"An idyll!" he said. "They sing and dream in the moonlight! It's charming, I swear to God! May I sit do^ and dream with you?"
We looked at one another and said nothing. My uncle sat down on the bottom step, yawned, and looked at the sky. A silence fell. Pobedimsky, who had for a long time now been wanting to talk to some person, was delighted at the opportunity, and was the first to break the silence. He had only one subject for intellectual conversation: epizootic diseases. It sometimes happens that after one has been in an immense crowd, only some one counte- nance of the thousands remains long imprinted on the memory; in the same way, of all that Pobedimsky had heard during his six months at the veterinary institute he remembered only one passage:
"Epizootics do immense damage to national economy. It is the duty of society to work hand in hand with the government in waging war upon them."
Before saying this to Uncle, my tutor cleared his throat three times, and several times, in his excitement, wrapped himself up in his cape. On hearing about the epizootics, my uncle looked intently at my tutor and made a sound between a snort and a laugh.
"Upon my soul, that's charming!" he said, scrutinizing us as though we were lay figures. "This is actually life. • • • This is what reality is bound to be. Why are you silent, Pelageya Ivanovna?" he said, addressing Tatyana Ivanovna.
She coughed, overcome with embarrassment.
"Talk, my friends, sing . . . play! . . • Don't lose time. You know, time, the rascal, runs away and waits for no man! I swear to God, before you have time to look round, old age is upon you. . . . Then it is too late to live! That's how it is, Pelageya Ivanovna. . . • We mustn't sit still and be silent. . . ."
At that point supper was brought in from the kitchen. Uncle went into the wing with us, and to keep us com- pany ate five curd fritters and the wing of a duck. He ate and looked at us. He was touched and delighted by us aU. Whatever silly nonsense my precious tutor talked, and whatever Tatyana Ivanovna did, he thought charm- ing and delightful. When after supper Tatyana Ivan- ovna sat quietly down and took up her knitting, he kept his eyes fixed on her fingers and chatted away without ceasing.
"Make all the haste you can to live, my friends . . ." he said. "God forbid you should sacrifice the present for the future! There is youth, health, fire in the present; the future is smoke and deception! As soon as you are twenty begin to live."
Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle. Uncle jumped up, picked up the needle, and handed it to Tatyana Ivanovna with a bow, and for the first time in my life I learned that there were people in the world more refined than Pobedimsky.
"Yes . . ." my uncle went on, "love, marry . . . do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaning- ful life."
Uncle talked a great deal, so much that he bored us;
I sat on a chest listening to him and dropping to sleep. It distressed me that he did not once all the evening pay attention to me. He left the lodge at two o'clock, when, overcome with drowsiness, I was sound asleep.
From that time forth my uncle took to coming to the lodge every evening. He sang with us, had supper with us, and always stayed on till two o'clock in the morning, chatting incessantly, always about the same subject. His evening and night work was given up, and by the end of June, when the privy councilor had learned to eat mother's turkey and compote, his work by day was aban- doned too. My uncle tore himself away from his desk and was dra^ into "life." In the daytime he walked up and down the garden, whistled and interfered with the men's work, making them tell him various stories. When his eye fell on Tatyana Ivanovna he ran up to her and, if she was carrying anything, offered his assistance, which embarrassed her dreadfully.
As the summer advanced, Uncle grew more and more frivolous, volatile, and abstracted. Pobedimsky was com- pletely disappointed in him.
"He is too one-sided," he said. "There is nothing to show that he is in the very foremost ranks of the service. And he doesn't even know how to talk. At every word it's 'I swear to God!' No, I don't like him!"
From the time that my uncle began visiting the lodge there was a noticeable change both in Fyodor and my tutor. Fyodor gave up going out shooting, came home early, sat more taciturn than ever, and stared with particular ill-humor at his wife. In my uncle's presence my tutor gave up talking about epizootics, frowned, and even laughed sarcastically.
"Here comes our little bantam cock!" he growled on one occasion when Uncle was coming into the wing.
I put down this change in them both to their being offended with my uncle. My absent-minded uncle mixed up their names, and to the very day of his departure had not learned to tell my tutor from Tatyana Ivan- ovna's husband. Tatyana Ivanovna herself he sometimes called Nastasya, sometimes Pelageya, and sometimes Yevdokia. Touched and delighted by us, he laughed and behaved exactly as though he was in the company of small children. . . . All this, of course, might well offend young men. It was not a case of offended pride, however, but, as I realize now, of subtler feelings.
I remember one evening I was sitting on the chest struggling with sleep. My eyelids felt glued together and my body, tired out by running about all day, drooped sideways. But I struggled against sleep and tried to look on. It was about midnight. Tatyana Ivan- ovna, rosy and meek as always, was sitting at a little table sewing a shirt for her husband. Fyodor, sullen and gloomy, was staring at her from one corner, and in the other sat Pobedimsky, snorting angrily and retreat- ing into the high collar of his shirt. Uncle was walking up and down the room, thinking. Silence reigned; noth- ing was to be heard but the rustling of the linen in Tatyana Ivanovna's hands. Suddenly my uncle stood still before Tatyana Ivanovna, and said:
"You are all so young, so fresh, so nice, you live so peacefully in this quiet place that I envy you. I have become attached to your way of life here; my heart aches when I remember I have to go away. . . . You may believe in my sincerity!"
Sleep closed my eyes and I dropped off. When some noise waked me, my uncle was standing before Tatyana Ivanovna, looking at her with a softened expression. His cheeks were flushed.
"My life has been wasted," he said. "I have not lived! Your young face makes me think of my own lost youth, and I should be ready to sit here watching you to my dying day. It would be a pleasure to me to take you with me to Petersburg."
"What for?" Fyodor asked in a husky voice.
"I should put her under a glass case on my desk. I should admire her and show her to other people. You know, Pelageya Ivanovna, we have no women like you there. We have wealth, distinction, sometimes beauty, but we have not this true sort of life, this healthy serenity. . . ."
My uncle sat do^ facing Tatyana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.
"So you won't come with me to Petersburg?" he laughed. "In that case give me your little hand. ... A charming little hand! . . . You won't give it? Come, you miser! let me kiss it, anyway. . . ."
At that moment there was the scrape of a chair. Fyodor jumped up and with heavy, measured steps went up to his wife. His face was pale gray and quiver- ing. He brought his fist down on the table with a bang, and said in a hollow voice: "I won't allow itl"
At the same moment Pobedimsky too jumped up from his chair. Pale and angry, he went up to Tatyana Ivanovna, and he, too, struck the table with his fist.
"I . . . I won't allow it!" he said.
"What? What's the matter?" asked my uncle in sur- prise.
"I won't allow it!" repeated Fyodor, banging on the table.
Uncle jumped up and blinked faint-heartedly. He tried to speak, but in his amazement and alarm could not utter a word; with an embarrassed smile, he shuffied out of the lodge with the mincing step of an old man, leaving his hat behind. When, a little later, mother ran into the lodge, Fyodor and Pobedimsky were still hammering on the table like blacksmiths and repeating, "I won't allow it!"