‘Read … here,’ he said hurriedly, ‘where the corner’s turned down, about death. It seems to me, it’s terribly well said, but I can’t make it out at all. Can’t you explain it to me, my benefactress? I’ll come back again and you explain it me.’
With these words Martin Petrovitch went away.
‘He’s in a bad way, he’s in a bad way,’ observed my mother, directly he had disappeared through the doorway, and she set to work upon the Leisure-Hour. On the page turned down by Harlov were the following words:
‘Death is a grand and solemn work of nature. It is nothing else than that the spirit, inasmuch as it is lighter, finer, and infinitely more penetrating than those elements under whose sway it has been subject, nay, even than the force of electricity itself, so is chemically purified and striveth upward till what time it attaineth an equally spiritual abiding-place for itself …’ and so on.
My mother read this passage through twice, and exclaiming, ‘Pooh!’ she flung the book away.
Three days later, she received the news that her sister’s husband was dead, and set off to her sister’s country-seat, taking me with her. My mother proposed to spend a month with her, but she stayed on till late in the autumn, and it was only at the end of September that we returned to our own estate.
XVI
The first news with which my valet, Prokofy, greeted me (he regarded himself as the seignorial huntsman) was that there was an immense number of wild snipe on the wing, and that in the birch-copse near Eskovo (Harlov’s property), especially, they were simply swarming. I had three hours before me till dinner-time. I promptly seized my gun and my game-bag, and with Prokofy and a setter-dog, hastened to the Eskovo copse. We certainly did find a great many wild snipe there, and, firing about thirty charges, killed five. As I hurried homewards with my booty, I saw a peasant ploughing near the roadside. His horse had stopped, and with tearful and angry abuse he was mercilessly tugging with the cord reins at the animal’s head, which was bent on one side. I looked attentively at the luckless beast, whose ribs were all but through its skin, and, bathed in sweat, heaved up and down with convulsive, irregular movements like a blacksmith’s bellows. I recognised it at once as the decrepit old mare, with the scar on her shoulder, who had served Martin Petrovitch so many years.