Pavel Petrovitch did not long remain present at his brother's interview

with his bailiff, a tall, thin man with a sweet consumptive voice and

knavish eyes, who to all Nikolai Petrovitch's remarks answered,

'Certainly, sir,' and tried to make the peasants out to be thieves and

drunkards. The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed

system, and the new mechanism worked, creaking like an ungreased wheel,

warping and cracking like homemade furniture of unseasoned wood.

Nikolai Petrovitch did not lose heart, but often he sighed, and was

gloomy; he felt that the thing could not go on without money, and his

money was almost all spent. Arkady had spoken the truth; Pavel

Petrovitch had more than once helped his brother; more than once,

seeing him struggling and cudgelling his brains, at a loss which way to

turn, Pavel Petrovitch moved deliberately to the window, and with his

hands thrust into his pockets, muttered between his teeth, '_mais je

puis vous de l'argent_,' and gave him money; but to-day he had none

himself, and he preferred to go away. The petty details of agricultural

management worried him; besides, it constantly struck him that Nikolai

Petrovitch, for all his zeal and industry, did not set about things in

the right way, though he would not have been able to point out

precisely where Nikolai Petrovitch's mistake lay. 'My brother's not

practical enough,' he reasoned to himself; 'they impose upon him.'

Nikolai Petrovitch, on the other hand, had the highest opinion of Pavel

Petrovitch's practical ability, and always asked his advice. 'I'm a

soft, weak fellow, I've spent my life in the wilds,' he used to say;

'while you haven't seen so much of the world for nothing, you see

through people; you have an eagle eye.' In answer to which Pavel

Petrovitch only turned away, but did not contradict his brother.



Leaving Nikolai Petrovitch in his study, he walked along the corridor,

which separated the front part of the house from the back; when he had

reached a low door, he stopped in hesitation, then pulling his

moustaches, he knocked at it.



'Who's there? Come in,' sounded Fenitchka's voice.



'It's I,' said Pavel Petrovitch, and he opened the door.



Fenitchka jumped up from the chair on which she was sitting with her

baby, and giving him into the arms of a girl, who at once carried him

out of the room, she put straight her kerchief hastily.



'Pardon me, if I disturb you,' began Pavel Petrovitch, not looking at

her; 'I only wanted to ask you ... they are sending into the town

to-day, I think ... please let them buy me some green tea.'



'Certainly,' answered Fenitchka; 'how much do you desire them to buy?'



'Oh, half a pound will be enough, I imagine. You have made a change

here, I see,' he added, with a rapid glance round him, which glided

over Fenitchka's face too. 'The curtains here,' he explained, seeing

she did not understand him.



'Oh, yes, the curtains; Nikolai Petrovitch was so good as to make me a

present of them; but they have been put up a long while now.'



'Yes, and it's a long while since I have been to see you. Now it is

very nice here.'



'Thanks to Nikolai Petrovitch's kindness,' murmured Fenitchka.



'You are more comfortable here than in the little lodge you used to

have?' inquired Pavel Petrovitch urbanely, but without the slightest

smile.



'Certainly, it's more comfortable.'



'Who has been put in your place now?'



'The laundry-maids are there now.'



'Ah!'



Pavel Petrovitch was silent. 'Now he is going,' thought Fenitchka; but

he did not go, and she stood before him motionless.



'What did you send your little one away for?' said Pavel Petrovitch at

last. 'I love children; let me see him.'



Fenitchka blushed all over with confusion and delight. She was afraid

of Pavel Petrovitch; he had scarcely ever spoken to her.



'Dunyasha,' she called; 'will you bring Mitya, please.' (Fenitchka did

not treat any one in the house familiarly.) 'But wait a minute, he must

have a frock on,' Fenitchka was going towards the door.



'That doesn't matter,' remarked Pavel Petrovitch.



'I will be back directly,' answered Fenitchka, and she went out

quickly.



