Then, pushing something into the old man’s cuff, he opened the door, and the postmaster, without remembering how, found himself in the street again.
For a long time he stood motionless; at last he observed in the cuff of his sleeve a roll of papers; he drew them out and unrolled several fifty-ruble notes. Tears again filled his eyes, tears of indignation! He crushed the notes into a ball, flung them upon the ground, stamped upon them with the heel of his boot, and then walked away.... After having gone a few steps, he stopped, reflected, and returned... but the notes were no longer there. A well-dressed young man, noticing him, ran toward a droshy, jumped in hurriedly, and cried to the driver: “Go on!”
The postmaster did not pursue him. He resolved to return home to his station, but before doing so he wished to see his poor Dunya once more. For that purpose, he returned to Minsky’s lodgings a couple of days later, but when he came the orderly told him roughly that his master received nobody, pushed him out of the ante-chamber and slammed the door in his face. The postmaster stood waiting for a long time, then he walked away.
That same day, in the evening, he was walking along Liteinaia Street, having been to a service at the Church of Our Lady of All the Sorrowing. Suddenly a smart droshky flew past him, and the postmaster recognized Minsky. The droshky stopped in front of a three-story house, close to the entrance, and the Hussar ran up the steps. A happy thought flashed through the mind of the postmaster. He returned, and, approaching the coachman:
“Whose horse is this, my friend?” asked he: “Doesn’t it belong to Minsky?”
“Exactly so,” replied the coachman: “what do you want?”
“Well, your master ordered me to carry a letter to his Dunya, and I have forgotten where his Dunya lives.”
“She lives here, on the second floor. But you are late with your letter, my friend; he is with her himself just now.”
“That doesn’t matter,” replied the postmaster, with an indescribable emotion. “Thanks for your information. I shall do as I was told.” And with these words he ascended the staircase.
The door was locked; he rang. There was a painful delay of several seconds. The key rattled, and the door was opened.
“Does Avdotya Samsonovna live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied a young maidservant: “what do you want with her?”
The postmaster, without replying, walked into the room.
“You mustn’t go in, you mustn’t go in!” the servant cried out after him: “Avdotya Samsonovna has visitors.”
But the postmaster, without heeding her, walked straight on. The first two rooms were dark; in the third there was a light. He approached the open door and paused. In the room, which was beautifully furnished, sat Minsky in deep thought. Dunya, attired in the most elegant fashion, was sitting upon the arm of his chair, like a lady rider upon her English saddle. She was gazing tenderly at Minsky, and winding his black curls round her dazzling fingers. Poor postmaster! Never had his daughter seemed to him so beautiful; he admired her against his will.
“Who is there?” she asked, without raising her head.
He remained silent. Receiving no reply, Dunya raised her head... and with a cry she fell upon the carpet. The alarmed Minsky hastened to pick her up, but suddenly catching sight of the old postmaster in the doorway, he left Dunya and approached him, trembling with rage.
“What do you want?” he said to him, clenching his teeth. “Why do you steal after me everywhere, like a thief? Or do you want to murder me? Be off!” and with a powerful hand he seized the old man by the collar and pushed him out onto the stairs.
The old man returned to his lodgings. His friend advised him to lodge a complaint, but the postmaster reflected, waved his hand, and resolved to abstain from taking any further steps in the matter. Two days afterward he left Saint Petersburg and returned to his station to resume his duties.
“This is the third year,” he concluded, “that I have been living without Dunya, and I have not heard a word about her. Whether she is alive or not — God only knows. So many things happen. She is not the first, nor yet the last, that a traveling scoundrel has seduced, kept for a little while, and then abandoned. There are many such young fools in Saint Petersburg, today in satin and velvet, and tomorrow sweeping the streets along with the rift-raft of the dram-shops. Sometimes, when I think that Dunya also may come to such an:nd, then, in spite of myself, I sin and wish her in her grave....”
Such was the story of my friend, the old postmaster, a story more than once interrupted by tears, which he picturesquely wiped away with the skirt of his coat, like the zealous Terentyich in Dmitriyev’s beautiful ballad. These tears were partly induced by the punch, of which he had drunk five glasses during the course of his narrative, but for all that, they moved me deeply. After taking leave of him, it was a long time before I could forget the old postmaster, and for a long time I thought of poor Dunya....
Passing through the little town of X. a short time ago, I remembered my friend. I heard that the station, over which he ruled, had been done away with. To my question: “Is the old postmaster still alive?” nobody could give me a satisfactory reply. I resolved to pay a visit to the familiar place, and having hired horses, I set out for the village of N — .
It was in the autumn. Gray clouds covered the sky; a cold wind blew across the reaped fields, carrying along with it the red and yellow leaves from the trees that it encountered. I arrived in the village at sunset, and stopped at the little post-house. In the entry (where Dunya had once kissed me) a stout woman came out to meet me, and in answer to my questions replied, that the old postmaster had been dead for about a year, that his house was occupied by a brewer, and that she was the brewer’s wife. I began to regret my useless journey, and the seven rubles that I had spent in vain.
“Of what did he die?” I asked the brewer’s wife.
“Of drink, sir,” she replied.
