Dancing between the clerk Ignat and the coachman Arkhip, and also casting glances at the red-faced carpenter Ilyusha, who was mending the cellars at the head of a gang of workmen, she did not notice what was going on in the manor-house.
She thought the master was playing "a new comedy," and many a light remark about the master was passed in the jolly gatherings of the servants.
But one day she happened to enter the dining-room when Yudushka was hurriedly despatching the remnants of roast goose, and suddenly a kind of dread fell upon her.
Porfiry Vladimirych wore a greasy dressing-gown, through the holes of which the cotton interlining peeped out. He was pale, unkempt, and his face bristled with a many days' growth.
"Dear master, what is it? What is the matter?" she turned to him in fright.
Porfiry Vladimirych only smiled half sheepishly, half derisively, and the meaning of his smile was: "I'd like to see how you could get at me now."
"Darling master, what is the matter?
Tell me, what has happened to you?" repeated Yevpraksia.
He rose, fixed on her a gaze brimming over with hatred, and said, pausing after each word:
"If you, you hussy, ever dare—enter my study—I will kill you!"
_____ CHAPTER IV
As a result of this scene Yudushka's life outwardly changed for the better.
Distracted by no material hindrances, he gave himself completely over to his solitude, so that he did not even notice how the summer passed away.
It was late in August, the days grew shorter; it drizzled ceaselessly and the soil became boggy. The trees looked mournful, with their yellow leaves bestrewing the ground.
Absolute silence reigned in the court-yard and about the servants' quarters. The domestics sat quietly under cover, partly because of the weather, partly because they finally perceived that something was the matter with the master.
Yevpraksia came completely to her senses, forgot the silk dresses and her lovers, and sat in the maids' room for hours on end, brooding and wondering what she could do.
The drunken Prokhor teased her that she had designs on the master's life, that she had poisoned him and she could not escape the road to Siberia.
Meanwhile, Yudushka sat in his study, deep in reveries.
The ceaseless patter of the rain on the window-panes lulled him half to sleep—the most favorable state for the play of his fancy.
He imagined he was invisible and was inspecting his possessions, accompanied by old Ilya, who had served as bailiff under Yudushka's father, and whose bones had long since been rotting in the village churchyard.
"Ilya is a clever fellow," argued Porfiry Vladimirych with himself, glad that Ilya had arisen from the dead. "An old servant! Nowadays his kind is getting rare. Nowadays they know how to chat and fidget, but when it comes to business, they're good for nothing."
After saying an appropriate prayer, Yudushka and Ilya pick their way leisurely across meadows and ravines, dales and hills, and soon reach the Ukhovshchina waste. For a while they stand dazed, unable to believe their own eyes.
Straight before them looms up a magnificent pine forest, their tops tossing in the wind.
Some of the trees are so big in circumference that two or even three men could not embrace them. Their trunks are straight, naked, crowned with mighty, spreading tops—all signs of vigor and longevity.
"What a forest, brother!" exclaims Yudushka, enraptured.
"This wood has been protected from felling," explains Ilya. "Under your late grandfather Mikhail Vasilyevich, a procession with holy ikons went around it.
And look how tall the trees have grown." "How large do you think the forest is?"
"At that time it held just seventy desyatins, and the desyatin was then, as you know, one and a half times the present size."
"And how many trees, d'you think, are there on one desyatin?"
"I can't tell. Only God has counted them."
"I reckon there are no less than six or seven hundred trees to a desyatin.
I mean the desyatin now used.
Wait! If we take the number to be six hundred—or, let us say, six hundred and fifty trees, how many trees are there on one hundred and five desyatins?"
Porfiry Vladimirych takes a sheet of paper and multiplies 105 by 65 and gets 6,825 trees.
"Now, see here, if I were to sell all this timber, do you think I can get ten rubles a tree?"
Old Ilya shakes his head.
"Ten is little," he says. "Look at these trees. Each trunk will give two mill beams and some planks and boards and firewood. What do you think is the price of a mill-wheel beam?"
Porfiry Vladimirych makes believe he does not know, although he figured out everything to a kopek long ago.
"Here," continues the peasant, "a beam is worth ten rubles, but if we take it to Moscow it will be worth its weight in gold.
It is a tremendous beam. You will hardly haul it on a three-horse team. And think of the second beam that can be made out of the stem, and the boards and laths and firewood, and branches. Twenty rubles, I should think, is the lowest price for a tree."
Porfiry Vladimirych listens and takes in his words greedily.
A clever, faithful servant this Ilya.
And how well he has picked out his help!
Old Vavilo, Ilya's assistant—he too has been resting in the churchyard for a good many years—is quite worthy of his superior.
The foresters, too, are all tried, stalwart men, and the hounds at the corn lofts are fierce. Both the men and the dogs are ready to grapple with the devil himself for the master's good.
"Let's figure out, brother. If we sell the whole forest, what will it come to?"
Porfiry Vladimirych again makes a mental calculation of the value of a large beam, a smaller beam, a plank, a lath, the firewood and the branches.
He adds up, multiplies, now omitting fractions, now adding them.
Columns of numbers fill the sheet.
"Here is the total, brother," says Yudushka, showing Ilya's phantom an altogether fabulous sum. The old servant is dazed. "Is it not a little too large?" he says, pensively shrugging his shoulders. But Porfiry Vladimirych has already cast off all doubts and giggles gleefully.