‘Lo, the barrel turns around,And the cogs within resound.’
Punin commended in this effort a certain imitative melody, but disapproved of the subject itself as low and unworthy of lyrical treatment.
Alas! all those efforts and emotions and transports, our solitary readings, our life together, our poetry, all came to an end at once. Trouble broke upon us suddenly, like a clap of thunder.
My grandmother in everything liked cleanliness and order, quite in the spirit of the active generals of those days; cleanliness and order were to be maintained too in our garden. And so from time to time they ‘drove’ into it poor peasants, who had no families, no land, no beasts of their own, and those among the house serfs who were out of favour or superannuated, and set them to clearing the paths, weeding the borders, breaking up and sifting the earth in the beds, and so on. Well, one day, in the very heat of these operations, my grandmother went into the garden, and took me with her. On all sides, among the trees and about the lawns, we caught glimpses of white, red, and blue smocks; on all sides we heard the scraping and clanging of spades, the dull thud of clods of earth on the slanting sieves. As she passed by the labourers, my grandmother with her eagle eye noticed at once that one of them was working with less energy than the rest, and that he took off his cap, too, with no show of eagerness. This was a youth, still quite young, with a wasted face, and sunken, lustreless eyes. His cotton smock, all torn and patched, scarcely held together over his narrow shoulders.
‘Who’s that?’ my grandmother inquired of Filippitch, who was walking on tiptoe behind her.
‘Of whom ... you are pleased ...’ Filippitch stammered.
‘Oh, fool! I mean the one that looked so sullenly at me. There, standing yonder, not working.’
‘Oh, him! Yes ... th ... th ... that’s Yermil, son of Pavel Afanasiitch, now deceased.’
Pavel Afanasiitch had been, ten years before, head butler in my grandmother’s house, and stood particularly high in her favour. But suddenly falling into disgrace, he was as suddenly degraded to being herdsman, and did not long keep even that position. He sank lower still, and struggled on for a while on a monthly pittance of flour in a little hut far away. At last he had died of paralysis, leaving his family in the most utter destitution.
‘Aha!’ commented my grandmother; ‘it’s clear the apple’s not fallen far from the tree. Well, we shall have to make arrangements about this fellow too. I’ve no need of people like that, with scowling faces.’
My grandmother went back to the house—and made arrangements. Three hours later Yermil, completely ‘equipped,’ was brought under the window of her room. The unfortunate boy was being transported to a settlement; the other side of the fence, a few steps from him, was a little cart loaded with his poor belongings. Such were the times then. Yermil stood without his cap, with downcast head, barefoot, with his boots tied up with a string behind his back; his face, turned towards the seignorial mansion, expressed not despair nor grief, nor even bewilderment; a stupid smile was frozen on his colourless lips; his eyes, dry and half-closed, looked stubbornly on the ground. My grandmother was apprised of his presence. She got up from the sofa, went, with a faint rustle of her silken skirts, to the window of the study, and, holding her golden-rimmed double eyeglass on the bridge of her nose, looked at the new exile. In her room there happened to be at the moment four other persons, the butler, Baburin, the page who waited on my grandmother in the daytime, and I.
My grandmother nodded her head up and down....
‘Madam,’ a hoarse almost stifled voice was heard suddenly. I looked round. Baburin’s face was red ... dark red; under his overhanging brows could be seen little sharp points of light.... There was no doubt about it; it was he, it was Baburin, who had uttered the word ‘Madam.’
My grandmother too looked round, and turned her eyeglass from Yermil to Baburin.
‘Who is that ... speaking?’ she articulated slowly ... through her nose. Baburin moved slightly forward.
‘Madam,’ he began, ‘it is I.... I venture ... I imagine ... I make bold to submit to your honour that you are making a mistake in acting as ... as you are pleased to act at this moment.’
‘That is?’ my grandmother said, in the same voice, not removing her eyeglass.
‘I take the liberty ...’ Baburin went on distinctly, uttering every word though with obvious effort—‘I am referring to the case of this lad who is being sent away to a settlement ... for no fault of his. Such arrangements, I venture to submit, lead to dissatisfaction, and to other—which God forbid!—consequences, and are nothing else than a transgression of the powers allowed to seignorial proprietors.’
‘And where have you studied, pray?’ my grandmother asked after a short silence, and she dropped her eyeglass.
Baburin was disconcerted. ‘What are you pleased to wish?’ he muttered.
‘I ask you: where have you studied? You use such learned words.’
‘I ... my education ...’ Baburin was beginning.
