"And so, brother, you've never married!" she sighed.
"No; I've not married."
"Why not?" asked mother softly.
"How can I tell you? It just happened so. In my youth I was too hard at work, I had no time to live, and when I longed to live—1 looked round—and there I had fifty years on my back already. It was too late! However, talking about it . . . is depressing."
Mother and Uncle both sighed at once and walked on, and I left them and flew off to find my tutor, that I might share my impressions with him. Pobedimsky was standing in the middle of the yard, looking majestically at the heavens.
"One can see he is a man of culture!" he said, twisting his head round. "I hope we shall get on together."
An hour later mother came to us.
"I am in trouble, my dears!" she began, nghing. "You see, brother has brought a valet with him, and the valet, God bless him, is not one you can put in the kitchen or in the passage; he must have a room to himself. I can't think what I am to do! I tell you what, children, couldn't you move out somewhere—to Fyodor's lodge, for in- stance—and give your room to the valet? What do you say?
We gave our ready consent, for living in the lodge we would be a great deal freer than in the house, under mother's eye.
"It's a nuisance, and that's a fact!" said mother. "Brother says he won't have dinner in the middle of the day, but between six and seven, as they do in Peters- burg. I am simply distracted with worry! By seven o'clock the dinner will be ruined. Really, men don't un- derstand anything about housekeeping, though they have so much intellect. Oh, dear! we shall have to cook two dinners every day! You will have dinner at midday as before, children, while your poor old mother has to wait til seven, for the sake of her brother."
Then my mother heaved a deep sigh, bade me and please my uncle, whose coming was a piece of luck for me for which we must thank God, and hurried off to the kitchen. Pobedimsky and I moved into the wing the same day. We were installed in a room between the en- try to the steward's bedroom.
Contrary to my expectations, life went on just as be- fore, drearily and monotonously, in spite of my uncle's arrival and our removal to new quarters. We were ex- cused from lessons "on account of the visitor." Pobedim- sky, who never read anything or occupied himself in any way, spent most of his time sitting on his bed, with his long nose thrust into the air, thinking. Sometimes he would get up, try on his new suit, and sit down again to relapse into contemplation and silence. Only one thing worried him, the flies, which he mercilessly swatted with his hands. After dinner he usually "rested," and his snores were a cause of annoyance to the whole house- hold. I ran about the garden from morning to night, or sat in the room making kites.
For the first two or three weeks we did not see Uncle often. For days together he sat in his own room work- ing, in spite of the flies and the heat. His extraordinary capacity for sitting as though glued to his table pro- duced upon us the effect of an inexplicable conjuring trick. To us idlers, knowing nothing of systematic work, his industry seemed simply miraculous. Getting up at nine, he sat down at his desk, and did not leave it till dinnertime; after dinner he set to work again, and went on till late at night. Whenever I peeped through the keyhole I invariably saw the same thing: my uncle sit- ting at the desk working. The work consisted in his writ- ing with one hand while he turned over the leaves of a book with the other, and, strange to say, all of him was in constant movement—his leg swinging as though it were a pendulum, his head nodding in time to his 50 the portable chekhov
whistling. He had an extremely careless and frivolous expression aU the while, as though he were not working, but playing tick-tack-toe. I always saw him wearing a smart short jacket and a jauntily tied cravat, and he always smelt, even through the keyhole, of delicate feminine perfume. He only left his room for dinner, but he ate little.
"I can't make brother out!" mother complained of ^m. "Every day we kill a turkey and squabs on purpose for him, I make a compote with my own hands, and he eats a plateful of broth and a bit of meat the size of a finger and gets up from the table. I begin begging him to eat; he comes back and drinks a glass of milk. And what is there in that, in a glass of milk? It's no better than dishwater! You may die of a diet like that. • . . If I to persuade him, he laughs and makes a joke of it. . . . No; he does not care for our fare, poor dear!"
We spent the evenings far more gaily than the days. As a rule, by the time the sun was setting and long shadows were lying across the yard, we—that is, Ta- tyana Ivanovna, Pobedimsky, and I—were sitting on the steps of the lodge. We did not talk tiU it grew quite dark. And, indeed, what is one to talk of when every subject has been talked over already? There was only one piece of news, my uncle's arrival, and even that subject was soon exhausted. My tutor never took his eyes off Tatyana Ivanovna's face, and frequently heaved deep sighs. . . . At the time I did not understand those sighs, and did not try to fathom their significance; now they explain a great deal to me.
When the shadows merged into one thick mass, the steward Fyodor would come in from shooting or from the fields. This Fyodor gave me the impression of being a fierce and even terrible man. The son of a Russianized gypsy from Izyum, swarthy-faced and curly-headed, with big black eyes and a matted beard, he was never called among our Kochuevko peasants by any name but "The Devil." And, indeed, there was a great deal of the gypsy about him apart from his appearance. He could not, for instance, stay at home, and went off for days together into the country or into the woods to shoot. He was gloomy, ill-humored, taciturn, was afraid of no one, and recognized no authority. He was rude to mother, addressed me familiarly, and was contemptuous of Po- bedimsky's learning. All this we forgave him, looking upon him as a hot-tempered and nervous man; mother liked him because, in spite of his gypsy nature, he was ideally honest and industrious. He loved his Tatyana Ivanovna passionately, like a gypsy, but this love took in him a gloomy form, as though it cost him suffering. He was never affectionate to his wife in our presence, but simply rolled his eyes angrily at her and twisted his mouth.
When he came in from the fields he would noisily and angrily put down his gun, would come out to us on the steps, and sit down beside his wife. After resting a little, he would ask his wife a few questions about household matters, and then sink into silence.
"Let's sing," I would suggest.
My tutor would tune his guitar, and in a deep dea- con's bass strike up "Down in the Level Valley." The singing began. My tutor took the bass, Fyodor sang in a hardly audible tenor, while I sang soprano in unison with Tatyana Ivanovna.
When the whole sky was covered with stars and the frogs had left off croaking, they would bring in our supper from the kitchen. We went into the lodge and sat down to the meal. My tutor and the gypsy ate greedily, with such a noise that it was hard to tell whether it was the bones crunching or their jaws, while
Tatyana Ivanovna and I scarcely managed to eat our
share. After supper the lodge was plunged in deep sleep.
One evening, it was at the end of May, we were sit- ting on the steps, waiting for supper. A shadow sud- denly fell across us, and Uncle stood before us as though he had sprung out of the ground. He looked at us for a long time, then struck his hands together and laughed gaily.