I used to watch them through a chink in the fence; they could not see me, but I wanted them to know I was there. I liked the way they played together, so gaily and amicably, games which were unfamiliar to me; I liked their dress, and their consideration for each other, which was especially noticeable in the conduct of the elder ones to their little brother, a funny little fellow, full of life. If he fell down, they laughed--it being the custom to laugh when any one has a fall--but there was no malice in their laughter, and they ran to help him up directly; and if he made his hands or knees dirty, they wiped his fingers and trousers with leaves or their handkerchiefs, and the middle boy said good-naturedly:
"There, clumsy!"
They never quarreled amongst themselves, never cheated, and all three were agile, strong and indefatigable.
One day I climbed up a tree and whistled to them; they stood stock-still for a moment, then they calmly drew close together, and after looking up at me, deliberated quietly amongst themselves. Thinking that they were going to throw stones at me, I slipped to the ground, filled my pockets and the front of my blouse with stones, and climbed up the tree again; but they were playing in another corner of the yard, far away from me, and apparently had forgotten all about me. I was very sorry for this; first, because I did not wish to be the one to begin the war, and secondly, because just at that moment some one called to them out of the window:
"You must come in now, children."
They went submissively, but without haste, in single file, like geese.
I often sat on the tree over the fence hoping that they would ask me to play with them; but they never did. But in spirit I was always playing with them, and I was so fascinated by the games sometimes that I shouted and laughed aloud; whereupon all three would look at me and talk quietly amongst themselves, whilst I, overcome with confusion, would let myself drop to the ground.
One day they were playing hide-and-seek, and when it came to the turn of the middle brother to hide, he stood in the corner by the storehouse and shut his eyes honestly, without attempting to peep, while his brothers ran to hide themselves. The elder one nimbly and swiftly climbed into a broad sledge which was kept in a shed against the storehouse, but the youngest one ran in a comical fashion round and round the well, flustered by not knowing where to hide.
"One--" shouted the elder one. "Two--"
The little boy jumped on the edge of the well, seized the rope, and stepped into the bucket, which, striking once against the edge with a dull sound, disappeared. I was stupefied, as I saw how quickly and noiselessly the well-oiled wheel turned, but I realized in a moment the possibilities of the situation, and I jumped down into the yard crying:
"He has fallen into the well!"
The middle boy and I arrived at the edge of the well at the same time; he clutched at the rope and, feeling himself drawn upwards, loosed his hands. I was just in time to catch the rope, and the elder brother, having come up, helped me to draw up the bucket, saying:
"Gently, please!"
We quickly pulled up the little boy, who was very frightened; there were drops of blood on the fingers of his right hand, and his cheek was severely grazed. He was wet to the waist, and his face was overspread with a bluish pallor; but he smiled, then shuddered, and closed his eyes tightly, then smiled again, and said slowly:
"Howe--ver did I fa--all?"
"You must have been mad to do such a thing!" said the middle brother, putting his arm round him and wiping the blood off his face with a handkerchief; and the elder one said frowning:
"We had better go in. We can't hide it anyhow--"
"Will you be whipped?" I asked.
He nodded, and then he said, holding out his hand:
"How quickly you ran here!"
I was delighted by his praise, but I had no time to take his hand for he turned away to speak to his brothers again.
"Let us go in, or he will take cold. We will say that he fell down, but we need not say anything about the well."
"No," agreed the youngest, shuddering. "We will say I fell in a puddle, shall we?" And they went away.
All this happened so quickly that when I looked at the branch from which I had sprung into the yard, it was still shaking and throwing its yellow leaves about.
The brothers did not come into the yard again for a week, and when they appeared again they were more noisy than before; when the elder one saw me in the tree he called out to me kindly:
"Come here and play with us."
We gathered together, under the projecting roof of the storehouse, in the old sledge, and having surveyed one another thoughtfully, we held a long conversation.
"Did they whip you?" I asked.
"Rather!"
It was hard for me to believe that these boys were whipped like myself, and I felt aggrieved about it for their sakes.
