A House of Gentlefolk

rattle of a cart; in the village a gate is creaking. Then the jarring voice of a peasant woman, “What?” “Hey, you are my little sweetheart,” cries Anton to the little two-year-old girl he is dandling in his arms. “Fetch the kvass,” repeats the same woman’s voice, and all at once there follows a deathly silence; nothing rattles, nothing is moving; the wind is not stirring a leaf; without a sound the swallows fly one after another over the earth, and sadness weighs on the heart from their noiseless flight. “Here I am at the very bottom of the river,” thought Lavretsky again. “And always, at all times life here is quiet, unhasting,” he thought; “whoever comes within its circle must submit; here there is nothing to agitate, nothing to harass; one can only get on here by making one’s way slowly, as the ploughman cuts the furrow with his plough. And what vigour, what health abound in this inactive place! Here under the window the sturdy burdock creeps out of the thick grass; above it the lovage trails its juicy stalks and the Virgin’s tears fling still higher their pink tendrils; and yonder further in the fields is the silky rye, and the oats are already in ear, and every leaf on every tree, every grass on its stalk is spread to its fullest width. In the love of a woman my best years have gone by,” Lavretsky went on thinking, “let me be sobered by the sameness of life here, let me be soothed and made ready, so that I may learn to do my duty without haste.” And again he fell to listening to the silence, expecting nothing⁠—and at the same time constantly expecting something; the silence enfolded him on all sides, the sun moved calmly in the peaceful blue sky, and the clouds sailed calmly across it; they seemed to know why and whither they were sailing. At this same time in other places on the earth there is the seething, the bustle, the clash of life; life here slipped by noiseless, as water over marshy grass; and even till evening Lavretsky could not tear himself from the contemplation of this life as it passed and glided by; sorrow for the past was melting in his soul like snow in spring, and strange to say, never had the feeling of home been so deep and strong within him.

XXI

In the course of a fortnight, Fedor Ivanitch had brought Glafira Petrovna’s little house into order and had cleared the courtyard and the garden. From Lavriky comfortable furniture was sent him; from the town, wine, books, and papers; horses made their appearance in the stable; in brief Fedor Ivanitch provided himself with everything necessary and began to live⁠—not precisely after the manner of a country landowner, nor precisely after the manner of a hermit. His days passed monotonously; but he was not bored though he saw no one; he set diligently and attentively to work at farming his estate, rode about the neighbourhood and did some reading. He read little, however; he found it pleasanter to listen to the tales of old Anton. Lavretsky usually sat at the window with a pipe and a cup of cold tea. Anton stood at the door, his hands crossed behind him, and began upon his slow, deliberate stories of old times, of those fabulous times when oats and rye were not sold by measure, but in great sacks, at two or three farthings a sack; when there were impassable forests, virgin steppes stretching on every side, even close to the town. “And now,” complained the old man, whose eightieth year had passed, “there has been so much clearing, so much ploughing everywhere, there’s nowhere you may drive now.” Anton used to tell many stories, too, of his mistress, Glafira Petrovna; how prudent and saving she was; how a certain gentleman, a young neighbour, had paid her court, and used to ride over to see her, and how she was even pleased to put on her best cap, with ribbons of salmon colour, and her yellow gown of tru-tru lévantine for him; but how, later on, she had been angry with the gentleman neighbour for his unseemly inquiry, “What, madam, pray, might be your fortune?” and had bade them refuse him the house; and how it was then that she had given directions that, after her decease, everything to the last rag should pass to Fedor Ivanitch. And, indeed, Lavretsky found all his aunt’s household goods intact, not excepting the best cap with ribbons of salmon colour, and the yellow gown of tru-tru lévantine. Of old papers and interesting documents, upon which Lavretsky had reckoned, there seemed no trace, except one old book, in which his grandfather, Piotr Andreitch, had inscribed in one place, “Celebration in the city of Saint Petersburg of the peace, concluded with the Turkish empire by his Excellency Prince Alexander Alexandrovitch Prozorovsky;” in another place a recipe for a pectoral decoction with the comment, “This recipe was given to the general’s lady, Prascovya Federovna Soltikov, by the chief priest of the Church of the Life-giving Trinity, Fedor Avksentyevitch:” in another, a piece of political news of this kind: “Somewhat less talk of the French tigers;” and next this entry: “In the Moscow Gazette an announcement of the death of Mr. Senior-Major Mihal Petrovitch Kolitchev. Is not this the son of Piotr Vassilyevitch Kolitchev?” Lavretsky found also some old calendars and dream-books, and the mysterious work of Ambodik; many were the memories stirred by the well-known; but long-forgotten Symbols and Emblems. In Glafira Petrovna’s little dressing-table, Lavretsky found a small packet, tied up with black ribbon, sealed with black sealing wax, and thrust away in the very farthest corner of the drawer. In the parcel there lay face to face a portrait, in pastel, of his father in his youth, with effeminate curls straying over his brow, with