– and how quickly. You’ve not spared money, I should say?’
‘No, indeed, madam.’
‘Well, well. And you say you want to consult with me. Well, my little Dmitri can go; and I’ll send Souvenir with him, and speak to Kvitsinsky… But you haven’t invited Gavrila Fedulitch?’
‘Gavrila Fedulitch – Mr. Zhitkov – has had notice … from me also. As a betrothed, it was only fitting.’
Martin Petrovitch had obviously exhausted all the resources of his eloquence. Besides, it always seemed to me that he did not look altogether favourably on the match my mother had made for his daughter; possibly, he had expected a more advantageous marriage for his darling Evlampia.
He got up from his chair, and made a scrape with his foot. ‘Thank you for your consent.’
‘Where are you off to?’ asked my mother. ‘Stay a bit; I’ll order some lunch to be served you.’
‘Much obliged,’ responded Harlov. ‘But I cannot… Oh! I must get home.’
He backed and was about to move sideways, as his habit was, through the door.
‘Stop, stop a minute,’ my mother went on, ‘can you possibly mean to make over the whole of your property without reserve to your daughters?’
‘Certainly, without reserve.’
‘Well, but how about yourself – where are you going to live?’
Harlov positively flung up his hands in amazement. ‘You ask where? In my house, at home, as I’ve lived hitherto … so henceforward. Whatever difference could there be?’
‘You have such confidence in your daughters and your son-in-law, then?’
‘Were you pleased to speak of Volodka? A poor stick like him? Why, I can do as I like with him, whatever it is … what authority has he? As for them, my daughters, that is, to care for me till I’m in the grave, to give me meat and drink, and clothe me… Merciful heavens! it’s their first duty. I shall not long be an eyesore to them. Death’s not over the hills – it’s upon my shoulders.’
‘Death is in God’s hands,’ observed my mother; ‘though that is their duty, to be sure. Only pardon me, Martin Petrovitch; your elder girl, Anna, is well known to be proud and imperious, and – well – the second has a fierce look…’
‘Natalia Nikolaevna!’ Harlov broke in, ‘why do you say that?.. Why, as though they … My daughters … Why, as though I … Forget their duty? Never in their wildest dreams… Offer opposition? To whom? Their parent … Dare to do such a thing? Have they not my curse to fear? They’ve passed their life long in fear and in submission – and all of a sudden … Good Lord!’
Harlov choked, there was a rattle in his throat.
‘Very well, very well,’ my mother made haste to soothe him; ‘only I don’t understand all the same what has put it into your head to divide the property up now. It would have come to them afterwards, in any case. I imagine it’s your melancholy that’s at the bottom of it all.’
‘Eh, ma’am,’ Harlov rejoined, not without vexation, ‘you will keep coming back to that. There is, maybe, a higher power at work in this, and you talk of melancholy. I thought to do this, madam, because in my own person, while still in life, I wish to decide in my presence, who is to possess what, and with what I will reward each, so that they may possess, and feel thankfulness, and carry out my wishes, and what their father and benefactor has resolved upon, they may accept as a bountiful gift.’
Harlov’s voice broke again.
‘Come, that’s enough, that’s enough, my good friend,’ my mother cut him short; ‘or your raven colt will be putting in an appearance in earnest.’
‘O Natalia Nikolaevna, don’t talk to me of it,’ groaned Harlov. ‘That’s my death come after me. Forgive my intrusion. And you, my little sir, I shall have the honour of expecting you the day after to-morrow.’
Martin Petrovitch went out; my mother looked after him, and shook her head significantly. ‘This is a bad business,’ she murmured, ‘a bad business. You noticed’ – she addressed herself to me – ‘he talked, and all the while seemed blinking, as though the sun were in his eyes; that’s a bad sign. When a man’s like that, his heart’s sure to be heavy, and misfortune threatens him. You must go over the day after to-morrow with Vikenty Osipovitch and Souvenir.’
XI
On the day appointed, our big family coach, with seats for four, harnessed with six bay horses, and with the head coachman, the grey-bearded and portly Alexeitch, on the box, rolled smoothly up to the steps of our house. The importance of the act upon which Harlov was about to enter, and the solemnity with which he had invited us, had had their effect on my mother. She had herself given orders for this extraordinary state equipage to be brought out, and had directed Souvenir and me to put on our best clothes. She obviously wished to show respect to her protégé. As for Kvitsinsky, he always wore a frock-coat and white tie. Souvenir chattered like a magpie all the way, giggled, wondered whether his brother would apportion him anything, and thereupon called him a dummy and an old fogey. Kvitsinsky, a man of severe and bilious temperament, could not put up with it at last ‘What can induce you,’ he observed, in his distinct Polish accent, ‘to keep up such a continual unseemly chatter? Can you really be incapable of sitting quiet without these “wholly superfluous” (his favourite phrase) inanities?’ ‘All right, d’rectly,’ Souvenir muttered discontentedly, and he fixed his squinting eyes on the carriage window. A quarter of an hour had not passed, the smoothly trotting horses had scarcely begun to get warm under the straps of their new harness, when Harlov’s homestead came into sight. Through the widely open gate, our coach rolled into the yard. The diminutive postillion, whose legs hardly reached half-way down his horses’ body, for the last time leaped up with a babyish shriek into the soft saddle, old Alexeitch at once spread out and raised his elbows, a slight ‘wo-o’ was heard, and we stopped. The dogs did not bark to greet us, and the serf boys, in long smocks that gaped open over their big stomachs, had all hidden themselves. Harlov’s son-in-law was awaiting us in the doorway. I remember I was particularly struck by the birch boughs stuck in on both sides of the steps, as though it were Trinity Sunday. ‘Grandeur upon grandeur,’ Souvenir, who was the first to alight, squeaked through his nose. And certainly there was a solemn air about everything. Harlov’s son-in-law was wearing a plush cravat with a satin bow, and an extraordinarily tight tail-coat; while Maximka, who popped out behind his back, had his hair so saturated with kvas, that it positively dripped. We went into the parlour, and saw Martin Petrovitch towering – yes, positively towering – motionless, in the middle of the room. I don’t know what Souvenir’s and Kvitsinsky’s feelings were at the sight of his colossal figure; but I felt something akin to awe. Martin Petrovitch was attired in a grey Cossack coat – his militia uniform of 1812 it must have been – with a black stand-up collar. A bronze medal was to be seen on his breast, a sabre hung at his side; he laid his left hand on the hilt, with his right he was leaning on the table, which was covered with a red cloth. Two sheets of paper, full of writing, lay on the table. Harlov stood motionless, not even gasping; and what dignity was expressed in his attitude, what confidence in himself, in his unlimited and unquestionable power! He barely greeted us with a motion of the head, and barely articulating ‘Be seated!’ pointed the forefinger of his left hand in the direction of some chairs set in a row. Against the right-hand wall of the parlour were standing Harlov’s daughters wearing their Sunday clothes: Anna, in a shot lilac-green dress, with a yellow silk sash; Evlampia, in pink, with crimson ribbons. Near them stood Zhitkov, in a new uniform, with the habitual expression of dull and greedy expectation in his eyes, and with a greater profusion of sweat than usual over his hirsute countenance. On the left side of the room sat the priest, in a threadbare snuff-coloured cassock, an old man, with rough brown hair. This head of hair, and the dejected lack-lustre eyes, and the big wrinkled hands, which seemed a burden even to himself, and lay like two rocks on his knees, and the tarred boots which peeped out beneath his cassock, all seemed to tell of a joyless laborious life. His parish was a very poor one. Beside him was the local police captain, a fattish, palish,