PAGE 13
Gubin
by
He sprang towards me with a vicious scowl.
“Who gave you leave to do so?” he exclaimed.
“Wait a moment. I said that it was only in a dream, that you saw her crossing the garden to the washhouse.”
“Indeed? And why did you do that? “
Somehow, as, barelegged and dripping with mud, he stood blinking his eyes at me with a most disagreeable expression, he looked extremely comical.
“See here,” I remarked, “you have only to go and tell her husband about her for me to go and tell him the same story about your having seen the whole thing in a dream.”
“Why?” cried Gubin, now almost beside himself. Presently, however, he recovered sufficient self-possession to grin and ask in an undertone:
“HOW MUCH DID SHE GIVE YOU?”
I explained to him that my sole reason for what I had done had been that I pitied the woman, and feared lest the brothers Birkin should do an injury to one who at least ought not to be betrayed. Gubin began by declining to believe me, but eventually, after the matter had been thought out, said:
“Acceptance of money for doing what is right is certainly irregular; but at least is it better than acceptance of money for conniving at sin. Well, you have spoilt my scheme, young fellow. Hired only to clean out the well, I would nevertheless have cleaned out the establishment as a whole, and taken pleasure in doing so.”
Then once more he relapsed into fury, and muttered as he scurried round and round the well:
“How DARED you poke your nose into other people’s affairs? Who are YOU in this establishment?”
The air was hot and arid, yet still the sky was as dull as though coated throughout with the dust of summer, and, as yet, one could gaze at the sun’s purple, rayless orb without blinking, and as easily as one could have gazed at the glowing embers of a wood fire.
Seated on the fence, a number of rooks were directing intelligent black eyes upon the heaps of mud which lay around the coping of the well. And from time to time they fluttered their wings impatiently, and cawed.
“I got you some work,” Gubin continued in a grumbling tone, “and put heart into you with the prospect of employment. And now you have gone and treated me like –“
At this point I caught the sound of a horse trotting towards the entrance-gates, and heard someone shout, as the animal drew level with the house:
“YOUR timber too has caught alight!”
Instantly, frightened by the shout, the rooks took to their wings and flew away. Also, a window sash squeaked, and the courtyard resounded with sudden bustle–the culinary regions vomiting the elderly lady and the tousled, half-clad Jonah; and an open window the upper half of the red-headed Peter.
“Men, harness up as quickly as possible!” the latter cried, his voice charged with a plaintive note.
And, indeed, he had hardly spoken before Gubin led out a fat roan pony, and Jonah pulled from a shelter a light buggy or britchka. Meanwhile Nadezhda called from the veranda to Jonah:
“Do you first go in and dress yourself! “
The elderly lady then unfastened the gates; whereupon a stunted, oldish muzhik in a red shirt limped into the yard with a foam-flecked steed, and exclaimed:
“It is caught in two places–at the Savelkin clearing and near the cemetery!”
Immediately the company pressed around him with groans and ejaculations, and Gubin alone continued to harness the pony with swift and dexterous hands–saying to me through his teeth as he did so, and without looking at anyone:
“That is how those wretched folk ALWAYS defer things until too late.”
The next person to present herself at the entrance gates was a beggar-woman. Screwing up her eyes in a furtive manner, she droned:
“For the sake of Lord Je-e-esus!”
“God will give you alms! God will give you alms!” was Nadezhda’s reply as, turning pale, she flung out her arms in the old woman’s direction. “You see, a terrible thing has happened –our timber lands have caught fire. You must come again later.”