My grandmother shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. ‘It seems,’ she interrupted, ‘that my arrangements are not to your liking. That is of absolutely no consequence to me—among my subjects I am sovereign, and answerable to no one for them, only I am not accustomed to having people criticising me in my presence, and meddling in what is not their business. I have no need of learned philanthropists of nondescript position; I want servants to do my will without question. So I always lived till you came, and so I shall live after you’ve gone. You do not suit me; you are discharged. Nikolai Antonov,’ my grandmother turned to the steward, ‘pay this man off; and let him be gone before dinner-time to-day! D’you hear? Don’t put me into a passion. And the other too ... the fool that lives with him—to be sent off too. What’s Yermilka waiting for?’ she added, looking out of window, ‘I have seen him. What more does he want?’ My grandmother shook her handkerchief in the direction of the window, as though to drive away an importunate fly. Then she sat down in a low chair, and turning towards us, gave the order grimly: ‘Everybody present to leave the room!’
We all withdrew—all, except the day page, to whom my grandmother’s words did not apply, because he was nobody.
My grandmother’s decree was carried out to the letter. Before dinner, both Baburin and my friend Punin were driving away from the place. I will not undertake to describe my grief, my genuine, truly childish despair. It was so strong that it stifled even the feeling of awe-stricken admiration inspired by the bold action of the republican Baburin. After the conversation with my grandmother, he went at once to his room and began packing up. He did not vouchsafe me one word, one look, though I was the whole time hanging about him, or rather, in reality, about Punin. The latter was utterly distraught, and he too said nothing; but he was continually glancing at me, and tears stood in his eyes ... always the same tears; they neither fell nor dried up. He did not venture to criticise his ‘benefactor’—Paramon Semyonitch could not make a mistake,—but great was his distress and dejection. Punin and I made an effort to read something out of theRossiadfor the last time; we even locked ourselves up in the lumber-room—it was useless to dream of going into the garden—but at the very first line we both broke down, and I fairly bellowed like a calf, in spite of my twelve years, and my claims to be grown-up.
When he had taken his seat in the carriage Baburin at last turned to me, and with a slight softening of the accustomed sternness of his face, observed: ‘It’s a lesson for you, young gentleman; remember this incident, and when you grow up, try to put an end to such acts of injustice. Your heart is good, your nature is not yet corrupted.... Mind, be careful; things can’t go on like this!’ Through my tears, which streamed copiously over my nose, my lips, and my chin, I faltered out that I would ... I would remember, that I promised ... I would do ... I would be sure ... quite sure ...
But at this point, Punin, whom I had before this embraced twenty times (my cheeks were burning from the contact with his unshaven beard, and I was odoriferous of the smell that always clung to him)—at this point a sudden frenzy came over Punin. He jumped up on the seat of the cart, flung both hands up in the air, and began in a voice of thunder (where he got it from!) to declaim the well-known paraphrase of the Psalm of David by Derzhavin,—a poet for this occasion—not a courtier.
‘God the All-powerful doth ariseAnd judgeth in the congregation of the mighty! ...How long, how long, saith the Lord,Will ye have mercy on the wicked?“Ye have to keep the laws....”’
‘Sit down!’ Baburin said to him.
Punin sat down, but continued:
‘To save the guiltless and needy,To give shelter to the afflicted,To defend the weak from the oppressors.’
Punin at the word ‘oppressors’ pointed to the seignorial abode, and then poked the driver in the back.
‘To deliver the poor out of bondage!They know not! neither will they understand! ...’
Nikolai Antonov running out of the seignorial abode, shouted at the top of his voice to the coachman: ‘Get away with you! owl! go along! don’t stay lingering here!’ and the cart rolled away. Only in the distance could still be heard:
‘Arise, O Lord God of righteousness! ...Come forth to judge the unjust—And be Thou the only Ruler of the nations!’
‘What a clown!’ remarked Nikolai Antonov.
‘He didn’t get enough of the rod in his young days,’ observed the deacon, appearing on the steps. He had come to inquire what hour it would please the mistress to fix for the night service.
The same day, learning that Yermil was still in the village, and would not till early next morning be despatched to the town for the execution of certain legal formalities, which were intended to check the arbitrary proceedings of the landowners, but served only as a source of additional revenue to the functionaries in superintendence of them, I sought him out, and, for lack of money of my own, handed him a bundle, in which I had tied up two pocket-handkerchiefs, a shabby pair of slippers, a comb, an old night-gown, and a perfectly new silk cravat. Yermil, whom I had to wake up—he was lying on a heap of straw in the back yard, near the cart—Yermil took my present rather indifferently, with some hesitation in fact, did not thank me, promptly poked his head into the straw and fell asleep again. I went home somewhat disappointed. I had imagined that he would be astonished and overjoyed at my visit, would see in it a pledge of my magnanimous intentions for the future—and instead of that ...