Pavel Petrovitch was left alone, and he looked round this time with

special attention. The small low-pitched room in which he found himself

was very clean and snug. It smelt of the freshly painted floor and of

camomile. Along the walls stood chairs with lyre-shaped backs, bought

by the late general on his campaign in Poland; in one corner was a

little bedstead under a muslin canopy beside an iron-clamped chest with

a convex lid. In the opposite corner a little lamp was burning before a

big dark picture of St. Nikolai the wonder-worker; a tiny porcelain egg

hung by a red ribbon from the protruding gold halo down to the saint's

breast; by the windows greenish glass jars of last year's jam carefully

tied down could be seen; on their paper covers Fenitchka herself had

written in big letters 'Gooseberry'; Nikolai Petrovitch was

particularly fond of that preserve. On a long cord from the ceiling a

cage hung with a short-tailed siskin in it; he was constantly chirping

and hopping about, the cage was constantly shaking and swinging, while

hempseeds fell with a light tap on to the floor. On the wall just above

a small chest of drawers hung some rather bad photographs of Nikolai

Petrovitch in various attitudes, taken by an itinerant photographer;

there too hung a photograph of Fenitchka herself, which was an absolute

failure; it was an eyeless face wearing a forced smile, in a dingy

frame, nothing more could be made out; while above Fenitchka, General

Yermolov, in a Circassian cloak, scowled menacingly upon the Caucasian

mountains in the distance, from beneath a little silk shoe for pins

which fell right on to his brows.



Five minutes passed; bustling and whispering could be heard in the next

room. Pavel Petrovitch took up from the chest of drawers a greasy book,

an odd volume of Masalsky's _Musketeer_, and turned over a few

pages.... The door opened, and Fenitchka came in with Mitya in her

arms. She had put on him a little red smock with embroidery on the

collar, had combed his hair and washed his face; he was breathing

heavily, his whole body working, and his little hands waving in the

air, as is the way with all healthy babies; but his smart smock

obviously impressed him, an expression of delight was reflected in

every part of his little fat person. Fenitchka had put her own hair too

in order, and had arranged her kerchief; but she might well have

remained as she was. And really is there anything in the world more

captivating than a beautiful young mother with a healthy baby in her

arms?



'What a chubby fellow!' said Pavel Petrovitch graciously, and he

tickled Mitya's little double chin with the tapering nail of his

forefinger. The baby stared at the siskin, and chuckled.



'That's uncle,' said Fenitchka, bending her face down to him and

slightly rocking him, while Dunyasha quietly set in the window a

smouldering perfumed stick, putting a halfpenny under it.



'How many months old is he?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.



'Six months; it will soon be seven, on the eleventh.'



'Isn't it eight, Fedosya Nikolaevna?' put in Dunyasha, with some

timidity.



'No, seven; what an idea!' The baby chuckled again, stared at the

chest, and suddenly caught hold of his mother's nose and mouth with all

his five little fingers. 'Saucy mite,' said Fenitchka, not drawing her

face away.



'He's like my brother,' observed Pavel Petrovitch.



'Who else should he be like?' thought Fenitchka.



'Yes,' continued Pavel Petrovitch, as though speaking to himself;

'there's an unmistakable likeness.' He looked attentively, almost

mournfully, at Fenitchka.



'That's uncle,' she repeated, in a whisper this time.



'Ah! Pavel! so you're here!' was heard suddenly the voice of Nikolai

Petrovitch.



Pavel Petrovitch turned hurriedly round, frowning; but his brother

looked at him with such delight, such gratitude, that he could not help

responding to his smile.



'You've a splendid little cherub,' he said, and looking at his watch,

'I came in here to speak about some tea.'



And, assuming an expression of indifference, Pavel Petrovitch at once

went out of the room.



'Did he come of himself?' Nikolai Petrovitch asked Fenitchka.



'Yes; he knocked and came in.'



'Well, and has Arkasha been in to see you again?'



'No. Hadn't I better move into the lodge, Nikolai Petrovitch?'



'Why so?'



'I wonder whether it wouldn't be best just for the first.'



'N ... no,' Nikolai Petrovitch brought out hesitatingly, rubbing his

forehead. 'We ought to have done it before.... How are you, fatty?' he

said, suddenly brightening, and going up to the baby, he kissed him on

the cheek; then he bent a little and pressed his lips to Fenitchka's

hand, which lay white as milk upon Mitya's little red smock.



'Nikolai Petrovitch! what are you doing?' she whispered, dropping her

eyes, then slowly raising them. Very charming was the expression of her

eyes when she peeped, as it were, from under her lids, and smiled

tenderly and a little foolishly.



