Virgin Soil (Volume 1)/Chapter 9
IX
May had already passed into its second half. The first hot days of summer had come.
At the end of his history lesson one day Nezhdanov went out into the garden, and from the garden into a birchwood which adjoined it on one side. Part of this wood had been cut down by timber merchants fifteen years before, but all the clearings were overgrown with thick young birch-trees. The trunks of the trees stood close like columns of soft dull silver, striped with greyish rings; the tiny leaves were of a uniform shining green, as though some one had washed them and put varnish on them; the spring grass pushed up in little sharp tongues through the dark even layer of last year's fallen leaves. Little narrow paths ran up and down all over the wood; yellow-beaked blackbirds, with a sudden cry, as though in alarm, fluttered across the paths, low down, close to the earth, and dashed like mad into the bushes. After walking for half an hour, Nezhdanov sat down at last on a felled stump, surrounded by grey, ancient chips; they lay in little heaps as they had fallen, struck off by the axe. Many times had the winter snow covered them and melted from off them in the spring, and no one had touched them. Nezhdanov sat with his back to a thick hedge of young birches, in the dense, soft shade. He thought of nothing; he gave himself up utterly to that peculiar sensation of the spring in which, for young and old alike, there is always an element of pain . . . the restless pain of expectation in the young . . . the settled pain of regret in the old.. . .
Suddenly Nezhdanov heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
It was not one person coming, and not a peasant in shoes or heavy boots, nor a barefoot peasant woman. It seemed as though two persons were walking at a slow, even pace.. . . There was the light rustle of a woman's dress.. . .
Suddenly there came the sound of a hollow voice─the voice of a man: 'And so that is your last word?─never?'
'Never!' repeated another voice─a woman's─which seemed to Nezhdanov familiar, and an instant later, at a turn in the path, which at that point skirted the young birches, Marianna stepped out, escorted by a dark, black-eyed man, whom Nezhdanovhad never seen till that instant.
Both stopped, as if they had been shot, at the sight of Nezhdanov, while he was so astounded that he did not even get up from the stump on which he was sitting.. . . Marianna blushed up to the roots of her hair, but at once smiled contemptuously. For whom was the smile meant─for herself for having blushed, or for Nezhdanov? . . . Her companion knitted his bushy brows, and there was a gleam in the yellowish whites of his uneasy eyes. Then he looked at Marianna, and both of them, turning their backs on Nezhdanov, walked away in silence, at the same slow pace, while he followed them with a stare of amazement.
Half an hour later he went home and to his room, and when, summoned by the booming of the gong, he went into the drawing-room, he saw in it the same swarthy stranger who had come upon him in the copse. Sipyagin led Nezhdanov up to him and introduced him as his beau-frère, the brother of Valentina Mihalovna─Sergei Mihalovitch Markelov.
'I hope you will be good friends, gentlemen!' cried Sipyagin, with the majestically affable though absent-minded smile characteristic of him.
Markelov performed a silent bow; Nezhdanov responded in a similar manner . . . while Sipyagin, with a slight toss of his little head and a shrug of his shoulders, moved away, as much as to say, 'I have done my duty by you . . . and whether you really do become friends is a matter of no importance to me!'
Then Valentina Mihalovna approached the couple, who stood immovable, and again presented them to one another, and with the peculiar caressing brightness which she seemed able at will to shed over her marvellous eyes, she addressed her brother:
'How is it, cher Serge, you've quite forgotten us? you did not even come for Kolya's name-day. Or have you had such piles of work? He's introducing new arrangements with his peasants', she turned to Nezhdanov─'very original ones too; three-quarters of everything for them, and one quarter for himself; and even then he thinks he gets too much.'
'My sister's fond of joking,' Markelov in his turn addressed himself to Nezhdanov; 'but I'm prepared to agree with her that for one man to take a quarter of what belongs to a hundred at least, is certainly too much.'
'And have you, Alexey Dmitrievitch, noticed that I'm fond of joking?' inquired Madame Sipyagin, still with the same caressing softness both of eyes and voice.Nezhdanov found no reply; and at that moment Kallomyetsev was announced. The lady of the house went to meet him, and a few moments later the butler appeared and in a sing-song voice announced that dinner was on the table.
At dinner Nezhdanov could not help watching Marianna and Markelov. They sat side by side, both with eyes downcast, and lips compressed, with a severe, gloomy, almost exasperated expression. Nezhdanov kept wondering too how Markelov could be Madame Sipyagin's brother. There was so little resemblance to be discerned between them. One thing, perhaps─both were of dark complexion; but in Valentina Mihalovna the uniform tint of her face, arms, and shoulders constituted one of her charms . . . while in her brother it attained that degree of swarthiness which polite people describe as 'bronzed', but which, to the Russian eye, inevitably suggests a leather gaiter. Markelov had curly hair, a rather hooked nose, full lips, sunken cheeks, a contracted chest, and sinewy hands. He was sinewy and dry all over; and he spoke in a harsh, abrupt, metallic voice. His eyes were sleepy, his face surly, a regular dyspeptic! He ate little, and busied himself in rolling up little pellets of bread, only occasionally casting a glance at Kallomyetsev who had just returned from the town, where he had seen the governor, upon a matter rather unpleasant for him, Kallomyetsev. Upon this point he was studiously silent, though on other subjects he launched out freely.