"Why do you catch birds?" asked the youngest.
"Because I like to hear them sing."
"But you ought not to catch them; why don't you let them fly about as they like to?"
"Well, I 'm not going to, so there!"
"Won't you just catch one then and give it to me?"
"To you! . . . What kind?"
"A lively one, in a cage."
"A siskin . . . that's what you want."
"The cat would eat it," said the youngest one; "and besides, papa would not allow us to have it."
"No, he would n't allow it," agreed the elder.
"Have you a mother?"
"No," said the eldest, but the middle one corrected him:
"We have a mother, but she is not ours really. Ours is dead."
"And the other is called a stepmother?" I said, and the elder nodded "Yes."
And they all three looked thoughtful, and their faces were clouded. I knew what a stepmother was like from the stories grandmother used to tell me, and I understood that sudden thoughtfulness. There they sat, all close together, as much alike as a row of peas in a pod; and I remembered the witch-stepmother who took the place of the real mother by means of a trick.
"Your real mother will come back to you again, see if she does n't," I assured them.
The elder one shrugged his shoulders.
"How can she if she is dead? Such things don't happen."
"Don't happen? Good Lord! how many times have the dead, even when they have been hacked to pieces, come to life again when sprinkled with living water? How many times has death been neither real, nor the work of God, but simply the evil spell cast by a wizard or a witch!"
I began to tell grandmother's stories to them excitedly; but the eldest laughed at first, and said under his breath:
"We know all about those fairy-tales!"
His brothers listened in silence; the little one with his lips closely shut and pouting, and the middle one with his elbows on his knees, and holding his brother's hand which was round his neck.
The evening was far advanced, red clouds hung over the roof, when suddenly there appeared before us the old man with the white mustache and cinnamon-colored clothes, long, like those worn by a priest, and a rough fur cap.
"And who may this be?" he asked, pointing to me.
The elder boy stood up and nodded his head in the direction of grandfather's house:
"He comes from there."
"Who invited him in here?"
The boys silently climbed down from the sledge, and went into the house, reminding me more than ever of a flock of geese.
The old man gripped my shoulder like a vice and propelled me across the yard to the gate. I felt like crying through sheer terror, but he took such long, quick steps that before I had time to cry we were in the street, and he stood at the little gate raising his finger at me threateningly, as he said:
"Don't you dare to come near me again!"
I flew into a rage.
"I never did want to come near you, you old devil!"
Once more I was seized by his long arm and he dragged me along the pavement as he asked in a voice which was like the blow of a hammer on my head:
"Is your grandfather at home?"
To my sorrow he proved to be at home, and he stood before the minacious old man, with his head thrown back and his beard thrust forward, looking up into the dull, round, fishy eyes as he said hastily:
"His mother is away, you see, and I am a busy man, so there is no one to look after him; so I hope you will overlook it this time, Colonel."
The Colonel raved and stamped about the house like a madman, and he was hardly gone before I was thrown into Uncle Peter's cart.
"In trouble again, young gentleman?" he asked as he unharnessed the horse. "What are you being punished for now?"
When I told him, he flared up.
"And what do you want to be friends with them for?" he hissed. "The young serpents! Look what they have done for you! It is your turn now to blow on them; see you do it."
He whispered like this for a long time, and all sore from my beating as I was, I was inclined to listen to him at first; but his wrinkled face quivered in a way which became more and more repellent to me every moment, and reminded me that the other boys would be beaten too, and undeservedly, in my opinion.
"They ought not to be whipped; they are all good boys. As for you, every word you say is a lie," I said.
He looked at me, and then without any warning cried:
"Get out of my cart!"
"You fool!" I yelled, jumping down to the ground.
He ran after me across the yard, making unsuccessful attempts to catch me, and yelling in an uncanny voice:
"I am a fool, am I? I tell lies, do I? You wait till I get you!"
At this moment grandmother came out of the kitchen, and I rushed to her.
