Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories Part 39

"There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be pleased to look between the two."

Ivan Petrovich could not see anything.

"It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation."

"That's so."

"Well, go on!"

Near a puddle, Mishka jumped down from the footboard and tested the road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry, from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the porch. The Chernshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at once ran the servants: gloomy old Danilych with the side whiskers, Nikolay, Mishka's brother, and the boy Pavlushka; and after them came a girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the elbow, and with just such a bared neck.

"Marya Ivanovna, Marya Ivanovna! Where are you going? Your mother will be worried. You will have time," was heard the voice of fat Katerina behind her.

But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange glance.

"Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked, as though in dread.

"Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I could not receive the communion."

The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at such a solemn moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she kissed.

"Who is here?"

"Young Chernshev. He is in the drawing-room."

"Is mamma up? How is she?"

"Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs."

In the pa.s.sage room Ivan Petrovich was met by nurse Evprakseya, clerk Andrey Ivanovich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Ivan Petrovich. In the drawing-room sat Luiza Karlovna Trugoni, for ten years a friend of the house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years, Chernshev, with his French tutor.

THE DECEMBRISTS

THIRD FRAGMENT

(Variant of the First Chapter)

On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic peasants of the village of Izlegoshcha and Chernshev, which was in favour of the peasants and against Chernshev. This decision was an unexpected and important calamitous event for Chernshev. The case had lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village of Izlegoshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ilya Mitrofanov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltykov, Prince Chernshev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides, the Izlegoshcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had insulted the surveyor, put in jail.

After that, Prince Chernshev, with his good-natured and merry carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in the pet.i.tion of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father had done it, and since then more than forty years had pa.s.sed. He knew that the peasants of the village of Izlegoshcha were getting along well without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friends.h.i.+p with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his lawyer, Ilya Mitrofanov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse, he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only was to be deprived of five thousand desyatinas of land, but also, for the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of 107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants.

Prince Chernshev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters.

He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the Senate. According to Ilya Mitrofanov's words there was but one salvation, and that was, to pet.i.tion the sovereign and to transfer the case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince Grigori Ivanovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family left his beloved estate of Studenets, where he had lived so long without leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St.

Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in which the son of Grigori Ivanovich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion.

In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree of the Senate, Prince Grigori Ivanovich got ready to go to Moscow. At first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the Arbat; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses, carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors from the province and from St. Petersburg began to a.s.semble in Moscow in the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the arrival of his son, the debuts of his daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksandra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of the Chernshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ilya Mitrofanov talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case.

Ivan Mironovich Baushkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate, who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs, and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord.

The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it were the six peasants who were pa.s.sing their seventh month in jail, and their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobodsk, and their families tried to get along as well as they could. n.o.body could be invoked in the case. Ivan Mironovich himself said that he could not take it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case.

The peasants were in prison, and n.o.body paid any attention to them; but one family, that of Mikhail Gerasimovich, particularly his wife Tikhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man, Gerasimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tikhonovna could not rest quiet. She begged Mironovich to take the case, but he declined it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to G.o.d for the old man. She had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law.

Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerasimovich was put into jail, she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the pilgrimage.

First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and to take him some s.h.i.+rts; from there they went through the capital of the Government to Moscow. On her way Tikhonovna told the deacon's wife of her sorrow, and the latter advised her to pet.i.tion the emperor who, it was said, was to be in Penza, telling her of various cases of pardon granted by him.

When the pilgrims arrived in Penza, they heard that there was there, not the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikolay Pavlovich. When he came out of the cathedral, Tikhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Troitsa. In Troitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Paisi. At the confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having pet.i.tioned the brother of the Tsar. Father Paisi told her that there was no sin in that and that there was no sin in pet.i.tioning the Tsar even in a just case, and dismissed her. In Khotkov she called on the blessed abbess, and she ordered her to pet.i.tion the Tsar himself.