‘You may say what you like—these people have no feeling,’ was my reflection on my homeward way.
My grandmother, who had for some reason left me in peace the whole of that memorable day, looked at me suspiciously when I came after supper to say good-night to her.
‘Your eyes are red,’ she observed to me in French; ‘and there’s a smell of the peasant’s hut about you. I am not going to enter into an examination of what you’ve been feeling and doing—I should not like to be obliged to punish you—but I hope you will get over all your foolishness, and begin to conduct yourself once more in a manner befitting a well-bred boy. However, we are soon going back to Moscow, and I shall get you a tutor—as I see you need a man’s hand to manage you. You can go.’
We did, as a fact, go back soon after to Moscow.
Seven years had passed by. We were living as before at Moscow—but I was by now a student in my second year—and the authority of my grandmother, who had aged very perceptibly in the last years, no longer weighed upon me. Of all my fellow-students the one with whom I was on the friendliest terms was a light-hearted and good-natured youth called Tarhov. Our habits and our tastes were similar. Tarhov was a great lover of poetry, and himself wrote verses; while in me the seeds sown by Punin had not been without fruit. As is often the case with young people who are very close friends, we had no secrets from one another. But behold, for several days together I noticed a certain excitement and agitation in Tarhov.... He disappeared for hours at a time, and I did not know where he had got to—a thing which had never happened before. I was on the point of demanding, in the name of friendship, a full explanation.... He anticipated me.
One day I was sitting in his room.... ‘Petya,’ he said suddenly, blushing gaily, and looking me straight in the face, ‘I must introduce you to my muse.’
‘Your muse! how queerly you talk! Like a classicist. (Romanticism was at that time, in 1837, at its full height.) As if I had not known it ever so long—your muse! Have you written a new poem, or what?’
‘You don’t understand what I mean,’ rejoined Tarhov, still laughing and blushing. ‘I will introduce you to a living muse.’
‘Aha! so that’s it! But how is she—yours?’
‘Why, because ... But hush, I believe it’s she coming here.’
There was the light click of hurrying heels, the door opened, and in the doorway appeared a girl of eighteen, in a chintz cotton gown, with a black cloth cape on her shoulders, and a black straw hat on her fair, rather curly hair. On seeing me she was frightened and disconcerted, and was beating a retreat ... but Tarhov at once rushed to meet her.
‘Please, please, Musa Pavlovna, come in! This is my great friend, a splendid fellow—and the soul of discretion. You’ve no need to be afraid of him. Petya,’ he turned to me, ‘let me introduce my Musa—Musa Pavlovna Vinogradov, a great friend of mine.’
I bowed.
‘How is that ... Musa?’ I was beginning.... Tarhov laughed. ‘Ah, you didn’t know there was such a name in the calendar? I didn’t know it either, my boy, till I met this dear young lady. Musa! such a charming name! And suits her so well!’
I bowed again to my comrade’s great friend. She left the door, took two steps forward and stood still. She was very attractive, but I could not agree with Tarhov’s opinion, and inwardly said to myself: ‘Well, she’s a strange sort of muse!’
The features of her curved, rosy face were small and delicate; there was an air of fresh, buoyant youth about all her slender, miniature figure; but of the muse, of the personification of the muse, I—and not only I—all the young people of that time had a very different conception! First of all the muse had infallibly to be dark-haired and pale. An expression of scornful pride, a bitter smile, a glance of inspiration, and that ‘something’—mysterious, demonic, fateful—that was essential to our conception of the muse, the muse of Byron, who at that time held sovereign sway over men’s fancies. There was nothing of that kind to be discerned in the face of the girl who came in. Had I been a little older and more experienced I should probably have paid more attention to her eyes, which were small and deep-set, with full lids, but dark as agate, alert and bright, a thing rare in fair-haired people. Poetical tendencies I should not have detected in their rapid, as it were elusive, glance, but hints of a passionate soul, passionate to self-forgetfulness. But I was very young then.
I held out my hand to Musa Pavlovna—she did not give me hers—she did not notice my movement; she sat down on the chair Tarhov placed for her, but did not take off her hat and cape.
She was, obviously, ill at ease; my presence embarrassed her. She drew deep breaths, at irregular intervals, as though she were gasping for air.
