第59章

OUR NEIGHBOURS

ON the first day after our arrival, I had been greatly astonished that Papa should speak of our neighbours, the Epifanovs, as "nice people," and still more so that he should go to call upon them.

The fact was that we had long been at law over some land with this family.When a child, I had more than once heard Papa raging over the litigation, abusing the Epifanovs, and warning people (so I understood him) against them.Likewise, I had heard Jakoff speak of them as "our enemies" and "black people" and could remember Mamma requesting that their names should never be mentioned in her presence, nor, indeed, in the house at all.

From these data I, as a child, had arrived at the clear and assured conviction that the Epifanovs were foemen of ours who would at any time stab or strangle both Papa and his sons if they should ever come across them, as well as that they were "black people", in the literal sense of the term.Consequently, when, in the year that Mamma died, I chanced to catch sight of Avdotia ("La Belle Flamande") on the occasion of a visit which she paid to my mother, I found it hard to believe that she did not come of a family of negroes.All the same, I had the lowest possible opinion of the family, and, for all that we saw much of them that summer, continued to be strongly prejudiced against them.As a matter of fact, their household only consisted of the mother (a widow of fifty, but a very well-preserved, cheery old woman), a beautiful daughter named Avdotia, and a son, Peter, who was a stammerer, unmarried, and of very serious disposition.

For the last twenty years before her husband's death, Madame Epifanov had lived apart from him--sometimes in St.Petersburg, where she had relatives, but more frequently at her village of Mitishtchi, which stood some three versts from ours.Yet the neighbourhood had taken to circulating such horrible tales concerning her mode of life that Messalina was, by comparison, a blameless child: which was why my mother had requested her name never to be mentioned.As a matter of fact, not one-tenth part of the most cruel of all gossip--the gossip of country-houses--is worthy of credence; and although, when I first made Madame's acquaintance, she had living with her in the house a clerk named Mitusha, who had been promoted from a serf, and who, curled, pomaded, and dressed in a frockcoat of Circassian pattern, always stood behind his mistress's chair at luncheon, while from time to time she invited her guests to admire his handsome eyes and mouth, there was nothing for gossip to take hold of.I believe, too, that since the time--ten years earlier--when she had recalled her dutiful son Peter from the service, she had wholly changed her mode of living.It seems her property had never been a large one--merely a hundred souls or so--[This refers, of course, to the days of serfdom.]and that during her previous life of gaiety she had spent a great deal.Consequently, when, some ten years ago, those portions of the property which had been mortgaged and re-

mortgaged had been foreclosed upon and compulsorily sold by auction, she had come to the conclusion that all these unpleasant details of distress upon and valuation of her property had been due not so much to failure to pay the interest as to the fact that she was a woman: wherefore she had written to her son (then serving with his regiment) to come and save his mother from her embarrassments, and he, like a dutiful son--conceiving that his first duty was to comfort his mother in her old age--had straightway resigned his commission (for all that he had been doing well in his profession, and was hoping soon to become independent), and had come to join her in the country.

Despite his plain face, uncouth demeanour, and fault of stuttering, Peter was a man of unswerving principles and of the most extraordinary good sense.Somehow--by small borrowings, sundry strokes of business, petitions for grace, and promises to repay--he contrived to carry on the property, and, making himself overseer, donned his father's greatcoat (still preserved in a drawer), dispensed with horses and carriages, discouraged guests from calling at Mitishtchi, fashioned his own sleighs, increased his arable land and curtailed that of the serfs, felled his own timber, sold his produce in person, and saw to matters generally.