“And where is he buried?”
“On the outskirts of the village, near his late wife.”
“Could somebody take me to his grave?”
“To be sure! Hi, Vanka, you have played with that cat long enough. Take this gentleman to the cemetery, and show him the postmaster’s grave.”
At these words a ragged lad, with red hair, and blind in one eye, ran up to me and immediately began to lead the way toward the burial-ground.
“Did you know the dead man?” I asked him on the road.
“Yes, indeed! He taught me how to cut whistles. When he came out of the dram-shop (God rest his soul!) we used to run after him and call out: ‘Grandfather! grandfather! some nuts!’ and he used to throw nuts to us. He always used to play with us.”
“And do the travelers remember him?”
“There are very few travelers now; the assessor passes this way sometimes, but he doesn’t trouble himself about dead people. Last summer a lady passed through here, and she asked after the old postmaster, and went to his grave.”
“What sort of a lady?” I asked with curiosity.
“A very beautiful lady,” replied the lad. “She was in a carriage with six horses, and had along with her three little children, a nurse, and a little black lapdog; and when they told her that the old postmaster was dead, she began to cry, and said to the children: ‘Sit still, I will go to the cemetery.’ I offered to show her the way. But the lady said: ‘I know the way.’ And she gave me a five-copeck piece.... such a kind lady!”
We reached the cemetery, a bare place, with no fence around it, dotted with wooden crosses, which were not shaded by a single tree. Never in my life had I seen such a dismal cemetery.
“This is the old postmaster’s grave,” said the lad to me, leaping upon a heap of sand, in which was planted a black cross with a bronze ikon.
“And did the lady come here?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Vanka; “I watched her from a distance. She cast herself down here, and remained lying down for a long time. Then she went back to the village, sent for the
priest, gave him some money and drove off, after giving me a five-copeck piece... such a kind lady!”
And I, too, gave the lad a five-copeck piece, and I no longer regretted the journey nor the seven rubles that I had spent on it.
MISTRESS INTO MAID
Translated by T. Keane
You’re pretty, Dushenka, no matter what you wear.
Bogdanovich
IN one of our remote provinces was situated the estate of Ivan Petrovich Berestov. In his youth he had served in the Guards, but having quitted the service at the beginning of the year 1797, he repaired to his village, and since that time he had not stirred from it. He had been married to a penniless gentlewoman, who had died in child-bed at a time when he was absent from home on a visit to one of the outlying fields of his estate. He soon found consolation in attending to his affairs. He built a house on a plan of his own, established a textile mill, tripled his revenues, and began to consider himself the most intelligent man in the whole country roundabout, and in this he was not contradicted by his neighbors, who came to visit him with their families and their dogs. On week-days he wore a velveteen jacket, but on Sundays and holidays he appeared in a surtout of cloth that had been manufactured on his own premises. He himself kept an account of all his expenses, and he never read anything except the “Senate Bulletins.”
In general he was liked, although he was considered proud. There was only one person who was not on good terms with him, and that was Grigory Ivano- vich Muromsky, his nearest neighbor. This latter was a genuine Russian gentleman. After having squandered the greater part of his fortune in Moscow, and having become a widower about the same time, he retired to his last remaining estate, where he continued to indulge in habits of extravagance, but of a new kind. He laid out an English garden, on which he expended nearly the whole of his remaining revenue. His grooms were dressed like English jockeys, his daughter had an English governess, and his fields were cultivated after the English method.
But Russian corn fares ill when foreign ways are followed, and in spite of a considerable reduction in his expenses, the revenues of Grigory Ivanovich did not increase. He found means, even in the country, of contracting new debts. Nevertheless he was not considered a fool, for he was the first landowner in his province who conceived the idea of mortgaging his estate in the Tutorial Council — a proceeding which at that time was considered exceedingly complicated and venturesome. Of all those who censured him, Berestov showed himself the most severe. Hatred of all innovation was a distinguishing trait in his character. He could not bring himself to speak calmly of his neighbor’s Anglomania, and he constantly found occasion to criticise him. If he showed his possessions to a guest, in reply to the praises bestowed upon him for his economical arrangements, he would say with a sly smile:
“Yes, sir, it is not the same with me as with my neighbor Grigory Ivanovich. What need have we to ruin ourselves in the English style, when we have enough to do to keep the wolf from the door in the Russian style?”
These, and similar sarcastic remarks, thanks to the zeal of obliging neighbors, did not fail to reach the ears of Grigory Ivanovich greatly embellished. The Anglomaniac bore criticism as impatiently as our journalists. He became furious, and called his traducer a boor and a country bumpkin.
Such were the relations between the two proprietors, when Berestov’s son came home. He had been educated at the University of- — -----, and intended to enter the military service, but to this his father would not give his consent. For the civil service the young man had not the slightest inclination, and as neither felt inclined to yield to the other, the young Alexey lived in the meantime like a gentleman, and at any rate allowed his mustache to grow.
