Part 17

"Did you believe him?" I asked.

"We didn't know what to do, believe him or disbelieve, but we knew he had been granted power to make investigations and draw up plans. For months, now, they have been measuring the depth of the water and testing this place and that. For my part, I think the preparations are only a device for making money. The engineer will enrich himself: the embankment and the street will be in his bank, but not here. The money they have spent already on his reports is appalling. But of course, if they do build an esplanade, our house will be worth three times what it cost us. We will let it as a café or a restaurant, and it will bring us rent all the year round. God grant it may be so!

"We resolved, however, to protect it, and we obtained permission to build a Chinese wall in front of it. But Bozhe moi, what that wall is costing us--already fifteen hundred roubles, and on the original estimate we thought five hundred.

"Even as it is we don't know how we stand. The engineer may claim that wall as belonging to the town. The town may have it knocked down, for it is built just outside our boundary line. We go down to the sand, and we have built upon the sand."

Obviously she hadn't built upon a rock.

"Now that they think of making a street in front of us, they will call part of the seashore land, and it will be surveyed. Someone will remark that we have encroached, and then down will go our wall and with it our fifteen hundred roubles."

I agreed with her and sympathised. The chances were certainly against the money having been profitably invested. But what an example of Russian ways!

We sat in silence and looked out over the placid waves on whose future kindliness so much of my hostess's happiness seemed to depend. It was a beautiful night. The sun had sunk through a cloud into the sea, and, as he disappeared, the waves all seemed to grow stiller and paler; they seemed full of anxious terror, as the faces of women whose husbands are just gone from their arms to the war. Dark curtains came down over their grief: the waves disappeared. The long bay was unruffled and grey to the horizon, like a sheet of unscored ice. Even the boats in the harbour seemed to be resting on something solid. The one felucca in front of us, with its five lines of rope and mast, grew darker and darker, till at last the moon rose and gleamed on her bows and cordage.

My hostess continued to talk to me of the fortunes of her property. "Twenty years ago," she said, "I was sitting on a log in a field one summer afternoon, when up comes an old peasant woman leaning on a stick and speaks to me in an ancient, squeaky voice:

"'Good-day, barinya!'

"'Good-day!' I said.

"'Would you like to buy a little wooden hut and some land?'

"'Eh, Gospody! What should I want with a little wooden hut?' said I. 'What do you ask for it?'

"'Fifty roubles,' she squeaked. 'My son has written to me from Poltava. He says, "Sell the hut and come and live with me," so I'm just looking for a buyer.'

"'What did you say?' I asked. 'Fifty roubles?'

"'Fifty roubles, barinya. Is it too much?'

"I was astonished. A house and land for fifty roubles. Such a matter had to be inquired into. I felt I must go and look at the hut. I went and saw it. It was all right, a nice little white cottage and thirty or forty yards of garden to it.' Here's your fifty roubles,' I said. And I bought it on the spot.

"We did nothing with it.

"Next summer, when I came down to Ghilendzhik, I said to my husband, 'Let us go and see our house and land.' Accordingly we went along to look. What was our astonishment to find it occupied by another old crone. I went up to the door and said:

"'Good-day!'

"'Good-day!' said a cracked old voice. 'And who might you be?'

"'I might be the landlady,' I said. 'How is it you're here?'

"'Oh, you're the khosaika, the hostess,' replied the old crone. 'Eh, dear! Eh, deary, deary! My respects to you. I didn't know you were the khosaika. I saw an empty cottage here one day; it didn't seem to belong to any one, so, as I hadn't one myself, I just came in.'

"The old dame bustled about apologetically.

"'Never mind,' said I. 'Live on, live on.'

"'Live on,' said Alexander Fed'otch.

"We went away and didn't come back to it or ask about it for seventeen years. Then one day I received a letter offering me twenty pounds (two hundred roubles) for the property, but as I had no need of money I paid no attention. A month later some one offered me thirty pounds. Obviously there was something in the air; there was some reason for the sudden lively interest in our property. Alexander Fed'otch went down, and he discovered that the site was wanted by the Government for a new vodka-shop. If we didn't sell, we should at last be forced to give up the property to the Government, and perhaps find ourselves involved in litigation over it. Alexander Fed'otch made negotiations, and sold it for ninety pounds--nine hundred roubles--think of it. And it only cost us five pounds to start with! Ah, here is a place where you can get rich if you only have a little capital."

"The old woman?" I queried. "Was she evicted?"