A Sportsman's Sketches, Volume 2 eBook

Half-an-hour later, no one would have recognised us; we were chatting and frolicking like children.  Masha was the merriest of all; Tchertop-hanov simply could not take his eyes off her.  Her face grew paler, her nostrils dilated, her eyes glowed and darkened at the same time.  It was a wild creature at play.  Nedopyuskin limped after her on his short, fat little legs, like a drake after a duck.  Even Venzor crawled out of his hiding-place in the hall, stood a moment in the doorway, glanced at us, and suddenly fell to jumping up into the air and barking.  Masha flitted into the other room, fetched the guitar, flung off the shawl from her shoulders, seated herself quickly, and, raising her head, began singing a gypsy song.  Her voice rang out, vibrating like a glass bell when it is struck; it flamed up and died away....  It filled the heart with sweetness and pain....  Tchertop-hanov fell to dancing.  Nedopyuskin stamped and swung his legs in tune.  Masha was all a-quiver, like birch-bark in the fire; her delicate fingers flew playfully over the guitar, her dark-skinned throat slowly heaved under the two rows of amber.  All at once she would cease singing, sink into exhaustion, and twang the guitar, as it were involuntarily, and Tchertop-hanov stood still, merely working his shoulders and turning round in one place, while Nedopyuskin nodded his head like a Chinese figure; then she would break out into song like a mad thing, drawing herself up and holding up her head, and Tchertop-hanov again curtsied down to the ground, leaped up to the ceiling, spun round like a top, crying ‘Quicker!...’

‘Quicker, quicker, quicker!’ Nedopyuskin chimed in, speaking very fast.

It was late in the evening when I left Bezsonovo....

XXII

THE END OF TCHERTOP-HANOV

I

It was two years after my visit that Panteley Eremyitch’s troubles began—­his real troubles.  Disappointments, disasters, even misfortunes he had had before that time, but he had paid no attention to them, and had risen superior to them in former days.  The first blow that fell upon him was the most heartrending for him.  Masha left him.

What induced her to forsake his roof, where she seemed to be so thoroughly at home, it is hard to say.  Tchertop-hanov to the end of his days clung to the conviction that a certain young neighbour, a retired captain of Uhlans, named Yaff, was at the root of Masha’s desertion.  He had taken her fancy, according to Panteley Eremyitch, simply by constantly curling his moustaches, pomading himself to excess, and sniggering significantly; but one must suppose that the vagrant gypsy blood in Masha’s veins had more to do with it.  However that may have been, one fine summer evening Masha tied up a few odds and ends in a small bundle, and walked out of Tchertop-hanov’s house.