"Well, you must have a horse, of course.... A jolly good 'un.... And a cow, I suppose ... some sheep ... fowls of different sorts, eh?"
"Don't speak of it! Ah! if it could be so! Ah! Lord! Lord! then life would be something like."
"Well, friend, life's a poor thing in itself.... I know something about it myself. I have my own little nest somewhere or other. My father was one of the richest in the village...."
Chelkash rowed slowly. The skiff rocked upon the waves saucily splashing against her sides, scarcely moving upon the dark sea, and the sea sported ever more and more saucily. Two people were dreaming as they rocked upon the water, glancing pensively around them. Chelkash guided Gabriel's thoughts to his village, wishing to encourage him a little and soothe him. At first he spoke, smiling sceptically to himself all the time; but, presently, suggesting replies to his neighbour, and reminding him of the joys of a rustic life, as to which he himself had long been disillusioned, he forgot all about them, and remembered only the actual present, and wandered far away from his intention, so that instead of questioning the rustic about his village and its affairs, he insensibly fell to laying down the law to him on the subject.
"The chief thing in the life of the peasant, my friend, is liberty. You are your own master. You have your house—not worth a farthing, perhaps—but still it is your own. You have your land—a mere handful, no doubt—still it is yours. You have your own hives, your own eggs, your own apples. You are king on your own land! And then the regularity of it. Work calls you up in the morning—in spring one sort of work, in summer another sort of work, in autumn and in winter work again, but again of a different sort. Wherever you go, it is to your house that you always return—to warmth and quiet. You're a king, you see. Ain't it so?" concluded Chelkash enthusiastically, thus totting up the long category of rustic rights and privileges with the accompanying suggestion of corresponding obligations.
Gabriel looked at him curiously, and also felt enthusiastic. During this conversation he had managed to forget whom he was having dealings with, and saw before him just such a peasant-farmer as himself, chained for ages to the soil through many generations, bound to it by the recollections of childhood, voluntarily separated from it and from its cares, and bearing the just punishment of this separation.
"Ah, brother! true! Ah, how true! Look at yourself now. What are you now without the land? Ah! the land, my friend, is like a mother; not for long do you forget her."
Chelkash fell a musing. He began to feel once more that irritating, burning sensation in his breast, that sensation which arose whenever his pride—the pride of the tireless adventurer—was wounded by something, especially by something which had no value in his eyes.
"Silence!" he cried savagely, "no doubt you thought I meant all that seriously. Open your pouch a little wider."
"You're a funny sort of man," said Gabriel, suddenly grown timid again, "as if I were speaking of you. I suppose there are lots like you. Alas! what a lot of unhappy people there are in the world!... vagabonds who...."