hopping about in a dance before the peasant in the grey smock; the peasant, on his side, was with difficulty stamping and scraping with his feet, and grinning meaninglessly over his dishevelled beard; he waved one hand from time to time, as much as to say, ‘Here goes!’ Nothing could be more ludicrous than his face; however much he twitched up his eyebrows, his heavy lids would hardly rise, but seemed lying upon his scarcely visible, dim, and mawkish eyes. He was in that amiable frame of mind of a perfectly intoxicated man, when every passer-by, directly he looks him in the face, is sure to say, ‘Bless you, brother, bless you!’ The Blinkard, as red as a lobster, and his nostrils dilated wide, was laughing malignantly in a corner; only Nikolai Ivanitch, as befits a good tavern-keeper, preserved his composure unchanged. The room was thronged with many new faces; but the Wild Master I did not see in it.

I turned away with rapid steps and began descending the hill on which Kolotovka lies. At the foot of this hill stretches a wide plain; plunged in the misty waves of the evening haze, it seemed more immense, and was, as it were, merged in the darkening sky. I walked with long strides along the road by the ravine, when all at once from somewhere far away in the plain came a boy’s clear voice: ‘Antropka! Antropka-a-a!…’ He shouted in obstinate and tearful desperation, with long, long drawing out of the last syllable.

He was silent for a few instants, and started shouting again. His voice rang out clear in the still, lightly slumbering air. Thirty times at least he had called the name, Antropka. When suddenly, from the farthest end of the plain, as though from another world, there floated a scarcely audible reply:

‘Wha-a-t?’

The boy’s voice shouted back at once with gleeful exasperation:

‘Come here, devil! woo-od imp!’

‘What fo-or?’ replied the other, after a long interval.

‘Because dad wants to thrash you!’ the first voice shouted back hurriedly.

The second voice did not call back again, and the boy fell to shouting Antropka once more. His cries, fainter and less and less frequent, still floated up to my ears, when it had grown completely dark, and I had turned the corner of the wood which skirts my village and lies over three miles from Kolotovka…. ‘Antropka-a-a!’ was still audible in the air, filled with the shadows of night.

XVIII

PIOTR PETROVITCH KARATAEV

One autumn five years ago, I chanced, when on the road from Moscow to Tula, to spend almost a whole day at a posting station for want of horses. I was on the way back from a shooting expedition, and had been so incautious as to send my three horses on in front of me. The man in charge of the station, a surly, elderly man, with hair hanging over his brows to his very nose, with little sleepy eyes, answered all my complaints and requests with disconnected grumbling, slammed the door angrily, as though he were cursing his calling in life, and going out on the steps abused the postilions who were sauntering in a leisurely way through the mud with the weighty wooden yokes on their arms, or sat yawning and scratching themselves on a bench, and paid no special attention to the wrathful exclamations of their superior. I had already sat myself down three times to tea, had several times tried in vain to sleep, and had read all the inscriptions on the walls and windows; I was overpowered by fearful boredom. In chill and helpless despair I was staring at the upturned shafts of my carriage, when suddenly I heard the tinkling of a bell, and a small trap, drawn by three jaded horses, drew up at the steps. The new arrival leaped out of the trap, and shouting ‘Horses! and look sharp!’ he went into the room. While he was listening with the strange wonder customary in such cases to the overseer’s answer that there were no horses, I had time to scan my new companion from top to toe with all the greedy curiosity of a man bored to death. He appeared to be nearly thirty. Small-pox had left indelible traces on his face, which was dry and yellowish, with an unpleasant coppery tinge; his long blue-black hair fell in ringlets on his collar behind, and was twisted into jaunty curls in front; his small swollen eyes were quite expressionless; a few hairs sprouted on his upper lip. He was dressed like a dissipated country gentleman, given to frequenting horse-fairs, in a rather greasy striped Caucasian jacket, a faded lilac silk-tie, a waistcoat with copper buttons, and grey trousers shaped like huge funnels, from under which the toes of unbrushed shoes could just be discerned. He smelt strongly of tobacco and spirits; on his fat, red hands, almost hidden in his sleeves, could be seen silver and Tula rings. Such figures are met in Russia not by dozens, but by hundreds; an acquaintance with them is not, to tell the truth, productive of any particular pleasure; but in spite of the prejudice with which I looked at the new-comer, I could not fail to notice the recklessly good-natured and passionate expression of his face.