"This little wretch gives me no peace! I am five times older than he is, yet he dares to come and revile me . . . and my mother . . . and all."
Hearing him lie like this so brazenly, I lost my presence of mind, and could do nothing but stand staring at him stupidly; but grandmother replied sternly:
"Now you are telling lies, Peter, there is no doubt about it. He would never be offensive to you or any one."
Grandfather would have believed the drayman!
From that day there was silent but none the less bitter warfare between us; he would try to hit me with his reins, without seeming to do it, he would let my birds out of their cage, and sometimes the cat would catch and eat them, and he would complain about me to grandfather on every possible occasion, and was always believed. I was confirmed in my first impression of him--that he was just a boy like myself disguised as an old man. I unplaited his bast shoes, or rather I ripped a little inside the shoes so that as soon as he put them on they began to fall to pieces; one day I put some pepper in his cap which set him sneezing for a whole hour, and trying with all his might not to leave off his work because of it.
On Sundays he kept me under observation, and more than once he caught me doing what was forbidden--talking to the Ovsyanikovs, and went and told tales to grandfather.
My acquaintance with the Ovsyanikovs progressed, and gave me increasing pleasure. On a little winding pathway between the wall of grandfather's house and the Ovsyanikovs' fence grew elms and lindens, with some thick elder bushes, under cover of which I bored a semicircular hole in the fence, and the brothers used to come in turns, or perhaps two of them together, and, squatting or kneeling at this hole, we held long conversations in subdued tones; while one of them watched lest the Colonel should come upon us unawares.
They told me how miserable their existence was, and it made me sad to listen to them; they talked about my caged birds, and of many childish matters, but they never spoke a single word about their stepmother or their father, at least, as far as I can remember. More often than not they asked me to tell them a story, and I faithfully reproduced one of grandmother's tales, and if I forgot anything, I would ask them to wait while I ran to her and refreshed my memory. This pleased her.
I told them a lot about grandmother, and the eldest boy remarked once with a deep sigh:
"Your grandmother seems to be good in every way. . . . We had a good grandmother too, once."
He often spoke sadly like this, and spoke of things which had happened as if he had lived a hundred years instead of eleven. I remember that his hands were narrow, and his fingers very slender and delicate, and that his eyes were kind and bright, like the lights of the church lamps. His brothers were lovable too; they seemed to inspire confidence and to make one want to do the things they liked; but the eldest one was my favorite.
Often I was so absorbed in our conversations that I did not notice Uncle Peter till he was close upon us, and the sound of his voice sent us flying in all directions as he exclaimed:
"A--gai--
nV
I noticed that his fits of taciturnity and moroseness became more frequent, and I very soon learned to see at a glance what mood he was in when he returned from work. As a rule he opened the gate in a leisurely manner, and its hinges creaked with a longdrawn-out, lazy sound; but when he was in a bad mood, they gave a sharp squeak, as if they were crying out in pain.
His dumb nephew had been married some time and had gone to live in the country, so Peter lived alone in the stables, in a low stall with a broken window and a close smell of hides, tar, sweat and tobacco; and because of that smell I would never enter his dwellingplace. He had taken to sleep with his lamp burning, and grandfather greatly objected to the habit.
"You see! You 'll burn me out, Peter."
"No, I shan't. Don't you worry. I stand the lamp in a basin of water at night," he would reply, with a sidelong glance.
He seemed to look askance at every one now, and had long given over attending grandmother's evenings and bringing her jam; his face seemed to be shriveling, his wrinkles became much deeper, and as he walked he swayed from side to side and shuffled his feet like a sick person.
One week-day morning grandfather and I were clearing away the snow in the yard, there having been a heavy fall that night, when suddenly the latch of the gate clanged loudly and a policeman entered the yard, closing the gate by setting his back against it while he beckoned to grandfather with a fat, gray finger. When grandfather went to him the policeman bent down so that his long-pointed nose looked exactly as if it were chiseling grandfather's forehead, and said something, but in such a low tone that I could not hear the words; but grandfather answered quickly: