Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (184 page)

XXII

IN the middle of October, three weeks after my interview with Martin Petrovitch, I was standing at the window of my own room in the second storey of our house, and thinking of nothing at all, I looked disconsolately into the yard and the road that lay beyond it. The weather had been disgusting for the last five days. Shooting was not even to be thought of. All things living had hidden themselves; even the sparrows made no sound, and the rooks had long ago disappeared from sight. The wind howled drearily, then whistled spasmodically. The low - hanging sky, unbroken by one streak of light, had changed from an unpleasant whitish to a leaden and still more sinister hue; and the rain, which had been pouring and pouring, mercilessly and unceasingly, had suddenly become still more violent and more driving, and streamed with a rushing sound over the panes. The trees had been stripped utterly bare, and turned a sort of grey. It seemed they had nothing left to plunder; yet the wind would not be denied, but set to harassing them once more. Puddles, clogged with dead leaves, stood everywhere. Big bubbles, continually bursting and rising up again, leaped and glided over them. Along the roads, the mud lay thick and impassable. The cold pierced its way indoors through one’s clothes to the very bones. An involuntary shiver passed over the body, and how sick one felt at heart! Sick, precisely, not sad. It seemed there would never again in the world be sunshine, nor brightness, nor colour, but this rain and mire and grey damp, and raw fog would last for ever, and for ever would the wind whine and moan! Well, I was standing moodily at my window, and I remember a sudden darkness came on -
 
- a bluish darkness -
 
- though the clock only pointed to twelve. Suddenly I fancied I saw a bear dash across our yard from the gates to the steps! Not on all - fours, certainly, but as he is depicted when he gets up on his hind - paws. I could not believe my eyes. If it were not a bear I had seen, it was, any way, something enormous, black, shaggy. . . . I was still lost in wonder as to what it could be, when suddenly I heard below a furious knocking. It seemed something utterly unlooked for, something terrible was stumbling headlong into our house. Then began a commotion, a hurrying to and fro. . . .

I quickly went down the stairs, ran into the dining - room. . . .

At the drawing - room door facing me stood my mother, as though rooted to the spot. Behind her, peered several scared female faces. The butler, two footmen, and a page, with his mouth wide open with astonishment, were packed together in the doorway of the hall. In the middle of the dining - room, covered with mire, dishevelled, tattered, and soaking wet -
 
- so wet that steam rose all round and water was running in little streams over the floor -
 
- knelt, shaking ponderously, as it were, at the last gasp . . . the very monster I had seen dashing across the yard! And who was this monster? Harlov! I came up on one side, and saw, not his face, but his head, which he was clutching, with both hands in the hair that blinded him with filth. He was breathing heavily, brokenly; some thing positively rattled in his throat -
 
- and in all the bespattered dark mass, the only thing that could be clearly distinguished was the tiny whites of the eyes, straying wildly about. He was awful! The dignitary came into my mind whom he had once crushed for comparing him to a mastodon. Truly, so might have looked some antediluvian creature that had just escaped another more powerful monster, attacking it in the eternal slime of the primeval swamps.

“Martin Petrovitch!” my mother cried at last, and she clasped her hands. “Is that you? Good God! Merciful heavens!”

“I . . . I . . .” we heard a broken voice, which seemed with effort and painfully to dwell on each sound. “Alas! It is I!”

“But what has happened to you? Mercy upon us!”

“Natalia Nikolaev . . . na . . . I have . . . run straight . . . to you . . . from home . . . on foot.” . . .

“Through such mud! But you don’t look like a man. Get up; sit down, anyway. . . . And you,” she turned to the maid - servants, “run quick for clothes. And haven’t you some dry clothes?” she asked the butler.

The butler gesticulated as though to say, Is it likely for such a size? . . . “But we could get a coverlet,” he replied, “or, there’s a new horse - rug.”

“But get up, get up, Martin Petrovitch, sit down,” repeated my mother.

“They’ve turned me out, madam,” Harlov moaned suddenly, and he flung his head back and stretched his hands out before him. “They’ve turned me out, Natalia Nikolaevna! My own daughters, out of my own home. . .”

My mother sighed and groaned.

