“So now you have three Annas,” His Excellency said, examining his white hands with their pink fingernails. “One in your buttonhole and two round your neck.”
Modest Alexeich put two fingers to his lips to prevent himself from laughing out loud.
“It only remains for me to await the arrival of a little Vladimir,” he said. “I make bold to suggest that Your Excellency might be disposed to act as godfather.”
He was alluding to the Order of St. Vladimir, fourth class, and he was already imagining how he would soon be telling everyone about his little witticism, so felicitously apt and audacious, and now again he wanted to say something equally felicitous, but His Excellency was buried in his newspaper and merely gave him a nod.
Meanwhile Anna continued to drive around in troikas; she went hunting with Artynov, performed in one-act plays, attended supper parties, and spent less and less time with her own family. They now dined alone. As for Pyotr Leontyich, he was drinking more heavily than ever; he had no money, and had long ago sold the harmonium to pay his debts. The boys did not let him go out alone in the streets, and they always followed him for fear he would fall; and when they met Anna driving down Old Kiev Street in a carriage drawn by two horses with Artynov sitting in the coachman’s box, Pyotr Leontyich would sweep off his top hat and try to shout something, but Petya and Andryusha would hold him by the arms and say imploringly:
“No, Papa! No, you really mustn’t!”
T
I
SOME six or seven years ago, when I was living in T— — province, I stayed on the estate of a young landowner called Belokurov, a man who always rose very early, dressed himself in one of those sleeveless jackets worn by peasants, drank beer in the evenings, and perpetually complained to me that he could never find anyone who sympathized with him. He lived in a little house in the garden, while I lived in the old mansion in the huge columned ballroom with no furniture except the wide sofa on which I slept and the table on which I played patience. Even on calm days there was always the sound of moaning in the ancient stoves, and during a thunderstorm the whole house shook as though on the point of collapse; and it was rather terrifying, especially at night, when the ten great windows blazed in the flashes of lightning.
I was doomed by fate to a life of permanent idleness, and did nothing whatever. For whole hours I gazed out of the windows at the sky, the birds, the avenues of trees, and read whatever the mails brought me, and slept. Sometimes I slipped away from the house and wandered about aimlessly until late at night.
Once on my way home I happened upon an estate I had never seen before. The sun was already setting, and the evening shadows lay over the ripening rye. There were two rows of ancient, towering fir trees, planted so close together that they formed two parallel walls enclosing an avenue of somber beauty. I climbed easily over a fence and walked down the avenue, my feet slipping on a two-inch-thick carpet of fir needles. It was quiet and dark but for the occasional gleams of golden light shimmering high in the treetops, painting the spiders’ webs in rainbow colors. Suffocating and overpowering was the fragrance of the pines. I soon turned into a long avenue of lime trees. Here, too, everything spoke of neglect and age. Last year’s leaves rustled mournfully beneath my feet, and shadows lurked in the twilight between the trees. From an ancient orchard on my right a gold-hammer sang feebly and listlessly; it gave the impression of being very old. And then the lime trees came to an end, and I went past a white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and quite suddenly there unfolded before my eyes a view of the manorial courtyard with a large pond, a bathhouse, a huddle of green willows, and a village beyond the pond dominated by a high and slender belfry crowned with a cross blazing in the light of the setting sun. For a moment I was under the spell of something very dear and familiar to me: it was as though I had seen this same scene in the days of my childhood.
An old and sturdy gate, the white stone gateposts adorned with lions, led from the courtyard into open fields; here two young women were standing. The older of the two was thin and pale and very pretty, with great masses of chestnut hair piled high on her head, and she had a small straight mouth and a severe expression. She scarcely glanced at me. The other was still quite young, hardly more than seventeen or eighteen, and she too was thin and pale, but her lips were full and her enormous eyes followed me with a look of surprise as I walked past. She said some words in English and looked embarrassed. I felt I had known these charming faces all my life. I went home with the feeling that I had experienced a pleasant dream.
Soon afterwards, around noon, I was walking with Belokurov near the house when the grass rustled beneath a spring carriage as it came into our courtyard; the older of the two girls was sitting in it. She had come to collect subscriptions in aid of the victims of a fire. Without looking at us, she spoke gravely and in great detail about the number of houses which had burned down in the village of Siyanovo, the number of men, women, and children rendered homeless, and the measures proposed by the committee for the relief of the victims, for she was herself a member of the committee. She gave us the subscription list so that we could write down our names, then she put the list away, and prepared to take her leave.
“You have completely forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovich.” She addressed Belokurov, offering him her hand. “Do come and visit with us, and if Monsieur N. [she mentioned my name] would like to see how his admirers live, and if he would care to come, then Mama and I would be only too pleased.”
I bowed.
When she had gone, Pyotr Petrovich began to tell me about her. According to him, she was a young woman of good family, her name was Lydia Volchaninova, and the estate on which she lived with her mother and sister was called Shelkovka, like the village on the other side of the pond. Her father had occupied an important post in Moscow, and held the rank of privy councilor when he died. Although they possessed considerable wealth, the Volchaninovs lived in the country all the year round, never leaving the estate. Lydia was a teacher in the zemstvo 1 school in her home village of Shelkovka, and earned twenty-five rubles a month. This was all the money she spent on herself, and she was proud of earning her own living.
“They’re an interesting family,” said Belokurov. “We might go over and see them. They will be delighted to see you.”
One afternoon on a holiday we remembered the Volchaninovs and drove over to see them. The mother and the two daughters were at home. It was obvious that Yekaterina Pavlovna, the mother, had once been pretty, but she had become more bloated than her years warranted, and she was short-winded, melancholy, and absent-minded. She tried to entertain me with talk about painting. Learning from her daughter that I might visit Shelkovka, she hurriedly called to mind two or three landscapes of mine she had seen on exhibition in Moscow, and now asked me what I was attempting to express in them. Lydia, or, as she was called at home, Leda, talked more to Belokurov than to me. Grave and unsmiling, she asked him why he did not work in the zemstvo, and why he had never attended a single one of its meetings.