‘I’ve only come to you for one minute, Vladimir Nikolaitch,’ she began—her voice was very soft and deep; from her crimson, almost childish lips, it seemed rather strange;—‘but our madame would not let me out for more than half an hour. You weren’t well the day before yesterday ... and so, I thought ...’
She stammered and hung her head. Under the shade of her thick, low brows her dark eyes darted—to and fro—elusively. There are dark, swift, flashing beetles that flit so in the heat of summer among the blades of dry grass.
‘How good you are, Musa, Musotchka!’ cried Tarhov. ‘But you must stay, you must stay a little.... We’ll have the samovar in directly.’
‘Oh no, Vladimir Nikolaevitch! it’s impossible! I must go away this minute.’
‘You must rest a little, anyway. You’re out of breath.... You’re tired.’
‘I’m not tired. It’s ... not that ... only ... give me another book; I’ve finished this one.’ She took out of her pocket a tattered grey volume of a Moscow edition.
‘Of course, of course. Well, did you like it?Roslavlev,’ added Tarhov, addressing me.
‘Yes. Only I thinkYury Miloslavskyis much better. Our madame is very strict about books. She says they hinder our working. For, to her thinking ...’
‘But, I say,Yury Miloslavsky’s not equal to Pushkin’sGipsies? Eh? Musa Pavlovna?’ Tarhov broke in with a smile.
‘No, indeed! TheGipsies...’ she murmured slowly. ‘Oh yes, another thing, Vladimir Nikolaitch; don’t come to-morrow ... you know where.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s impossible.’
‘But why?’
The girl shrugged her shoulders, and all at once, as though she had received a sudden shove, got up from her chair.
‘Why, Musa, Musotchka,’ Tarhov expostulated plaintively. ‘Stay a little!’
‘No, no, I can’t.’ She went quickly to the door, took hold of the handle....
‘Well, at least, take the book!’
‘Another time.’
Tarhov rushed towards the girl, but at that instant she darted out of the room. He almost knocked his nose against the door. ‘What a girl! She’s a regular little viper!’ he declared with some vexation, and then sank into thought.
I stayed at Tarhov’s. I wanted to find out what was the meaning of it all. Tarhov was not disposed to be reserved. He told me that the girl was a milliner; that he had seen her for the first time three weeks before in a fashionable shop, where he had gone on a commission for his sister, who lived in the provinces, to buy a hat; that he had fallen in love with her at first sight, and that next day he had succeeded in speaking to her in the street; that she had herself, it seemed, taken rather a fancy to him.
‘Only, please, don’t you suppose,’ he added with warmth,—‘don’t you imagine any harm of her. So far, at any rate, there’s been nothing of that sort between us.
‘Harm!’ I caught him up; ‘I’ve no doubt of that; and I’ve no doubt either that you sincerely deplore the fact, my dear fellow! Have patience—everything will come right’
‘I hope so,’ Tarhov muttered through his teeth, though with a laugh. ‘But really, my boy, that girl ... I tell you—it’s a new type, you know. You hadn’t time to get a good look at her. She’s a shy thing!—oo! such a shy thing! and what a will of her own! But that very shyness is what I like in her. It’s a sign of independence! I’m simply over head and ears, my boy!’
Tarhov fell to talking of his ‘charmer,’ and even read me the beginning of a poem entitled: ‘My Muse.’ His emotional outpourings were not quite to my taste. I felt secretly jealous of him. I soon left him.
A few days after I happened to be passing through one of the arcades of the Gostinny Dvor. It was Saturday; there were crowds of people shopping; on all sides, in the midst of the pushing and crushing, the shopmen kept shouting to people to buy. Having bought what I wanted, I was thinking of nothing but getting away from their teasing importunity as soon as possible—when all at once I halted involuntarily: in a fruit shop I caught sight of my comrade’s charmer—Musa, Musa Pavlovna! She was standing, profile to me, and seemed to be waiting for something. After a moment’s hesitation I made up my mind to go up to her and speak. But I had hardly passed through the doorway of the shop and taken off my cap, when she tottered back dismayed, turned quickly to an old man in a frieze cloak, for whom the shopman was weighing out a pound of raisins, and clutched at his arm, as though fleeing to put herself under his protection. The latter, in his turn, wheeled round facing her—and, imagine my amazement, I recognised him as Punin!
Yes, it was he; there were his inflamed eyes, his full lips, his soft, overhanging nose. He had, in fact, changed little during the last seven years; his face was a little flabbier, perhaps.
‘Nikander Vavilitch!’ I cried. ‘Don’t you know me?’ Punin started, opened his mouth, stared at me....
