‘A snake in the grass,’ he began, uttering each letter of each syllable with bitter distinctness, ‘has poisoned me with his fang, and turned all my hopes in life to ashes. And I could tell you, Dmitri Semyonovitch, all his hellish wiles, but I’m afraid of angering your mamma.’ (‘You’re young yet’—Prokofy’s expression flashed across my mind.) ‘Even as it is’——Zhitkov groaned.
‘Patience … patience … nothing else is left me. (He struck his fist upon his chest.) Patience, old soldier, patience. I served the Tsar faithfully … honourably … yes. I spared neither blood nor sweat, and now see what I am brought to. Had it been in the regiment—and the matter depending upon me,’ he continued after a short silence, spent in convulsively sucking at his cherrywood pipe, ‘I’d have … I’d have given it him with the flat side of my sword … three times over … till he’d had enough.…’
Zhitkov took the pipe out of his mouth, and fixed his eyes on vacancy, as though admiring the picture he had conjured up.
Souvenir ran up, and began quizzing the major. I turned away from them, and determined, come what may, I would see Martin Petrovitch with my own eyes.… My boyish curiosity was greatly stirred.
XVIII
Next day I set out with my gun and dog, but without Prokofy, to the Eskovo copse. It was an exquisite day; I fancy there are no days like that in September anywhere but in Russia. The stillness was such that one could hear, a hundred paces off, the squirrel hopping over the dry leaves, and the broken twig just feebly catching at the other branches, and falling, at last, on the soft grass—to lie there for ever, not to stir again till it rotted away. The air, neither warm nor chill, but only fragrant, and as it were keen, was faintly, deliciously stinging in my eyes and on my cheeks. A long spider-web, delicate as a silken thread, with a white ball in the middle, floated smoothly in the air, and sticking to the butt-end of my gun, stretched straight out in the air—a sign of settled and warm weather. The sun shone with a brightness as soft as moonlight. Wild snipe were to be met with pretty often; but I did not pay special attention to them. I knew that the copse went on almost to Harlov’s homestead, right up to the hedge of his garden, and I turned my steps in that direction, though I could not even imagine how I should get into the place itself, and was even doubtful whether I ought to try to do so, as my mother was so angry with its new owners. Sounds of life and humanity reached me from no great distance. I listened.… Some one was coming through the copse … straight towards me.
‘You should have said so straight out, dear,’ I heard a woman’s voice.
‘Be reasonable,’ another voice broke in, the voice of a man. ‘Can one do it all at once?’
I knew the voices. There was the gleam of a woman’s blue gown through the reddening nut bushes. Beside it stood a dark full coat. Another instant—and there stepped out into the glade, five paces from me, Sletkin and Evlampia.