Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [43]
“Yegor Vlassich!” The huntsman suddenly heard a soft voice.
He was startled and turned round, knitting his brows. Beside him, as though she had sprung out of the earth, stood a pale peasant woman of thirty, with a sickle in her hand. She was trying to peer into the face, and she was smiling shyly.
“Oh, it is you, Pelageya!” said the huntsman, and he stopped and slowly uncocked the gun. “Well, how do you happen to be here?”
“The women from our village have come to work here, and so I came with them.… I’m working with them, Yegor Vlassich.”
“Ah,” Yegor muttered, and walked slowly on.
Pelageya followed him. They went on in silence for twenty paces.
“It’s a long time since I saw you, Yegor Vlassich,” Pelageya said, gazing tenderly at the movement of his shoulders and shoulder blades. “I remember you dropped into our hut during Easter week for a drink of water, and then I never saw you again.… You dropped in for a moment at Easter, and then God knows what was the matter … you were quite drunk … you swore at me, and gave me a beating, and then you went away.… I’ve waited and waited.… I’ve worn out my eyes waiting.… Ah, Yegor Vlassich, Yegor Vlassich! If only you’d come back just once in all that time!”
“What would I be doing in your place?”
“No use.… Still, there’s the house to look after … seeing about things.… You are the master there!… So you shot a woodcock, Yegor? Why don’t you sit down and rest awhile.…”
Saying this, Pelageya smiled like an idiot and looked up into Yegor’s face. Her own face was glowing with happiness.
“Sit down? Well, if you want me to …” Yegor said in a tone of indifference, and he chose a spot in the shade between two fully grown fir trees. “Why are you standing, eh? You sit down, too!”
Pelageya sat down a little way away in the full sunlight. Ashamed of her happiness, she hid her smiles with her hand. Two minutes passed in silence.
“You might come back to me just once,” Pelageya said softly.
“Why?” Yegor sighed, and he removed his cap and wiped his red forehead with his sleeve. “I don’t see any need for it. There’s no sense in coming for an hour or two—it will only upset you! And as for living all the time in your village, well, it’s beyond endurance! You know yourself how I have been spoiled.… I have to have a bed, and good tea, and fine conversations.… Me, I want all the fine things of life, and as for you—you enjoy the poverty and smoke of your village.… I couldn’t stand it for even a day. Imagine there came an order saying I must live permanently with you—well, I’d rather set fire to the cottage or lay hands on myself! Ever since I was a boy, I was always spoiled—there’s no getting away from it!”
“Where are you living now?”
“With Dmitry Ivanich, a fine gentleman, and I’m his huntsman. I furnish his table with game … and there it is … he keeps me more for his own pleasure than for anything else.”
“That’s not proper kind of work, Yegor Vlassich!… People call that fooling around—there’s only you who thinks of it as an occupation, a real job of work.…”
“You don’t understand, stupid,” Yegor said, gazing dreamily at the sky. “Ever since you were born, you’ve never understood what kind of man I am, and you never will.… According to you I’m just a crazy half-cocked sort of fellow, but anyone with an ounce of understanding knows that I’m the best shot in the whole district. The gentry know that, and they’ve even written me up in a magazine. There isn’t a man who can be compared with me as a huntsman.… And it isn’t because I am spoiled and proud that I despise the work of your village. From the time when I was a child, as you know, I never had to do with anything except guns and dogs. If they took my gun away, I’d go out with a fishing rod, and if they took my rod away, then I’d find some way to busy myself with my hands. I went in for horse trading and I’d go to fairs when I had money, and you know yourself that when a peasant goes in for hunting and horse trading, then it’s good-by to the plow. Once freedom catches hold of a man, you can never hammer