Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – A Lear Of The Steppes – Contents
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Chapter XXIII > > >
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; something 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 cloths. 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.
< < < Chapter XXI
Chapter XXIII > > >
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Ivan Turgenev – A Lear Of The Steppes – Contents
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