“What are you saying? Turned you out! What wickedness! what wickedness!” (She crossed herself.) “But do get up, Martin Petrovitch, I beg you!”

Two maid - servants came in with cloths and stood still before Harlov. It was clear they did not know how to attack this mountain of filth. “They have turned me out, madam, they have turned me out!” Harlov kept repeating meanwhile. The butler returned with a large woollen coverlet, and he, too, stood still in perplexity. Souvenir’s little head was thrust in at a door and vanished again.

“Martin Petrovitch! get up! Sit down! and tell me everything properly,” my mother commanded in a tone of determination.

Harlov rose. . . . The butler tried to assist him but only dirtied his hand, and, shaking his fingers, retreated to the door. Staggering and faltering, Harlov got to a chair and sat down. The maids again approached him with their cloths, but he waved them off with his hand, and refused the coverlet. My mother did not herself, indeed, insist; to dry Harlov was obviously out of the question; they contented themselves with hastily wiping up his traces on the floor.

XXIII

“How have they turned you out?” my mother asked, as soon as he had a little time to recover himself.

“Madam! Natalia Nikolaevna!” he began, in a strained voice, -
 
- and again I was struck by the uneasy straying of his eyes; “I will tell you the truth; I am myself most of all to blame.”

“Ay, to be sure; you would not listen to me at the time,” assented my mother, sinking into an arm - chair and slightly moving a scented handkerchief before her nose; very strong was the smell that came from Harlov . . . the odour in a forest bog is not so strong.

“Alas! that’s not where I erred, madam, but through pride. Pride has been my ruin, as it ruined the Tsar Navuhodonosor. I fancied God had given me my full share of sense, and if I resolved on anything, it followed it was right; so . . . and then the fear of death came . . . I was utterly confounded! ‘I’ll show,’ said I, ‘to the last, my power and my strength! I’ll bestow all on them, -
 
- and they must feel it all their lives. . . .’“ (Harlov suddenly was shaking all over. . . .) “Like a mangy dog they have driven me out of the house! This is their gratitude!”

“In what way -
 
-
 
-
 
- ,” my mother was beginning. . . .

“They took my page, Maximka, from me,” Harlov interrupted her (his eyes were still wandering, he held both hands -
 
- the fingers interlaced -
 
- under his chin), “my carriage they took away, my monthly allowance they cut down, did not pay me the sum specified, cut me short all round, in fact; still I said nothing, bore it all! And I bore it by reason. . . alas! of my pride again. That my cruel enemies might not say, ‘See, the old fool’s sorry for it now’; and you too, do you remember, madam, had warned me; ‘mind you, it’s all to no purpose,’ you said! and so I bore it. . . . Only, to - day I came into my room, and it was occupied already, and my bed they’d thrown out into the lumber - room! ‘You can sleep there; we put up with you there even only out of charity; we’ve need of your room for the household.’ And this was said to me by whom? Volodka Sletkin! the vile hound, the base cur!”

Harlov’s voice broke.

“But your daughters? What did they do?” asked my mother.

“But I bore it all,” Harlov went on again; “bitterness, bitterness was in my heart, let me tell you, and shame. . . . I could not bear to look upon the light of day! That was why I was unwilling to come and see you, ma’am, from this same feeling, from shame for my disgrace! I have tried everything, my good friend; kindness, affection, and threats, and I reasoned with them, and more besides! I bowed down before them . . . like this.” (Harlov showed how he had bowed down.) “And all in vain. And all of it I bore! At the beginning, at first, I’d very different thoughts; I’ll up, I thought, and kill them. I’ll crush them all, so that not a trace remains of them! . . . I’ll let them know! Well, but after, I submitted! It’s a cross, I thought, laid upon me; it’s to bid me make ready for death. And all at once, to - day, driven out, like a cur! And by whom? Volodka! And you asked about my daughters; they’ve no will of their own at all. They’re Volodka’s slaves! Yes!”

My mother wondered. “In Anna’s case I can understand that; she’s a wife. . . . But how comes it your second . . .”

