"No! He-he!"

"Don't you believe in G.o.d?"

"No! He-he!"

They were silent for a long time after that. Then the old man raised himself on his elbows with a sly grin.

"You see," he said, "when a man is worn out ... sleep is the best thing for him ... that is so with dying ... one wants to die....

Understand? When a man is worn out...."

He was silent for a moment, then grinned and repeated:

"He-he! He-he! Understand?"

Ilya gave his father a long look, standing there motionless, with wide-open eyes, feeling a thrill of utter horror.

But the old man was already slumbering.

VIII

Day faded. The blue autumnal twilight spread over the earth and peeped in through the windows. A purple mist filled the room with vague, spectral shadows. Outside was a white frost. A silvery moon triumphantly rode the clear cold over-arching sky.

Ippolyte Ippolytovich lay upon his sofa. He felt nothing. The s.p.a.ce occupied by his body resembled only a great, dark, hollow bin in which there was--nothing! Close by, a rat flopped across the floor, but the old man did not hear. A teasing autumnal fly settled on his eyebrow, he did not wink. From the withered toes to the withered legs, to the hips, stomach, chest, and heart, pa.s.sed a faint, agreeable, scarcely noticeable numbness.

It was evening now and the room was dark; the mist gathered thick and threatening through the windows. Outside in the crisp, frosty moonlight, it was bright. The old man's face--all over-grown with white hair--and his bald skull, had a death-like look.

Vasena entered in her calm yet vigorous manner. Her broad hips and deep bosom were only loosely covered by a red jacket.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, it is time for your meal," she called in a matter of fact tone.

But he did not reply, nor utter his usual "Eh?"

They sent at once for the doctor, who felt his pulse, pressed a gla.s.s to his lips, then said in a low, solemn tone:

"He is dead."

Vasena, standing by the door, and somewhat resembling a wild animal, answered calmly:

"Well he wasn't so young as to.... Haven't we all got to die! What is it to him now? He and his had everything in their day! Dear Lord, they had everything!"

IX

Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the morning. Dark, lowering ma.s.ses followed in their wake. The snow fell in large, cold, soft, feather-like flakes.

St. Martin's Summer was past, to be succeeded by the advent of another earthly joy--the first white covering of snow, when it is so delicious to follow the fresh footprints of the beasts, a rifle in hand.

THE HEIRS

I

Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain--called the Mountain of Falcons, came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence came also Emelian Pugachev.

The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains, making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below.

Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' b.a.l.l.s were held there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya Davydovna--the mistress--old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end of her days.

She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, plundered house was occupied by--the heirs.

They had been scattered over the face of Russia, had spent their lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had stood vacant and moribund. Then the Revolution came! The instinctive fury of the ma.s.ses burst forth--and the remnants of the Rastorov family gathered in their old nest--to be hidden from the Revolution and famine.

Snow-storms--galloping snowy chargers--howled over the Steppe, the Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of Stenka Razin--thundered the Revolution.

The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and chilly. The old cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its steamers moored to their wharves.

The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was nominal, for each barricaded and entrenched himself in his own room, with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, malignant, worthless lives, execrating existence and the Revolution; they lived utterly apart from the turmoil that now replaced the placid even flow of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return.

General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock. Everything was crowded closely together in the room, which was bedroom, drawing-room and dining-room combined. The blue dusk of morning was visible through the heavy blinds of the low window. The general put on his ta.s.selled Bukhara dressing-gown and went outside, then returned coughing hoa.r.s.ely.

"Anna," he snarled, "ask your kinsfolk which of them left the place in such a state. Don't they know we have no servants? It is your turn to set the samovar to-day. Are there no cigarette boxes?" he walked about the room, his hands behind his back, diamond rings glittering on his fingers.

"And it is your turn to go for the rations," retorted Anna Andreevna.

"That will do, I know it. There are four families living in the house and they cannot organise themselves so as to go in turn for the rations. Give me a sheet of paper and some ink."

The general sat down at the table and wrote out a notice:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have no servants; We must see to things ourselves. We can't all perch like eagles, therefore, I beg you to be more careful.

Kirill L. Lezhner."

Kirill Lvovich was not one of the heirs, it was his wife who came of the Rastorov family, and he had merely accompanied her to the ancestral mansion. Lvovich took his notice and hung it on the lavatory door. Then again he paced the floor, his jewels sparkling brilliantly.

"Why the devil do Sergius and his family occupy three rooms, and we only one?" he grumbled. "I shall leave this den. They don't behave like relatives! Are there no cigarettes?"

Anna Andreevna, a quiet, weary, feeble woman, replied tonelessly: "You know there are none. But I will look for some b.u.t.t-ends in a moment. Lina sometimes throws away the unused cigarette wraps."

"What bourgeois they are--throwing away f.a.g-ends and keeping servants!" her husband complained.

The dark twining corridor was strewn with rubbish, for no one had the will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna rummaged by the stove of Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and sweepings. She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna, the maid--a one-eyed Cyclop--had filled it with birch-wood, whereas it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house should be used as fuel first.

After enjoying a cigarette of his "own" tobacco, the general went out to the courtyard for firewood, returning with a bundle of sticks from the summer-house. The samovar was now ready and he sat down to his tea, leisurely drinking gla.s.s after gla.s.s, while Anna Andreevna heated her stove in the corridor.

A dim, wintry dawn was gradually breaking. The family of Sergius--the former head of a ministerial department--could be heard rousing themselves behind the wall.

"You have had sufficient alb.u.men; take hydrates now," rose Lina's voice, calling to her children.