Alexey was indeed a fine young fellow, and it would really have been a pity were his slender frame never to be set off to advantage by a military uniform, and were he to be compelled to spend his youth in bending over the papers of the chancery office, instead of cutting a figure on horseback. The neighbors, observing how at the hunt he always dashed ahead across the fields, agreed that he would never make a proper clerk. The young ladies cast glances at him, and sometimes could not leave off looking at him, but Alexey troubled himself very little about them, and they attributed this insensibility to some secret love affair. Indeed, there passed from hand to hand a copy of the address on one of his letters: “To Akulina Petrovna Kurochkina in Moscow, opposite the Alexeyevsky Monastery, in the house of the coppersmith Savelyev, with the request that she hand this letter to A. N. R.”
Those of my readers who have never lived in the country, cannot imagine how charming these provincial young ladies are! Brought up in the pure air, under the shadow of their own apple trees, they derive their knowledge of the world and of life from books.
Solitude, freedom, and reading develop very early within them sentiments and passions unknown to our town-bred beauties. For the young ladies of the country the sound of harness-bells is an event; a journey to the nearest town marks an epoch in their lives, and the visit of a guest leaves behind a long, and sometimes an everlasting memory. Of course everybody is at liberty to laugh at some of their peculiarities, but the jokes of a superficial observer cannot nullify their essential merits, the chief of which is that quality of character, that individualité, without which, in Jean Paul’s opinion, there can be no human greatness. In the capitals, women receive perhaps a better education, but intercourse with the world soon smooths down the character and makes their souls as uniform as their head-dresses. This is said neither by way of judgment nor of censure, but “nota nostra manet,” as one of the old commentators writes.
It can easily be imagined what impression Alexey produced in the circle of our young ladies. He was the first who appeared before them gloomy and disenchanted, the first who spoke to them of lost happiness and of his blighted youth; in addition to which he wore a black ring engraved with a death’s head. All this was something quite new in that province. The young ladies went mad over him.
But not one of them felt so much interest in him as the daughter of our Anglomaniac, Liza, or Betsy, as Grigory Ivanovich usually called her. As their parents did not visit each other, she had not yet seen Alexey, even when he had become the sole topic of conversation among all the young ladies of the neighborhood. She was seventeen years old. Dark eyes illuminated her swarthy and exceedingly pleasant countenance. She was an only and consequently a spoiled child. Her liveliness and continual pranks delighted her father and filled with despair the heart of Miss Jackson, her governess, an affected old maid of forty, who powdered her face and darkened her eyebrows, read through Pamela twice a year, for which she received two thousand rubles, and was dying of boredom in this barbarous Russia.
Liza was waited upon by Nastya, who, although somewhat older, was quite as giddy as her mistress. Liza was very fond of her, confided to her all her secrets, and planned pranks together with her; in a word, Nastya was a far more important person in the village of Priluchino, than the trusted confidante in a French tragedy.
“Will you allow me to go out to-day on a visit?” said Nastya one morning, as she was dressing her mistress.
“Certainly; but where are you going to?”
“To Tugilovo, to the Berestovs’. The wife of their cook is going to celebrate her name-day to-day, and she came over yesterday to invite us to dinner.”
“Well!” said Liza: “the masters are at odds with each other, but the servants entertain each other.”
“What have the masters to do with us?” replied Nastya. “Besides, I belong to you, and not to your papa. You have not had any quarrel with young Berestov; let the old ones quarrel and fight, if it gives them any pleasure.”
“Try and see Alexey Berestov, Nastya, and then tell me what he looks like and what sort of a person he is.”
Nastya promised to do so, and all day long Liza waited with impatience for her return. In the evening Nastya made her appearance.
“Well, Lizaveta Grigoryevna,” said she, on entering the
room, “I have seen young Berestov, and I had ample opportunity for taking a good look at him, for we have been together all day.”
“How did that happen? Tell me about it, tell me everything just as it happened.”
“Very well. We set out, I, Anisya Yegorovna, Nenila, Dunka....”
“Yes, yes, I know. And then?”
“With your leave, I will tell you everything in detail. We arrived just in time for dinner. The room was full of people. The folk from Kolbino were there, from Zakharyevo, the bailiff’s wife and her daughters, the people from Khlupino....”
“Well, and Berestov?”
“Wait a moment. We sat down to table; the bailiff’s wife had the place of honor. I sat next to her... the daughters sulked, but I didn’t care about them....”
“Good heavens, Nastya, how tiresome you are with your never-ending details!”
“How impatient you are! Well, we rose from the table... we had been sitting down for three hours, and the dinner was excellent: pastry, blanc-mange, blue, red and striped.... Well, we left the table and went into the garden to have a game of tag, and it was then that the young master made his appearance.”
“Well, and is it true that he is so very handsome?”
“Exceedingly handsome: tall, well-built, and with red cheeks....”
“Really? And I was under the impression that he was pale. Well, and how did he seem to you? Sad, thoughtful?”
“Nothing of the kind! I have never in my life seen such a madcap. He joined in our game.”
“Joined in your game of tag? Impossible!”
“Not at all impossible. And what else do you think he did? He’d catch you and kiss you!”
“With your permission, Nastya, you are fibbing.”
“With your permission, I am not fibbing. I had the greatest trouble in the world to get away from him. He spent the whole day with us.”