A Sportsmans Sketches, vol 2 | Page 6

continued Mr. Benevolensky,'be hard for you to part from your revered aunt; you must feel the liveliest gratitude to her.' 'I adore my auntie,' Andryusha interrupted, blinking. 'Of course, of course, that's readily understood, and does you great credit; but, on the other hand, consider the pleasure that in the future... your success....' 'Kiss me, Andryusha,' muttered the kind-hearted lady. Andryusha flung himself on her neck. 'There, now, thank your benefactor.' Andryusha embraced Mr. Benevolensky's stomach, and stretching on tiptoe, reached his hand and imprinted a kiss, which his benefactor, though with some show of reluctance, accepted.... He had, to be sure, to pacify the child, and, after all, might reflect that he deserved it. Two days later, Mr. Benevolensky departed, taking with him his new _protégé_.
During the first three years of Andryusha's absence he wrote pretty often, sometimes enclosing drawings in his letters. From time to time Mr. Benevolensky added a few words, for the most part of approbation; then the letters began to be less and less frequent, and at last ceased altogether. A whole year passed without a word from her nephew; and Tatyana Borissovna was beginning to be uneasy when suddenly she got the following note:--
'DEAREST AUNTIE,--Piotr Mihalitch, my patron, died three days ago. A severe paralytic stroke has deprived me of my sole support. To be sure, I am now twenty. I have made considerable progress during the last seven years; I have the greatest confidence in my talent, and can make my living by means of it; I do not despair; but all the same send me, if you can, as soon as convenient, 250 roubles. I kiss your hand and remain...' etc.
Tatyana Borissovna sent her nephew 250 roubles. Two months later he asked for more; she got together every penny she had and sent it him. Not six weeks after the second donation he was asking a third time for help, ostensibly to buy colours for a portrait bespoken by Princess Tertereshenev. Tatyana Borissovna refused. 'Under these circumstances,' he wrote to her, 'I propose coming to you to regain my health in the country.' And in the May of the same year Andryusha did, in fact, return to Maliya-Briki.
Tatyana Borissovna did not recognise him for the first minute. From his letter she had expected to see a wasted invalid, and she beheld a stout, broad-shouldered fellow, with a big red face and greasy, curly hair. The pale, slender little Andryusha had turned into the stalwart Andrei Ivanovitch Byelovzorov. And it was not only his exterior that was transformed. The modest spruceness, the sedateness and tidiness of his earlier years, was replaced by a careless swagger and slovenliness quite insufferable; he rolled from side to side as he walked, lolled in easy-chairs, put his elbows on the table, stretched and yawned, and behaved rudely to his aunt and the servants. 'I'm an artist,' he would say; 'a free Cossack! That's our sort!' Sometimes he did not touch a brush for whole days together; then the inspiration, as he called it, would come upon him; then he would swagger about as if he were drunk, clumsy, awkward, and noisy; his cheeks were flushed with a coarse colour, his eyes dull; he would launch into discourses upon his talent, his success, his development, the advance he was making.... It turned out in actual fact that he had barely talent enough to produce passable portraits. He was a perfect ignoramus, had read nothing; why should an artist read, indeed? Nature, freedom, poetry were his fitting elements; he need do nothing but shake his curls, talk, and suck away at his eternal cigarette! Russian audacity is a fine thing, but it doesn't suit every one; and Polezhaevs at second-hand, without the genius, are insufferable beings. Andrei Ivanovitch went on living at his aunt's; he did not seem to find the bread of charity bitter, notwithstanding the proverb. Visitors to the house found him a mortal nuisance. He would sit at the piano (a piano, too, had been installed at Tatyana Borissovna's) and begin strumming 'The Swift Sledge' with one finger; he would strike some chords, tap on the keys, and for hours together he would howl Varlamov's songs, 'The Solitary Pine,' or 'No, doctor, no, don't come to me,' in the most distressing manner, and his eyes seemed to disappear altogether, his cheeks were so puffed out and tense as drums.... Then he would suddenly strike up: 'Be still, distracting passion's tempest!'... Tatyana Borissovna positively shuddered.
'It's a strange thing,' she observed to me one day, 'the songs they compose nowadays; there's something desperate about them; in my day they were very different. We had mournful songs, too, but it was always a pleasure to hear them.... For instance:--
"'Come, come to me in the meadow, Where I am awaiting