Читать книгу Plays - Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky - Страница 9

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LEONÍD and then POTÁPYCH

LEONÍD. Wait a bit! Hey, you, where are you going? Why are they always running away from me? You can't catch them anyhow! [He stands musing. Silence.

A GIRL sings behind the rail fence:

"No man may hope to flee the sting

Of cruel affliction's pain;

New love within the heart may sing—

Regret still in its train."

LEONÍD. [Running up to the fence] What a pretty girl you are!

GIRL. Pretty, but not yours!

LEONÍD. Come here!

GIRL. Where?

LEONÍD. To me in the garden.

GIRL. Why go to you?

LEONÍD. I'll go to town and buy you earrings.

GIRL. You're only a kid!

She laughs loudly and goes out. LEONÍD stands with bowed head musing. POTÁPYCH enters in hunting-dress, with a gun.

POTÁPYCH. One can't keep up with you, sir; you have young legs.

LEONÍD. [All the while lost in thought] All this, Potápych, will be mine.

POTÁPYCH. All yours, sir, and we shall all be yours. … Just as we served the old master, so we must serve you. … Because you're of the same blood. … That's the right way. Of course, may God prolong your dear mamma's days. …

LEONÍD. Then I shan't enter the service, Potápych; I shall come directly to the country, and here I shall live.

POTÁPYCH. You must enter the service, sir.

LEONÍD. What's that you say? Much I must! They'll make me a copying clerk! [He sits down upon a bench.

POTÁPYCH. No, sir, why should you work yourself? That's not the way to do things! They'll find a position for you—of the most gentlemanly, delicate sort; your clerks will work, but you'll be their chief, over all of them. And promotions will come to you of themselves.

LEONÍD. Perhaps they will make me vice-governor, or elect me marshal of the nobility.

POTÁPYCH. It's not improbable.

LEONÍD. Well, and when I'm vice-governor, shall you be afraid of me?

POTÁPYCH. Why should I be afraid? Let others cringe, but for us it's all the same. You are our master: that's honor enough for us.

LEONÍD. [Not hearing] Tell me, Potápych, have we many pretty girls here?

POTÁPYCH. Why, really, sir, if you think it over, why shouldn't there be girls? There are some on the estate, and among the house servants; only it must be said that in these matters the household is very strictly run. Our mistress, owing to her strict life and her piety, looks after that very carefully. Now just take this: she herself marries off the protégées and housemaids whom she likes. If a man pleases her, she marries the girl off to him, and even gives her a dowry, not a big one—needless to say. There are always two or three protégées on the place. The mistress takes a little girl from some one or other and brings her up; and when she is seventeen or eighteen years old, then, without any talk, she marries her off to some clerk or townsman, just as she takes a notion, and sometimes even to a nobleman. Ah, yes, sir! Only what an existence for these protégées, sir! Misery!

LEONÍD. But why?

POTÁPYCH. They have a hard time. The lady says: "I have found you a prospective husband, and now," she says, "the wedding will be on such and such a day, and that's an end to it; and don't one of you dare to argue about it!" It's a case of get along with you to the man you're told to. Because, sir, I reason this way: who wants to see disobedience in a person he's brought up? And sometimes it happens that the bride doesn't like the groom, nor the groom the bride: then the lady falls into a great rage. She even goes out of her head. She took a notion to marry one protégée to a petty shopkeeper in town; but he, an unpolished individual, was going to resist. "The bride doesn't please me," he said, "and, besides, I don't want to get married yet." So the mistress complained at once to the town bailiff and to the priest: well, they brought the blockhead round.

LEONÍD. You don't say.

POTÁPYCH. Yes, sir. And even if the mistress sees a girl at one of her acquaintances', she immediately looks up a husband for her. Our mistress reasons this way: that they are stupid; that if she doesn't look after them closely now, they'll just waste their life and never amount to anything. That's the way, sir. Some people, because of their stupidity, hide girls from the mistress, so that she may never set eyes on them; because if she does, it's all up with the girls.

LEONÍD. And so she treats other people's girls the same way?

POTÁPYCH. Other people's, too. She extends her care to everybody. She has such a kind heart that she worries about everybody. She even gets angry if they do anything without her permission. And the way she looks after her protégées is just a wonder. She dresses them as if they were her own daughters. Sometimes she has them eat with her; and she doesn't make them do any work. "Let everybody look," says the mistress, "and see how my protégées live; I want every one to envy them," she says.

LEONÍD. Well, now, that's fine, Potápych.

POTÁPYCH. And what a touching little sermon she reads them when they're married! "You," she says, "have lived with me in wealth and luxury, and have had nothing to do; now you are marrying a poor man, and will live your life in poverty, and will work, and will do your duty. And now forget," she says, "how you lived here, because not for you I did all this; I was merely diverting myself, but you must never even think of such a life; always remember your insignificance, and of what station you are." And all this so feelingly that there are tears in her own eyes.

LEONÍD. Well, now, that's fine.

POTÁPYCH. I don't know how to describe it, sir. Somehow they all get tired of married life later; they mostly pine away.

LEONÍD. Why do they pine away, Potápych?

POTÁPYCH. Must be they don't like it, if they pine away.

LEONÍD. That's queer.

POTÁPYCH. The husbands mostly turn out ruffians.

LEONÍD. Is that so?

POTÁPYCH. Everybody hopes to get one of our protégées, because the mistress right away becomes his patroness. Now in the case of these she marries to government clerks, there's a good living for the husband; because if they want to drive him out of the court, or have done so, he goes at once to our mistress with a complaint, and she's a regular bulwark for him; she'll bother the governor himself. And then the government clerk can get drunk or anything else, and not be afraid of anybody, unless he is insubordinate or steals a lot. …

LEONÍD. But, say, Potápych, why is it that the girls run away from me?

POTÁPYCH. How can they help running? They must run, sir!

LEONÍD. Why must they?

POTÁPYCH. Hm! Why? Why, because, as you are still under age, the mistress wants to watch over you as she ought to; well, and she watches over them, too.

LEONÍD. She watches us, ha, ha, ha!

POTÁPYCH. Yes, sir. That's the truth! She was talking about that. You're a child, just like a dove, but, well—the girls are foolish. [Silence] What next, sir? It's your mamma's business to be strict, because she is a lady. But why should you mind her! You ought to act for yourself, as all young gentlemen do. You don't have to suffer because she's strict. Why should you let others get ahead of you? That'd disgrace you.

LEONÍD. Well, well, but I don't know how to talk to the girls.

POTÁPYCH. But what's the use of talking to them a long time? What about? What kind of sciences would you talk about with them? Much they understand such stuff! You're just the master, and that's all.

LEONÍD. [Glances to one side] Who's this coming? That's NÁDYA, evidently. Ah, Potápych, how pretty she is!

POTÁPYCH. She is related to me, sir, my niece. Her father was set free by the late master; he was employed in a confectioner's in Moscow. When her mother died, her mistress took and brought her up, and is awful fond of her. And because her father is dead, why, now, she's an orphan. She's a good girl.

LEONÍD. Looks as if they were coming this way.

POTÁPYCH. Well, let 'em.

GAVRÍLOVNA and NÁDYA enter.