright yellow sand. Three wine shops were erected, and freshly cut brooms, planted on high poles, rose high in the air, to attract the peasants from a distance. Rows and rows of smaller stalls, for the sale of crockery, boots, stoneware, gingerbread, and all sorts of small things, rose as if by a magic wand, while in a special corner of the fair ground holes were dug to receive immense cauldrons, in which bushels of millet and sarrazin and whole sheep were boiled, for supplying the thousands of visitors with hot schi and kásha (soup and porridge). In the afternoon, the four roads leading to the fair were blocked by hundreds of peasant carts, and heaps of pottery, casks filled with tar, corn, and cattle were exhibited along the roadsides.
The night service on the eve of the fête was performed in our church with great solemnity. Half