‘I haven’t the honour,’ he was beginning—and all at once he piped out shrilly: ‘The little master of Troïtsky (my grandmother’s property was called Troïtsky)! Can it be the little master of Troïtsky?’
The pound of raisins tumbled out of his hands.
‘It really is,’ I answered, and, picking up Punin’s purchase from the ground, I kissed him.
He was breathless with delight and excitement; he almost cried, removed his cap—which enabled me to satisfy myself that the last traces of hair had vanished from his ‘egg’—took a handkerchief out of it, blew his nose, poked the cap into his bosom with the raisins, put it on again, again dropped the raisins.... I don’t know how Musa was behaving all this time, I tried not to look at her. I don’t imagine Punin’s agitation proceeded from any extreme attachment to my person; it was simply that his nature could not stand the slightest unexpected shock. The nervous excitability of these poor devils!
‘Come and see us, my dear boy,’ he faltered at last; ‘you won’t be too proud to visit our humble nest? You’re a student, I see ...’
‘On the contrary, I shall be delighted, really.’
‘Are you independent now?’
‘Perfectly independent.’
‘That’s capital! How pleased Paramon Semyonitch will be! To-day he’ll be home earlier than usual, and madame lets her, too, off for Saturdays. But, stop, excuse me, I am quite forgetting myself. Of course, you don’t know our niece!’
I hastened to slip in that I had not yet had the pleasure.
‘Of course, of course! How could you know her! Musotchka ... Take note, my dear sir, this girl’s name is Musa—and it’s not a nickname, but her real name ... Isn’t that a predestination? Musotchka, I want to introduce you to Mr. ... Mr. ...’
‘B.,’ I prompted.
‘B.,’ he repeated. ‘Musotchka, listen! You see before you the most excellent, most delightful of young men. Fate threw us together when he was still in years of boyhood! I beg you to look on him as a friend!’
I swung off a low bow. Musa, red as a poppy, flashed a look on me from under her eyelids, and dropped them immediately.
‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘you ‘re one of those who in difficult moments don’t turn pale, but red; that must be made a note of.’
‘You must be indulgent, she’s not a fine lady,’ observed Punin, and he went out of the shop into the street; Musa and I followed him.
The house in which Punin lodged was a considerable distance from the Gostinny Dvor, being, in fact, in Sadovoy Street. On the way my former preceptor in poetry had time to communicate a good many details of his mode of existence. Since the time of our parting, both he and Baburin had been tossed about holy Russia pretty thoroughly, and had not long—only a year and a half before—found a permanent home in Moscow. Baburin had succeeded in becoming head-clerk in the office of a rich merchant and manufacturer. ‘Not a lucrative berth,’ Punin observed with a sigh,—‘a lot of work, and not much profit ... but what’s one to do? One must be thankful to get that! I, too, am trying to earn something by copying and lessons; only my efforts have so far not been crowned with success. My writing, you perhaps recollect, is old-fashioned, not in accordance with the tastes of the day; and as regards lessons—what has been a great obstacle is the absence of befitting attire; moreover, I greatly fear that in the matter of instruction—in the subject of Russian literature—I am also not in harmony with the tastes of the day; and so it comes about that I am turned away.’ (Punin laughed his sleepy, subdued laugh. He had retained his old, somewhat high-flown manner of speech, and his old weakness for falling into rhyme.) ‘All run after novelties, nothing but innovations! I dare say you, too, do not honour the old divinities, and fall down before new idols?’
‘And you, Nikander Vavilitch, do you really still esteem Heraskov?’
Punin stood still and waved both hands at once. ‘In the highest degree, sir! in the high ... est de ... gree, I do!’
‘And you don’t read Pushkin? You don’t like Pushkin?’
Punin again flung his hands up higher than his head.
‘Pushkin? Pushkin is the snake, lying hid in the grass, who is endowed with the note of the nightingale!’
While Punin and I talked like this, cautiously picking our way over the unevenly laid brick pavement of so-called ‘white-stoned’ Moscow—in which there is not one stone, and which is not white at all—Musa walked silently beside us on the side further from me. In speaking of her, I called her ‘your niece.’ Punin was silent for a little, scratched his head, and informed me in an undertone that he had called her so ... merely as a manner of speaking; that she was really no relation; that she was an orphan picked up and cared for by Baburin in the town of Voronezh; but that he, Punin, might well call her daughter, as he loved her no less than a real daughter. I had no doubt that, though Punin intentionally dropped his voice, Musa could hear all he said very well; and she was at once angry, and shy, and embarrassed; and the lights and shades chased each other over her face, and everything in it was slightly quivering, the eyelids and brows and lips and narrow nostrils. All this was very charming, and amusing, and queer.
