“Well, and do the children get schooling?” inquired Kuzma.
“ ’Tis obligatory,” said Oska. “They have a scholar who is a terror!”
“What scholar are you talking about? Do you mean a teacher?”
“Well, then, teacher, it’s all the same. The way he has educated those brats—I tell you, ’tis fine. He’s a soldier. He beats them unmercifully, but on the other hand he has them well trained in all sorts of ways. Tikhon Ilitch and I happened to drop in one day—and if they didn’t all leap to their feet and bark out: ‘We wish you health!’ just as well as if they were soldiers!”
And once more Kuzma broke into a laugh.
But when he had passed the threshing-floor, had descended by the defective road past the cherry orchard and turned to the left, to the long farmyard, lying well dried and golden-hued in the sun, his heart actually began to beat violently. Here he was, at home, at last. And as he mounted the porch and stepped across the threshold, Kuzma gave vent to a sigh, and, making the sign of the cross on brow and breast, he bowed low before the dark holy picture in the corner of the anteroom. …
And for a long time he cared not whether the Russian people had a future or not. He roamed about the manor estate, the village; he sat for hours at a time on the doorsteps of the cottages, on the threshing-floors—watching the inhabitants of Durnovka, enjoying the possibility of breathing pure air, of chatting with his new neighbours.
II
Opposite the house, with their rear to Durnovka, to the wide ravine, stood the storehouses. From the porch, half of the village was visible, and beyond the storehouses the pond and a part of the promontory—one windmill and the schoolhouse. The sun rose to the left, beyond the fields, beyond the railway line on the horizon. In the morning the pond glittered with a bright, fresh exhalation, and from the park behind the house was wafted an odour of foliage from evergreens and leaf trees, steppe grass, apples, and dew. The rooms were small and empty. In the study, papered with old music sheets, rye was stored; in the hall and the drawing-room no furniture was left save a few Viennese chairs with broken seats and a large extension table. The windows of the drawing-room overlooked the park, and during almost the entire autumn Kuzma passed the night in it, on a broken-down couch, without closing the windows. The floor was never swept: the widow Odnodvorka lived there temporarily, in the capacity of cook; she had been the mistress of young Durnovo, and was obliged to run after her small children and prepare food, after a fashion, for herself, Kuzma, and the labourer. Kuzma himself prepared the samovar in the morning, after which he sat at the window in the hall and drank tea and ate apples.
Through the early glitter, beyond the brilliant mist over the ploughed fields, the railway train dashed past in the morning; and, above, rose-coloured wreaths floated behind it. Dense smoke hung over the roofs of the village. The garden was freshly fragrant; silvery hoarfrost lay upon the storehouses. At noon the sun stood over the village; it was hot out of doors; in the park the maples and lindens grew thin, quietly dropping their leaves; the vast spaces and the transparent dry air of the fields were filled with silence and with peace. The doves, warmed up by the sun, dozed all day long on the sloping roof of the kitchen, whose new straw roof gleamed yellow against the clear blue sky. The labourer rested after his dinner. Odnodvorka went off to her own home.
But Kuzma roamed about. He went to the threshing-floor, rejoicing in the sun, the firm road, the withered steppe grass, the beet-tops which had turned dark brown, the charming late flower of the blue chicory, and the down of the cotton thistle floating quietly through the air. The ploughed spaces in the fields gleamed in the sunlight with the silken threads of barely visible spiders’ webs, which extended to an immense distance. In the vegetable garden, goldfinches perched on the dry stalks of the burdocks. Upon the threshing-floor, amid the profound stillness in the sultry heat, grasshoppers diligently emitted their hoarse cry.
From the threshing-floor Kuzma climbed across the earthen well and returned to the manor-house through the orchard and the fir plantation. In the orchard he chatted with the petty burghers, the lessees of the orchard, with the Bride and the Goat, who were gathering up the windfalls, and forced his way, in their company, into the nettle patch where lay the ripest fruit of all. Sometimes he wandered to the village, to the schoolhouse. He became freshened up, sunburned; he felt himself almost happy.
The Goat amazed him by her health, her cheery stupidity, her senselessly brilliant Egyptian eyes. The Bride was handsome and strange. With him, as with Tikhon, she remained silent; not a word was to be got out of her. But when one went away she gave vent to a harsh laugh, indulged in bawling conversations with the petty burghers, and would suddenly strike up:
“Let them thrash me, curse me—
My pretty eyes will twinkle more …”
The soldier-teacher, born stupid, had lost in the service what small wits he had ever possessed. In appearance he was the most commonplace sort of peasant, about forty years of age. But he always spoke in such an extraordinary manner, and uttered such nonsense, that all one could do was to throw up one’s hands in despair. He was forever smiling with the greatest appearance of slyness at something or other; he looked down upon his interlocutor condescendingly, with his eyes screwed up, and never replied to any question immediately.
“How am I to
