The old lady had worn a serious expression while she watched Boris as he talked to Marfinka. She recognised his mother’s features, but the changes in his face did not escape her--the indications of vanishing youth, the premature furrows; and she was baffled by the original expression of his eyes. Formerly she had always been able to read his face, but now there was much inscribed on it that was undecipherable for her. Yet his temperament was open and affectionate and his words frankly interpreted his thoughts.
Now his aunt stood before him wearing a most business-like expression; in her hand were accounts and a ledger.
“Are you not weary with your journey?” she said. “You are yawning and perhaps you would like a little sleep. Business can wait till to-morrow.”
“I slept a good deal on the journey. But you are giving yourself useless trouble, Grandmother, for I am not going to look at your accounts.”
“What? You have surely come to take over the estate and to ask for an account of my stewardship. The accounts and statements that I sent you--”
“You haven’t read them. I have sent you precise information about your income and you don’t even know how your money is spent.”
“And I don’t want to know,” answered Raisky, looking out of the window away towards the banks of the Volga.
“Imagine, Marfinka,” he said, “I remember a verse I learnt as a child--
“‘Oh Volga, proudest of rivers, Stem thy hurrying flood; Oh Volga, hearken, hearken, To the ringing song of the poet, The unknown, whose life thou hast spared.’”
“Don’t be vexed with me, Borushka,” cried Tatiana Markovna, “but I think you are mad. What have you done with the papers I sent you? Have you brought them?”
“Where are they?” she continued, as he shook his head.
“Granny, I tore up all the accounts, and I swear I will do the same with these if you worry me with them.”
He seized the paper, but she snatched them away, exclaiming, “You dare to tear up my accounts.”
He laughed, suddenly embraced her, and kissed her lips as he had done when he was a child. She shook herself free and wiped her mouth.
“I toil till midnight, adding up and writing down every kopek, and he tears up my work. That is why you never wrote about money matters, gave any orders, made any preparations, or did anything of the kind. Did you never think of your estate?”