But at last we reached the ‘modest nest.’ And modest it certainly was, the nest. It consisted of a small, one-storied house, that seemed almost sunk into the ground, with a slanting wooden roof, and four dingy windows in the front. The furniture of the rooms was of the poorest, and not over tidy, indeed. Between the windows and on the walls hung about a dozen tiny wooden cages containing larks, canaries, and siskins. ‘My subjects!’ Punin pronounced triumphantly, pointing his finger at them. We had hardly time to get in and look about us, Punin had hardly sent Musa for the samovar, when Baburin himself came in. He seemed to me to have aged much more than Punin, though his step was as firm as ever, and the expression of his face altogether was unchanged; but he had grown thin and bent, his cheeks were sunken, and his thick black shock of hair was sprinkled with grey. He did not recognise me, and showed no particular pleasure when Punin mentioned my name; he did not even smile with his eyes, he barely nodded; he asked—very carelessly and drily—whether mygrannywere living—and that was all. ‘I’m not over-delighted at a visit from a nobleman,’ he seemed to say; ‘I don’t feel flattered by it.’ The republican was a republican still.
Musa came back; a decrepit little old woman followed her, bringing in a tarnished samovar. Punin began fussing about, and pressing me to take things; Baburin sat down to the table, leaned his head on his hands, and looked with weary eyes about him. At tea, however, he began to talk. He was dissatisfied with his position. ‘A screw—not a man,’ so he spoke of his employer; ‘people in a subordinate position are so much dirt to him, of no consequence whatever; and yet it’s not so long since he was under the yoke himself. Nothing but cruelty and covetousness. It’s a bondage worse than the government’s! And all the trade here rests on swindling and flourishes on nothing else!’
Hearing such dispiriting utterances, Punin sighed expressively, assented, shook his head up and down, and from side to side; Musa maintained a stubborn silence.... She was obviously fretted by the doubt, what I was, whether I was a discreet person or a gossip. And if I were discreet, whether it was not with some afterthought in my mind. Her dark, swift, restless eyes fairly flashed to and fro under their half-drooping lids. Only once she glanced at me, but so inquisitively, so searchingly, almost viciously ... I positively started. Baburin scarcely talked to her at all; but whenever he did address her, there was a note of austere, hardly fatherly, tenderness in his voice.
Punin, on the contrary, was continually joking with Musa; she responded unwillingly, however. He called her little snow-maiden, little snowflake.
‘Why do you give Musa Pavlovna such names?’ I asked.
Punin laughed. ‘Because she’s such a chilly little thing.’
‘Sensible,’ put in Baburin: ‘as befits a young girl.’
‘We may call her the mistress of the house,’ cried Punin. ‘Hey? Paramon Semyonitch?’ Baburin frowned; Musa turned away ... I did not understand the hint at the time.
So passed two hours ... in no very lively fashion, though Punin did his best to ‘entertain the honourable company.’ For instance, he squatted down in front of the cage of one of the canaries, opened the door, and commanded: ‘On the cupola! Begin the concert!’ The canary fluttered out at once, perched on thecupola, that is to say, on Punin’s bald pate, and turning from side to side, and shaking its little wings, carolled with all its might. During the whole time the concert lasted, Punin kept perfectly still, only conducting with his finger, and half closing his eyes. I could not help roaring with laughter ... but neither Baburin nor Musa laughed.
Just as I was leaving, Baburin surprised me by an unexpected question. He wished to ask me, as a man studying at the university, what sort of person Zeno was, and what were my ideas about him.
‘What Zeno?’ I asked, somewhat puzzled.
‘Zeno, the sage of antiquity. Surely he cannot be unknown to you?’
I vaguely recalled the name of Zeno, as the founder of the school of Stoics; but I knew absolutely nothing more about him.
‘Yes, he was a philosopher,’ I pronounced, at last.
‘Zeno,’ Baburin resumed in deliberate tones, ‘was that wise man, who declared that suffering was not an evil, since fortitude overcomes all things, and that the good in this world is one: justice; and virtue itself is nothing else than justice.’
Punin turned a reverent ear.
‘A man living here who has picked up a lot of old books, told me that saying,’ continued Baburin; ‘it pleased me much. But I see you are not interested in such subjects.’
Baburin was right. In such subjects I certainly was not interested. Since I had entered the university, I had become as much of a republican as Baburin himself. Of Mirabeau, of Robespierre, I would have talked with zest. Robespierre, indeed ... why, I had hanging over my writing-table the lithographed portraits of Fouquier-Tinville and Chalier! But Zeno! Why drag in Zeno?
