Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [355]
There were many delightful places to wander. Close by the house there was a long, shady alley in a grove of silver birches. Or one could stroll by the river, where the pine trees gave their scented shade. But Olga’s favourite walk lay through the woods to the monastery.
She loved the monastery. Since the reign of Catherine ended, a number of Russian monasteries – taking their inspiration, as in former centuries, from the great centre at Mount Athos in Greece – had found a fresh vigour and dedication to the things of the spirit; and some ten years before this movement had reached Russia. A few monks had even revived the ancient hermitage, the skit, that lay across the river past the springs.
Twice Olga walked over to the monastery with Pinegin and proudly showed him the little icon by Rublev that the Bobrovs had given so long ago. Though he said little, it seemed to her that he was impressed.
The second time they went, Olga took little Misha with her. For some childish reason, he seemed to be shy of Pinegin and would not walk beside him; but on the way back, when he got too tired to walk, the soldier quickly picked him up and carried him home: for which Olga gave him a grateful smile. ‘One day, if you like, we can walk over to the old springs and the monks’ hermitage across the river,’ she suggested. To which Pinegin gladly agreed.
So the days had passed: Pinegin sometimes out with a gun in the early morning; Ilya reading; walks in the late afternoon. In the evenings they played cards. Tatiana usually won, with Pinegin never far behind. Olga had a feeling that, had he chosen to do so, the quiet officer could have won more often.
Indeed, the only thing that gave her any cause for worry during those days had nothing to do with Pinegin at all. It concerned the estate.
There was nothing much wrong. It was more a succession of little things which, Olga was sure, could easily be put right. If, that was, Alexis would allow it. For if a new cart or a pump were needed, he would brusquely order the serf to try harder with the old one; he was also cutting down timber a little faster than he replanted. ‘Discipline’s needed, not money,’ he would say.
‘I watch over things in his absence,’ Tatiana told her daughter, ‘but he won’t let me make any improvements. And of course,’ she confided, ‘now that the Suvorins are gone, the income from the estates is less.’
Two years before, news had come from Siberia that Ivan Suvorin had died. As for Savva, no word of him had ever been heard. Olga was sad to see these small signs of decline in her old home, but not unduly worried. There were still miles of trees to be cut down before Alexis would be in any real trouble.
The only hint she might have had, in retrospect, came when one morning she was starting out for a stroll through the woods and casually asked Pinegin if he would like to join her. ‘I’d be glad to,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid a plain soldier must be rather dull company for you sometimes.’
And just to be pleasant she had replied, with a warm smile: ‘Oh, not at all, Fyodor Petrovich. In fact, I find you very interesting indeed.’
To her great surprise she thought she had seen him blush. But apart from an almost unconscious feeling of satisfaction, she had scarcely given it another thought.
It was one of the worthy, but slightly tedious, aspects of Alexis’s character that, like his mother and the majority of the village people, every Sunday he liked to go to church – and though nothing was said, it was quite clear that he expected everyone in the house to accompany him. He went not to the little wooden church in the village, however, where once a week a priest came to hold a service, but to the old stone church by the market place in Russka.
‘I wouldn’t mind going,’ Ilya told her grumpily, ‘except for that damned priest.’
The priest at Russka, it