A Desperate Character and Other Stories eBook

in oils, with an expression of ill-tempered alarm on the brick-coloured faces, and sometimes too an old warped picture of flowers and fruit or a mythological subject.  Everywhere there is the smell of kvas, of apples, of linseed-oil and of leather.  Flies buzz and hum about the ceiling and the windows.  A daring cockroach suddenly shows his countenance from behind the looking-glass frame....  No matter, one can live here—­and live very well too.

II

Just such a homestead it was my lot to visit thirty years ago ... it was in days long past, as you perceive.  The little estate in which this house stood belonged to a friend of mine at the university; it had only recently come to him on the death of a bachelor cousin, and he was not living in it himself....  But at no great distance from it there were wide tracts of steppe bog, in which at the time of summer migration, when they are on the wing, there are great numbers of snipe; my friend and I, both enthusiastic sportsmen, agreed therefore to go on St. Peter’s day, he from Moscow, I from my own village, to his little house.  My friend lingered in Moscow, and was two days late; I did not care to start shooting without him.  I was received by an old servant, Narkiz Semyonov, who had had notice of my coming.  This old servant was not in the least like ‘Savelitch’ or ‘Caleb’; my friend used to call him in joke ‘Marquis.’  There was something of conceit, even of affectation, about him; he looked down on us young men with a certain dignity, but cherished no particularly respectful sentiments for other landowners either; of his old master he spoke slightingly, while his own class he simply scorned for their ignorance.  He could read and write, expressed himself correctly and with judgment, and did not drink.  He seldom went to church, and so was looked upon as a dissenter.  In appearance he was thin and tall, had a long and good-looking face, a sharp nose, and overhanging eyebrows, which he was continually either knitting or lifting; he wore a neat, roomy coat, and boots to his knees with heart-shaped scallops at the tops.

III

On the day of my arrival, Narkiz, having given me lunch and cleared the table, stood in the doorway, looked intently at me, and with some play of the eyebrows observed: 

‘What are you going to do now, sir?’

’Well, really, I don’t know.  If Nikolai Petrovitch had kept his word and come, we should have gone shooting together.’

’So you really expected, sir, that he would come at the time he promised?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘H’m.’  Narkiz looked at me again and shook his head as it were with commiseration.  ’If you ‘d care to amuse yourself with reading,’ he continued:  ’there are some books left of my old master’s; I’ll get them you, if you like; only you won’t read them, I expect.’

‘Why?’