As he said good-bye to me, Punin insisted very warmly on my visiting them next day, Sunday; Baburin did not invite me at all, and even remarked between his teeth, that talking to plain people of nondescript position could not give me any great pleasure, and would most likely be disagreeable to mygranny. At that word I interrupted him, however, and gave him to understand that my grandmother had no longer any authority over me.
‘Why, you’ve not come into possession of the property, have you?’ queried Baburin.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I answered.
‘Well, then, it follows ...’ Baburin did not finish his sentence; but I mentally finished it for him: ‘it follows that I’m a boy.’
‘Good-bye,’ I said aloud, and I retired.
I was just going out of the courtyard into the street ... Musa suddenly ran out of the house, and slipping a piece of crumpled paper into my hand, disappeared at once. At the first lamp-post I unfolded the paper. It turned out to be a note. With difficulty I deciphered the pale pencil-marks. ‘For God’s sake,’ Musa had written, ‘come to-morrow after matins to the Alexandrovsky garden near the Kutafia tower I shall wait for you don’t refuse me don’t make me miserable I simply must see you.’ There were no mistakes in spelling in this note, but neither was there any punctuation. I returned home in perplexity.
When, a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, next day, I began to get near the Kutafia tower (it was early in April, the buds were swelling, the grass was growing greener, and the sparrows were noisily chirrupping and quarrelling in the bare lilac bushes), considerably to my surprise, I caught sight of Musa a little to one side, not far from the fence. She was there before me. I was going towards her; but she herself came to meet me.
‘Let’s go to the Kreml wall,’ she whispered in a hurried voice, running her downcast eyes over the ground; ‘there are people here.’
We went along the path up the hill.
‘Musa Pavlovna,’ I was beginning.... But she cut me short at once.
‘Please,’ she began, speaking in the same jerky and subdued voice, ‘don’t criticise me, don’t think any harm of me. I wrote a letter to you, I made an appointment to meet you, because ... I was afraid.... It seemed to me yesterday,—you seemed to be laughing all the time. Listen,’ she added, with sudden energy, and she stopped short and turned towards me: ‘listen; if you tell with whom ... if you mention at whose room you met me, I’ll throw myself in the water, I’ll drown myself, I’ll make an end of myself!’
At this point, for the first time, she glanced at me with the inquisitive, piercing look I had seen before.
‘Why, she, perhaps, really ... would do it,’ was my thought.
‘Really, Musa Pavlovna,’ I protested, hurriedly: ‘how can you have such a bad opinion of me? Do you suppose I am capable of betraying my friend and injuring you? Besides, come to that, there’s nothing in your relations, as far as I’m aware, deserving of censure.... For goodness’ sake, be calm.’
Musa heard me out, without stirring from the spot, or looking at me again.
‘There’s something else I ought to tell you,’ she began, moving forward again along the path, ‘or else you may think I’m quite mad! I ought to tell you, that old man wants to marry me!’
‘What old man? The bald one? Punin?’
‘No—not he! The other ... Paramon Semyonitch.’
‘Baburin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it possible? Has he made you an offer?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t consent, of course?’
‘Yes, I did consent ... because I didn’t understand what I was about then. Now it’s a different matter.’
I flung up my hands. ‘Baburin—and you! Why, he must be fifty!’
‘He says forty-three. But that makes no difference. If he were five—and—twenty I wouldn’t marry him. Much happiness I should find in it! A whole week will go by without his smiling once! Paramon Semyonitch is my benefactor, I am deeply indebted to him; he took care of me, educated me; I should have been utterly lost but for him; I’m bound to look on him as a father.... But be his wife! I’d rather die! I’d rather be in my coffin!’
‘Why do you keep talking about death, Musa Pavlovna?’
Musa stopped again.
‘Why, is life so sweet, then? Even your friend Vladimir Nikolaitch, I may say, I’ve come to love from being wretched and dull: and then Paramon Semyonitch with his offers of marriage.... Punin, though he bores me with his verses, he doesn’t scare me, anyway; he doesn’t make me read Karamzin in the evenings, when my head’s ready to drop off my shoulders for weariness! And what are these old men to me? They call me cold, too. With them, is it likely I should be warm? If they try to make me—I shall go. Paramon Semyonitch himself’s always saying: Freedom! freedom! All right, I want freedom too. Or else it comes to this! Freedom for every one else, and keeping me in a cage! I’ll tell him so myself. But if you betray me, or drop a hint—remember; they’ll never set eyes on me again!’