On their way back, Tikhonovna and the deacon's wife stopped in Moscow to see the saints. Here she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought that it was evidently G.o.d's command that she should pet.i.tion the Tsar.

All that had to be done was to write the pet.i.tion.

In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They begged permission to stay there overnight; they were allowed to do so. After supper the deacon's wife lay down on the oven, and Tikhonovna, placing her wallet under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In the morning, before daybreak, Tikhonovna got up, woke the deacon's wife, and went out. The innkeeper spoke to her just as she walked into the yard.

"You are up early, granny," he said.

"Before we get there, it will be time for matins," Tikhonovna replied.

"G.o.d be with you, granny!"

"Christ save you!" said Tikhonovna, and the pilgrims went to the Kremlin.

After standing through the matins and the ma.s.s, and having kissed the relics, the old women, with difficulty making their way, arrived at the house of the Chernshevs. The deacon's wife said that the old lady had given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and had ordered that all pilgrims should be received.

"There we shall find a man who will write the pet.i.tion," said the deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to blunder through the streets and ask their way. The deacon's wife had been there before, but had forgotten where it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed, and people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a policeman took the deacon's wife by the shoulder and, giving her a push, forbade her to walk through the street on which they were, and directed them through a forest of lanes. Tikhonovna did not know that they were driven off the Vozdvizhenka for the very reason that through that street was to drive the Tsar, of whom she was thinking all the time, and to whom she intended to give the pet.i.tion.

The deacon's wife walked, as always, heavily and complainingly, while Tikhonovna, as usual, walked lightly and briskly, with the gait of a young woman. At the gate the pilgrims stopped. The deacon's wife did not recognize the house: there was there a new hut which she had not seen before; but on scanning the well with the pumps in the corner of the yard, she recognized it all. The dogs began to bark and made for the women with the staffs.

"Don't mind them, aunties, they will not touch you. Away there, accursed ones!" the janitor shouted to the dogs, raising the broom on them. "They are themselves from the country, and just see them bark at country people! Come this way! You will stick in the mud,--G.o.d has not given any frost yet."

But the deacon's wife, frightened by the dogs, and muttering in a whining tone, sat down on a bench near the gate and asked the janitor to take her by. Tikhonovna made her customary bow to the janitor and, leaning on her crutch and spreading her feet, which were tightly covered with leg-rags, stopped near her, looking as always calmly in front of her and waiting for the janitor to come up to them.

"Whom do you want?" the janitor asked.

"Do you not recognize us, dear man? Is not your name Egor?" asked the deacon's wife. "We are coming back from the saints, and so are calling on her Serenity."

"You are from Izlegoshcha," said the janitor. "You are the wife of the old deacon,--of course. All right, all right. Go to the house! Everybody is received here,--n.o.body is refused. And who is this one?"

He pointed to Tikhonovna.

"From Izlegoshcha, Gerasimovich's wife,--used to be Fadyeev's,--I suppose you know her?" said Tikhonovna. "I myself am from Izlegoshcha."

"Of course! They say your husband has been put into jail."

Tikhonovna made no reply; she only sighed and with a strong motion threw her wallet and fur coat over her shoulder.

The deacon's wife asked whether the old lady was at home and, hearing that she was, asked him to announce them to her. Then she asked about her son, who was an official and, thanks to the prince's influence, was serving in St. Petersburg. The janitor could not give her any information about him and directed them over a walk, which crossed the yard, to the servants' house. The old women went into the house, which was full of people,--women, children, both old and young,--all of them manorial servants, and prayed turning to the front corner. The deacon's wife was at once recognized by the laundress and the old lady's maid, and she was at once surrounded and overwhelmed with questions: they took off her wallet, placed her at the table, and offered her something to eat. In the meantime Tikhonovna, having made the sign of the cross to the images and saluted everybody, was standing at the door, waiting to be invited in. At the very door, in front of the first window, sat an old man, making boots.