第25章 GUBIN(10)

The woman's hair was grey at the temples, and had resting upon it a silken cap which so kept changing colour in the sunlight as to convey to one. the impression that her head was bonneted with steel, while in her face, picturesque but dark (seemingly blackened with smoke), there gleamed two pupil-less blue eyes of a kind which I had never before beheld.

"Fools," she continued, "how often have I not pointed out to you the necessity of cutting a wider space between the timber and the cemetery?"

From a furrow above the woman's small but prominent nose, a pair of heavy brows extended to temples that were silvered over.

As she spoke there fell a strange silence amid which save for the pony's pawing of the mire no sound mingled with the sarcastic reproaches of the deep, almost masculine voice.

"That again is the mother-in-law," was my inward reflection.

Gubin finished the harnessing--then said to Jonah in the tone of a superior addressing a servant:

"Go in and dress yourself, you object!"

Nevertheless, the Birkins drove out of the yard precisely as they were, while the peasant mounted his belathered steed and followed them at a trot; and the elderly lady disappeared from the window, leaving its panes even darker and blacker than they had previously been. Gubin, slip-slopping through the puddles with bare feet, said to me with a sharp glance as he moved to shut the entrance gates:

"I presume that I can now take in hand the little affair of which you know."

"Yakov!" at this juncture someone shouted from the house.

Gubin straightened himself a la militaire.

"Yes, I am coming," he replied.

Whereafter, padding on bare soles, he ascended the steps.

Nadezhda, standing at their top, turned away with a frown of repulsion at his approach, and nodded and beckoned to myself, "What has Yakov said to you? " she inquired "He has been reproaching me."

"Reproaching you for what?"

"For having spoken to you."

She heaved a sigh.

"Ah, the mischief-maker!" she exclaimed. "And what is it that he wants?"

As she pouted her displeasure her round and vacant face looked almost childlike.

"Good Lord!" she added. "What DO such men as he want?"

Meanwhile the heavens were becoming overspread with dark grey clouds, and presaging a flood of autumn rain, while from the window near the steps the voice of Peter's mother-in-law was issuing in a steady stream. At first, however, nothing was distinguishable save a sound like the humming of a spindle.

"It is my mother that is speaking," Nadezhda explained softly.

"She'll give it him! Yes, SHE will protect me!"

Yet I scarcely heard Nadezhda's words, so greatly was I feeling struck with the quiet forcefulness, the absolute assurance, of what was being said within the window.

"Enough, enough! " said the voice. "Only through lack of occupation have you joined the company of the righteous."

Upon this I made a move to approach closer to the window; whereupon Nadezhda whispered:

"Whither are you going? You must not listen."

While she was yet speaking I heard come from the window:

"Similarly your revolt against mankind has come of idleness, of lack of an interest in life. To you the world has been wearisome, so, while devising this revolt as a resource, you have excused it on the ground of service of God and love of equity, while in reality constituting yourself the devil's workman."

Here Nadezhda plucked at my sleeve, and tried to pull me away, but I remarked:

"I MUST learn what Gubin has got to say in answer."

This made Nadezhda smile, and then whisper with a confiding glance at my face:

"You see, I have made a full confession to her. I went and said to her: 'Mamenka, I have had a misfortune.' And her only reply as she stroked my hair was, 'Ah, little fool! ' Thus you see that she pities me. And what makes her care the less that I should stray in that direction is that she yearns for me to bear her a child, a grandchild, as an heir to her property."

Next, Gubin was heard saying within the room:

"Whensoever an offence is done against the law I..."

At once a stream of impressive words from the other drowned his utterance:

"An offence is not always an offence of moment, since sometimes a person outgrows the law, and finds it too restrictive. No one person ought to be rated against another. For whom alone ought we to fear? Only the God in whose sight all of us have erred!"

And though in the elderly lady's voice there was weariness and distaste, the words were spoken slowly and incisively. Upon this Gubin tried to murmur something or another, but again his utterance failed to edge its way into his interlocutor's measured periods: