“And, papa,” resumed Seryozha without moving. “What do you think? Gavril Ilitch’s wife beat him in the street, because he paid up your money. Mr. Chew told me. Beat him—think of that! You remember Gavril Ilitch—like a great dumpling—you can imagine how funny it must have looked. … Oi!—I did regret not being there …”
Anna, thwarted in her hopes of spreading the tablecloth, stood grimly watching him. In spite of her feeling of injury, she gloried in the sight of him—his size, his straightness, his independence.
“Ai, that old clock,” said Seryozha, interrupting himself. “I often thought of its ugly old face while I was away.”
“And your mother’s ugly old face?” asked Anna.
“I often thought of that, too,” cried Seryozha, jumping off the table and throwing his arms about her. But she hardly had time to feel delight, for he spoke to his father over her shoulder. “Papa, in a field in Korea we saw a plough worked like a motorcar—no bullocks at all. The furrow it made was so straight and deep.”
He was sitting on the table again, his hand descriptively ploughing the air in front of him.
“For God’s sake, where is this wife of yours?” grumbled Anna, in a softened voice. “Where have you left her?”
“In the new temple,” said Seryozha, the smile that belonged to the marvelous plough still parting his lips. “Mr. Chew suggested our coming on ahead, and she seemed quite pleased. She is not like other girls—always asking for attention.”
“But is she there alone?”
“No. With Katya’s niece.”
“Who is Katya and who is her niece? For God’s sake, don’t talk so foolishly, boy.”
“Katya is Varvara Alexeievna’s servant. …” And as Seryozha said this his eye fell on the tablecloth on her arm—still torn and stained, still not mended or washed, just as he had seen it the day he went away. And the words in his mouth—“Varvara Alexeievna’s servant”—sent his mind back to his mother-in-law’s neat house and orderly possessions—the sunlight, through clean panes, lying patterned on a clean floor; the pressed linen that clothed Varvara’s awkward yet leisured body; the busy effectiveness of Katya. He remembered the departure from Mi-san, which, owing to Pavel’s dramatic sense, had appeased that craving that was in Seryozha, as in all young creatures, for the dignified conduct of great affairs of sentiment. There had been the panting Ford at the door, and in it a large crate of unfamiliar shape. “Whose package is that?” “Yours,” said Pavel, superbly. “Half the Ostapenko family silver for Pavel Ostapenko’s only child. And I’ll send her mare up by road as soon as I can arrange it, and the black gelding for you, my dear boy. And here is my daughter’s maid, Marfa, Katya’s niece, for I want the child to be well looked after. And here, Seryozha, is the child’s dowry. …” He handed him a draft for two thousand yen. Seryozha had felt ideally well treated for the first time in his life. All that was needed was a grave and literary blessing, and this Pavel at once supplied. “The God of Heaven give you a prosperous journey, my children. Tanya, you’re a married woman now. You must honor a new father and mother; they are your parents now, and from them let me hear a good account of you.” He kissed his daughter on the forehead. And then Varvara rather spoiled the noble austerity of it all by crying wildly: “Take care of her, Seryozha—there’s no one like her. … She’s different—she’s special. I commit her to you as a special trust. … Be very good to her. …” Then she gasped, with a rush of tears, “If there are babies, Seryozha, let me be there—I must be there. …” A scene to make a man of a boy indeed, thought Seryozha. Even Varvara’s tears, though awkwardly shed, had been a tribute to his grown-up dignity. And now—home to this threadbare muddle—to be reinfected with the virus of childishness by his incurable mother. For a few seconds Seryozha saw his home, and all his longing for home turned sour.
His mother watched his expression change and a sullenness come into his eyes. “Ah, tschah!” she said, hurt by this result of his glance in her direction. “I won’t bother you with questions, then. I’ll leave you to talk to your father. I’ll go to the new temple to meet your Tanya.”
She felt like a horseman whose unmanageable mount suddenly kicks out at a friend standing by, to whom he has been trying to talk charmingly. Here was her warm heart—its warmth all in vain—mounted on this clumsy steed of manners and body.
But Seryozha was still imbedded in his past. He could not yet bear to let the then dissolve into the now. “We had such a journey,” he said, dreamily. “By motorcar from Mi-san to Choanji, and we let Mr. Chew take the car and luggage from there to Gensan while Tanya and I walked through the Kongo-san—”
“But the expense …” quavered Old Sergei.
“Tschah! We are rich now. Expense is nothing. Why, papa, we have brought a huge box full of family silver. …”
Anna went out, patting Seryozha’s wrist wistfully as she passed him. He smiled at her as she did so. “Mamma darling, we must live quite differently now. …”
The new temple was so new that it was not yet finished. The molded mud gods were already enthroned, but they were not colored yet. To make up for this rather ungodlike nakedness, somebody had put a fresh hollyhock in each god’s hand. They looked like ladies trying on their engagement rings in their baths.
On a ledge between one god and another sat Tatiana. Anna was quite shocked to see how light and small and beautiful her son’s bride was.
Wilfred Chew was standing in the middle of the courtyard, looking contemptuously up at the dolphin-bristling roof-ridge and the curly, dragony eaves.
“Ah Mrs. Malinin,” said Wilfred, brightly. “I see I am to have the pleasure of introducing your daughter-in-law to you. Mrs. Malinin senior, I beg to present to you
