Four Plays | Page 5

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;