Musa stood in the middle of the path.
‘They’ll never set eyes on me again!’ she repeated sharply. This time, too, she did not raise her eyes to me; she seemed to be aware that she would infallibly betray herself, would show what was in her heart, if any one looked her straight in the face.... And that was just why she did not lift her eyes, except when she was angry or annoyed, and then she stared straight at the person she was speaking to.... But her small pretty face was aglow with indomitable resolution.
‘Why, Tarhov was right,’ flashed through my head; ‘this girl is a new type.’
‘You’ve no need to be afraid of me,’ I declared, at last.
‘Truly? Even, if ... You said something about our relations.... But even if there were ...’ she broke off.
‘Even in that case, you would have no need to be afraid, Musa Pavlovna. I am not your judge. Your secret is buried here.’ I pointed to my bosom. ‘Believe me, I know how to appreciate ...’
‘Have you got my letter?’ Musa asked suddenly.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In my pocket.’
‘Give it here ... quick, quick!’
I got out the scrap of paper. Musa snatched it in her rough little hand, stood still a moment facing me, as though she were going to thank me; but suddenly started, looked round, and without even a word at parting, ran quickly down the hill.
I looked in the direction she had taken. At no great distance from the tower I discerned, wrapped in an ‘Almaviva’ (‘Almavivas’ were then in the height of fashion), a figure which I recognised at once as Tarhov.
‘Aha, my boy,’ thought I, ‘you must have had notice, then, since you’re on the look-out.’
And whistling to myself, I started homewards.
Next morning I had only just drunk my morning tea, when Punin made his appearance. He came into my room with rather an embarrassed face, and began making bows, looking about him, and apologising for his intrusion, as he called it. I made haste to reassure him. I, sinful man, imagined that Punin had come with the intention of borrowing money. But he confined himself to asking for a glass of tea with rum in it, as, luckily, the samovar had not been cleared away. ‘It’s with some trepidation and sinking of heart that I have come to see you,’ he said, as he nibbled a lump of sugar. ‘You I do not fear; but I stand in awe of your honoured grandmother! I am abashed too by my attire, as I have already communicated to you.’ Punin passed his finger along the frayed edge of his ancient coat. ‘At home it’s no matter, and in the street, too, it’s no harm; but when one finds one’s self in gilded palaces, one’s poverty stares one in the face, and one feels confused!’ I occupied two small rooms on the ground floor, and certainly it would never have entered any one’s head to call them palaces, still less gilded; but Punin apparently was referring to the whole of my grandmother’s house, though that too was by no means conspicuously sumptuous. He reproached me for not having been to see them the previous day; ‘Paramon Semyonitch,’ said he, ‘expected you, though he did declare that you would be sure not to come. And Musotchka, too, expected you.’
‘What? Musa Pavlovna too?’ I queried.
‘She too. She’s a charming girl we have got with us, isn’t she? What do you say?’
‘Very charming,’ I assented. Punin rubbed his bare head with extraordinary rapidity.
‘She’s a beauty, sir, a pearl or even a diamond—it’s the truth I am telling you.’ He bent down quite to my ear. ‘Noble blood, too,’ he whispered to me, ‘only—you understand—left-handed; the forbidden fruit was eaten. Well, the parents died, the relations would do nothing for her, and flung her to the hazards of destiny, that’s to say, despair, dying of hunger! But at that point Paramon Semyonitch steps forward, known as a deliverer from of old! He took her, clothed her and cared for her, brought up the poor nestling; and she has blossomed into our darling! I tell you, a man of the rarest qualities!’
Punin subsided against the back of the armchair, lifted his hands, and again bending forward, began whispering again, but still more mysteriously: ‘You see Paramon Semyonitch himself too.... Didn’t you know? he too is of exalted extraction—and on the left side, too. They do say—his father was a powerful Georgian prince, of the line of King David.... What do you make of that? A few words—but how much is said? The blood of King David! What do you think of that? And according to other accounts, the founder of the family of Paramon Semyonitch was an Indian Shah, Babur. Blue blood! That’s fine too, isn’t it? Eh?’
‘Well?’ I queried, ‘and was he too, Baburin, flung to the hazards of destiny?’
Punin rubbed his pate again. ‘To be sure he was! And with even greater cruelty than our little lady! From his earliest childhood nothing but struggling! And, in fact, I will confess that, inspired by Ruban, I composed in allusion to this fact a stanza for the portrait of Paramon Semyonitch. Wait a bit ... how was it? Yes!