Nikolai Petrovitch had made Fenitchka's acquaintance in the following

manner. He had once happened three years before to stay a night at an

inn in a remote district town. He was agreeably struck by the cleanness

of the room assigned to him, the freshness of the bed-linen. Surely the

woman of the house must be a German? was the idea that occurred to him;

but she proved to be a Russian, a woman of about fifty, neatly dressed,

of a good-looking, sensible countenance and discreet speech. He entered

into conversation with her at tea; he liked her very much. Nikolai

Petrovitch had at that time only just moved into his new home, and not

wishing to keep serfs in the house, he was on the look-out for

wage-servants; the woman of the inn on her side complained of the small

number of visitors to the town, and the hard times; he proposed to her

to come into his house in the capacity of housekeeper; she consented.

Her husband had long been dead, leaving her an only daughter,

Fenitchka. Within a fortnight Arina Savishna (that was the new

housekeeper's name) arrived with her daughter at Maryino and installed

herself in the little lodge. Nikolai Petrovitch's choice proved a

successful one. Arina brought order into the household. As for

Fenitchka, who was at that time seventeen, no one spoke of her, and

scarcely any one saw her; she lived quietly and sedately, and only on

Sundays Nikolai Petrovitch noticed in the church somewhere in a side

place the delicate profile of her white face. More than a year passed

thus.



One morning, Arina came into his study, and bowing low as usual, she

asked him if he could do anything for her daughter, who had got a spark

from the stove in her eye. Nikolai Petrovitch, like all stay-at-home

people, had studied doctoring and even compiled a homoeopathic guide.

He at once told Arina to bring the patient to him. Fenitchka was much

frightened when she heard the master had sent for her; however, she

followed her mother. Nikolai Petrovitch led her to the window and took

her head in his two hands. After thoroughly examining her red and

swollen eye, he prescribed a fomentation, which he made up himself at

once, and tearing his handkerchief in pieces, he showed her how it

ought to be applied. Fenitchka listened to all he had to say, and then

was going. 'Kiss the master's hand, silly girl,' said Arina. Nikolai

Petrovitch did not give her his hand, and in confusion himself kissed

her bent head on the parting of her hair. Fenitchka's eye was soon well

again, but the impression she had made on Nikolai Petrovitch did not

pass away so quickly. He was for ever haunted by that pure, delicate,

timidly raised face; he felt on the palms of his hands that soft hair,

and saw those innocent, slightly parted lips, through which pearly

teeth gleamed with moist brilliance in the sunshine. He began to watch

her with great attention in church, and tried to get into conversation

with her. At first she was shy of him, and one day meeting him at the

approach of evening in a narrow footpath through a field of rye, she

ran into the tall thick rye, overgrown with cornflowers and wormwood,

so as not to meet him face to face. He caught sight of her little head

through a golden network of ears of rye, from which she was peeping out

like a little animal, and called affectionately to her--



'Good-evening, Fenitchka! I don't bite.'



'Good-evening,' she whispered, not coming out of her ambush.



By degrees she began to be more at home with him, but was still shy in

his presence, when suddenly her mother, Arina, died of cholera. What

was to become of Fenitchka? She inherited from her mother a love for

order, regularity, and respectability; but she was so young, so alone.

Nikolai Petrovitch was himself so good and considerate.... It's

needless to relate the rest....



'So my brother came in to see you?' Nikolai Petrovitch questioned her.

'He knocked and came in?'



'Yes.'



'Well, that's a good thing. Let me give Mitya a swing.'



And Nikolai Petrovitch began tossing him almost up to the ceiling, to

the huge delight of the baby, and to the considerable uneasiness of the

mother, who every time he flew up stretched her arms up towards his

little bare legs.



Pavel Petrovitch went back to his artistic study, with its walls

covered with handsome bluish-grey hangings, with weapons hanging upon a

variegated Persian rug nailed to the wall; with walnut furniture,

upholstered in dark green velveteen, with a _renaissance_ bookcase of

old black oak, with bronze statuettes on the magnificent writing-table,

with an open hearth. He threw himself on the sofa, clasped his hands

behind his head, and remained without moving, looking with a face

almost of despair at the ceiling. Whether he wanted to hide from the

very walls that which was reflected in his face, or for some other

reason, he got up, drew the heavy window curtains, and again threw

himself on the sofa.