I
The old professor, Edward Henriovitch Roggenfeldt, and his aged wife, Agnes Rudolfovna, had been accustomed for many years to live from May to September in the same watering-place, in Estonia on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. Every year they occupied the same beautiful country villa standing in its own grounds. From the balcony of this villa they had a broad and delightful outlook over the waters of the gulf, the meadows near the sea, and the beach.
Although this watering-place was inhabited for the most part by families of Germans, professors and physicians, and bore the stupid ridiculous name of Très-joli, it was a very pleasant and convenient place in which to live. All the people who owned villas there were firmly convinced that Estonia was the healthiest place in the world and that Très-joli was the most beautiful spot in Northwest Russia. They declared that this was printed in the Encyclopaedia in which other reliable information could be found of this sort, for example, that Edgar Poe lived a degraded life, and was a lying and evil-living man.
The peasants of the place—Estonians—were peaceful and honest and well-behaved; no one ever heard of fights or robberies there. There was a post and telegraph office quite near, only four versts away. The postman came twice a day, and not only brought the post but collected the letters.
There were two cafés in the neighbourhood, one on the seashore, the other inland, near the baron’s estate, with very fine gardens. Once a week there was music in the café on the shore. Not far away, also at a distance of four versts, was an Assembly Room where there was a public dance once a week, and where one could get wine and beer or have dinners or suppers. But all this was not too near—the people who lived at Très-joli could enjoy a peaceful quietude and yet not be deprived of the conveniences of civilisation. The tradesmen brought their goods to the very doors of the villas—a great convenience, which fully compensated for not living near the town markets.
The houses in Très-joli stood on a high cliff. The bank sloped down to the sea, with here and there steep ravines in which were trees and bushes and wild narcissus, but in places the cliff was bare and laminated, rejoicing the hearts of professors and students, who found there ancient Silurian remains, green and brown and yellow layers of limestone and sandstone. Along the edge of the sea stretched a broad strip of fine friable pale yellow sand, dotted here and there with large stones and some small pebbles. The rugged boulders were ornamental, the pebbles were rather a hindrance to walking, but the sand was delightful and the bathing excellent, and on the shore in front of the villas was a row of clean-looking dressing-rooms.
The water of the gulf was of many varying tints and colours, from the palest and most delicate blue in the sunshine to the gloomiest purple in dull weather. Sometimes it was perfectly calm. Then the broad waters of the gulf lay like an enormous expanse of steel along which stripes of fleeting colour streamed.
Sometimes the waves lashed noisily along the sandy shore. The long wearisome sound like the roar of a tired and hungry animal kept nervous visitors from sleeping, flurried the hysterical, and delighted the serious fifteen-year-old schoolboys. On such days they would come down to the shore and meditate upon the “accursed” questions of life and being—those questions familiar to every progressive schoolboy of that age.
The sunsets were wonderful, each evening different. Every evening the sky arrayed itself in a new way, sometimes covering itself with clouds, sometimes appearing clear and cloudless.
If there were few clouds, or none at all, the sky showed itself in an exquisite austerity of beauty as its adornment. Then the sun, solitary, weary, purple in colour, hiding itself behind pale purple veils, sank majestically down towards the hardly distinguishable line of the horizon, sinking slowly, dying away in sadness and beauty, till at length, with a last faint gleam shining for a moment in the misty bed of the far and melancholy distance, it went out like the last sigh of an expiring universe. And then came on an undisturbed serenity both in the heavens and upon the earth, and a spell of deepening shadows was cast upon the warm sand and the cold pebbles, on the dreaming trees and on the humble roofs of the villagers, gradually chilling all.
When the sunset sky was massed with dark heavy lowering clouds, and bright foam-like cloudlets were scattered like a whimsical pattern on the blue enamel of the heavens, the departing sun was attended by a magnificence of flame and colour and radiance and delicate gold-edged beams of light. The enraptured gaze did not then behold the setting sun in the majesty of its departure, for the sun appeared as only one of the heavenly marvels, and not the most beautiful of all—only a monotonously glowing disk of a uniform crimson incandescence. All the broad and beauteous West was filled with slow streams of wavering and glimmering molten many-toned liquid gold, blazing with all the yellows of amber and half-transparent topaz, flaming through the innocent blue of heaven with all the passions and crimsons of blood, trembling and unconsumed in the flames of jasper, onyx and emerald and the glowing carmine of rubies. It seemed then as if a gigantic rainbow, glowing in the heat of the heavenly furnace, suddenly tore apart its thin half-transparent veil, poured itself through and spread out along the heavens its many-coloured stream, which broke out into innumerable fires.
Sometimes in dull weather opal clouds would appear in the sky, and the pale angel of death would look down upon the earth with his unswerving gaze, right into the eyes of people who cannot perceive him.
But it is impossible to describe all the sunsets, because the diversity of them is endless, endless as the diversity of human life itself.
The most pleasant feature of Très-joli was its delightful combination of sea and forest, the trees in some places coming down nearly to the water’s edge. Firs and leafy trees were about equal in number, the stern and stately pines and firs mingling with white-trunked birches, trembling aspens, dull alders, bitter rowans, and proud maples. One rich merchant from Vishgorod had even planted chestnuts and oaks on his estate. The whole place was delightful, and all the visitors rejoiced in its beauty.
The villagers industriously ploughed their barren, stone-bestrewn fields, they prophesied the weather according to the appearance of the sky and the direction of the wind, they caught sprats in the sea, but didn’t bathe themselves in it, and they let their cows wander in the forest and all along the seashore. In short, they behaved as the villagers in such places always do.
“Aborigines,” they were called contemptuously by Professor Roggenfeldt’s grandson, the schoolboy Eddy, who was an unwearied seeker after fossils.
But Madame Roggenfeldt, a grey-haired old lady, with a sweet attractive face of great former beauty, said:
“The Estonians here are so cultured. They play Molière in their public hall, they have a choir and a band, and many of them have pianos. Their children sing and play very nicely, and on holidays they look quite like young ladies.”