“Evlampia? She’s worse than Anna! She’s altogether given herself up into Volodka’s hands. That’s the reason she refused your soldier, too. At his, at Volodka’s bidding. Anna, to be sure, ought to resent it, and she can’t bear her sister, but she submits! He’s bewitched them, the cursed scoundrel! Though she, Anna, I daresay, is pleased to think that Evlampia, who was always so proud, -
 
- and now see what she’s come to! . . . O . . alas . . . alas! God, my God!”

My mother looked uneasily towards me. I moved a little away as a precautionary measure, for fear I should be sent away altogether. . . .

“I am very sorry indeed, Martin Petrovitch,” she began, “that my former protégé has caused you so much sorrow, and has turned out so badly. But I, too, was mistaken in him. . . . Who could have expected this of him?”

“Madam,” Harlov moaned out, and he struck himself a blow on the chest, “I cannot bear the ingratitude of my daughters! I cannot, madam! You know I gave them everything, everything! And besides, my conscience has been tormenting me. Many things . . . alas! many things I have thought over, sitting by the pond, fishing. ‘If you’d only done good to any one in your life!’ was what I pondered upon, ‘succoured the poor, set the peasants free, or something, to atone for having wrung their lives out of them. You must answer for them before God! Now their tears are revenged.’ And what sort of life have they now? It was a deep pit even in my time -
 
- why disguise my sins? -
 
- but now there’s no seeing the bottom! All these sins I have taken upon my soul; I have sacrificed my conscience for my children, and for this I’m laughed to scorn! Kicked out of the house, like a cur!”

“Don’t think about that, Martin Petrovitch,” observed my mother.

“And when he told me, your Volodka,” Harlov went on with fresh force, “when he told me I was not to live in my room any more, -
 
- I laid every plank in that room with my own hands, -
 
- when he said that to me, -
 
- God only knows what passed within me! It was all confusion in my head, and like a knife in my heart. . . . Either to cut his throat or get away out of the house! . . . So, I have run to you, my benefactress, Natalia Nikolaevna . . . where had I to lay my head? And then the rain, the filth . . . I fell down twenty times, maybe! And now . . . in such unseemly. . .”

Harlov scanned himself and moved restlessly in his chair, as though intending to get up.

“Say no more, Martin Petrovitch,” my mother interposed hurriedly; “what does that signify? That you’ve made the floor dirty? That’s no great matter! Come, I want to make you a proposition. Listen! They shall take you now to a special room, and make you up a clean bed, -
 
- you undress, wash, and lie down and sleep a little. . . .”

“Natalia Nikolaevna! There’s no sleeping for me!” Harlov responded drearily. “It’s as though there were hammers beating in my brain! Me! like some good - for - nothing beast! . . .”

“Lie down and sleep,” my mother repeated insistently. “And then we’ll give you some tea, -
 
- yes, and we’ll have a talk. Don’t lose heart, old friend! If they’ve driven you out of
your
house, in
my
house you will always find a home. . . . I have not forgotten, you know, that you saved my life.”

“Benefactress!” moaned Harlov, and he covered his face with his hand. “
You
must save me now!”

This appeal touched my mother almost to tears. “I am ready and eager to help you, Martin Petrovitch, in everything I am able. But you must promise me that you will listen to me in future and dismiss every evil thought from you.”

Harlov took his hands from his face. “If need be,” he said, “I can forgive them, even!”

My mother nodded her head approvingly. “I am very glad to see you in such a truly Christian frame of mind, Martin Petrovitch; but we will talk of that later. Meanwhile, you put yourself to rights, and, most of all, sleep. Take Martin Petrovitch to what was the master’s room, the green room,” said my mother, addressing the butler, “and whatever he asks for, let him have it on the spot! Give orders for his clothes to be dried and washed, and ask the housekeeper for what linen is needed. Do you hear?”

“Yes, madam,” responded the butler.

“And as soon as he’s asleep, tell the tailor to take his measure; and his beard will have to be shaved. Not at once, but after.”

“Yes, madam,” repeated the butler. “Martin Petrovitch, kindly come.” Harlov got up, looked at my mother, was about to go up to her, but stopped, swinging a bow from the waist, crossed himself three times to the image, and followed the steward. Behind him, I, too, slipped out of the room.