Sipyagin, as before, pulled him up when he went too far. He laughed a great deal at his anecdotes, his bons mots, though he opined, 'qu'il est un affreux réactionnaire.' Kallomyetsev declared among the rest that he had been thrown into perfect raptures over the name the peasants─oui, oui! les simples moujiks!─give to the lawyers─'Loiars! loiars!' he repeated in ecstasy: 'ce peuple russe est délicieux.' Then he related how once when visiting a peasant-school he had put to the pupils the question: 'What is an ornithorhincus?' And as no one was able to answer, not even the teacher, then he, Kallomyetsev, put them another question: 'What is a wendaru?' quoting the line of Hemnitser: 'The senseless wendaru that apes the other beasts.' And no one had answered that either. So much for your peasant schools!
'But excuse me', remarked Valentina Mihalovna, 'I don't know myself what those animals are.'
'Madam!' cried Kallomyetsev, 'there's not the slightest necessity for you to know.'
'And what need is there for the peasants to know?'
'Why, because it's better for them to know of an ornithorhincus or a wendaru than of Proudhon─or even Adam Smith!'
But at this point Sipyagin again pulled him up, maintaining that Adam Smith was one of the leading lights of human thought, and that it would be a good thing if all were to imbibe his principles . . . (he poured himself out a glass of Château d'Yquem . . .) with their mothers' (he held it to his nose and sniffed at the wine) milk! . . . He emptied the glass; Kallomyetsev drank too, and praised the wine.
Markelov paid no special attention to the flights of the Petersburg kammerjunker, but twice he looked inquiringly at Nezhdanov, and, tossing up a pellet of bread, all but flung it straight at the loquacious visitor's nose.. . .
Sipyagin let his brother-in-law alone; Valentina Mihalovna, too, did not address him; it was clear that both husband and wife were in the habit of regarding Markelov as an unaccountable creature, whom it was better not to provoke.
After dinner, Markelov went off to the billiard-room to smoke a pipe, and Nezhdanov went to his own room. In the corridor he came upon Marianna. He was about to pass her . . . she stopped him with an abrupt gesture.
'Mr. Nezhdanov,' she began in a not quite steady voice, 'it ought really to be just the same to me what you think about me; but all the same I consider . . . I consider . . . (she was at a loss for a word . . .) I consider it fitting to tell you, that when you met me to-day in the copse with Mr. Markelov . . . Tell me, no doubt you wondered why it was we were both confused, and why we had come there, as though by appointment?'
'It certainly did strike me as a little strange,' Nezhdanov began.
'Mr. Markelov', Marianna broke in, 'made me an offer, and I refused him. That's all I had to say to you; so good-night. You can think of me what you choose.'
She turned swiftly away and walked with rapid steps along the corridor.
Nezhdanov went to his room, sat down at his window and pondered. 'What a strange girl! and why this wild freak, this uninvited confidence? What is it─a desire to be original, or simply affectation, or pride? Most likely pride. She can't put up with the smallest suspicion . . . She can't endure the idea that any one should judge her falsely. A strange girl!'
So mused Nezhdanov; and on the terrace below there was a conversation about him; and he heard it all very clearly.
'I know by instinct,' Kallomyetsev was asserting, 'that that's a red republican. While I was serving on special commission under the governor-general of Moscow, avec Ladislas, I got a quick scent for these gentlemen─the reds─and for dissenters too. I've a wonderfully keen nose, at times.' At this point Kallomyetsev described incidentally how he had once, in the environs of Moscow, caught by the heel an old dissenter, whom he had dropped in upon with the police, and who had all but jumped out of his cottage window. . .. 'And there he had been sitting as quiet as could be, till that minute, the rascal!'
Kallomyetsev forgot to add that the same old man, when shut up in prison, had refused all food, and starved himself to death.
'And your new tutor,' continued the zealous kammerjunker, 'is a red, not a doubt of it! Have you noticed that he never bows first?'
'And why should he bow first?' observed Madame Sipyagin; 'quite the contrary─I like that in him.'
'I am a guest in the house in which he is employed', cried Kallomyetsev 'yes, yes employed for money, comme un salarié.. . . Consequently I am his superior, and he ought to bow first.'
'You are very exacting, Kallomyetsev,' interposed Sipyagin, with especial stress on the y in his name; 'all that, if you'll excuse my saying so, strikes one as rather out of date. I have purchased his services, his work, but he remains a free man.'
'He does not feel the curb,' continued Kallomyetsev, 'the curb, le frein! All these reds are like that. I tell you I've a wonderfully sharp nose for them! Ladislas might perhaps compare with me in that respect. If he fell into my hands, that tutor, I'd straighten him up a bit! Wouldn't I make him sit up! He'd sing a very different tune; and shouldn't he touch his hat to me! . . . it would be sweet to see him!'
'Rotten drivel, little blustering idiot!' Nezhdanov was almost shouting from above.. . . But at that instant the door of his room opened, and into it, to the considerable astonishment of Nezhdanov, walked Markelov.