‘This gentleman’s been waiting more than an hour here too,’ observed the overseer indicating me.

More than an hour! The rascal was making fun of me.

‘But perhaps he doesn’t need them as I do,’ answered the new comer.

‘I know nothing about that,’ said the overseer sulkily.

‘Then is it really impossible? Are there positively no horses?’

‘Impossible. There’s not a single horse.’

‘Well, tell them to bring me a samovar. I’ll wait a little; there’s nothing else to be done.’

The new comer sat down on the bench, flung his cap on the table, and passed his hand over his hair.

‘Have you had tea already?’ he inquired of me.

‘Yes.’

‘But won’t you have a little more for company.’

I consented. The stout red samovar made its appearance for the fourth time on the table. I brought out a bottle of rum. I was not wrong in taking my new acquaintance for a country gentleman of small property. His name was Piotr Petrovitch Karataev.

We got into conversation. In less than half-an-hour after his arrival, he was telling me his whole life with the most simple-hearted openness.

‘I’m on my way to Moscow now,’ he told me as he sipped his fourth glass; ‘there’s nothing for me to do now in the country.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, it’s come to that. My property’s in disorder; I’ve ruined my peasants, I must confess; there have been bad years: bad harvests, and all sorts of ill-luck, you know…. Though, indeed,’ he added, looking away dejectedly; ‘how could I manage an estate!’

‘Why’s that?’

‘But, no,’ he interrupted me? ‘there are people like me who make good managers! You see,’ he went on, screwing his head on one side and sucking his pipe assiduously, ‘looking at me, I dare say you think I’m not much… but you, see, I must confess, I’ve had a very middling education; I wasn’t well off. I beg your pardon; I’m an open man, and if you come to that….’

He did not complete his sentence, but broke off with a wave of the hand. I began to assure him that he was mistaken, that I was highly delighted to meet him, and so on, and then observed that I should have thought a very thorough education was not indispensable for the good management of property.

‘Agreed,’ he responded; ‘I agree with you. But still, a special sort of disposition’s essential! There are some may do anything they like, and it’s all right! but I…. Allow me to ask, are you from Petersburg or from Moscow?’

‘I’m from Petersburg.’

He blew a long coil of smoke from his nostrils.

‘And I’m going in to Moscow to be an official.’

‘What department do you mean to enter?’

‘I don’t know; that’s as it happens. I’ll own to you, I’m afraid of official life; one’s under responsibility at once. I’ve always lived in the country; I’m used to it, you know… but now, there’s no help for it… it’s through poverty! Oh, poverty, how I hate it!’

‘But then you will be living in the capital.’

‘In the capital…. Well, I don’t know what there is that’s pleasant in the capital. We shall see; may be, it’s pleasant too…. Though nothing, I fancy, could be better than the country.’

‘Then is it really impossible for you to live at your country place?’

He gave a sigh.

‘Quite impossible. It’s, so to say, not my own now.’

‘Why, how so?’

‘Well, a good fellow there—a neighbour—is in possession… a bill of exchange.’

Poor Piotr Petrovitch passed his hand over his face, thought a minute, and shook his head.

‘Well?’… I must own, though,’ he added after a brief silence, ‘I can’t blame anybody; it’s my own fault. I was fond of cutting a dash, I am fond of cutting a dash, damn my soul!’

‘You had a jolly life in the country?’ I asked him.

‘I had, sir,’ he responded emphatically, looking me straight in the face, ‘twelve harriers—harriers, I can tell you, such as you don’t very often see.’ (The last words he uttered in a drawl with great significance.) ‘A grey hare they’d double upon in no time. After the red fox—they were devils, regular serpents. And I could boast of my greyhounds too. It’s all a thing of the past now, I’ve no reason to lie. I used to go out shooting too. I had a dog called the Countess, a wonderful setter, with a first-rate scent—she took everything. Sometimes I’d go to a marsh and call