The Invaders, and Other Stories

Polikushka

A Story

I

“As you may please to order, madame. But it would be too bad to send any of the Dutlofs. They are all, without exception, good boys; but if you don’t take one of the house-servants1 you will have to send one of them without fail,” said the overseer; “and now all point to them. However, as you wish.”

And he placed his right hand on his left, holding them both over his stomach, tipped his head on one side, sucked in his thin lips, almost smacking them, turned away his eyes, and held his peace, with the evident intention of holding it long, and of listening without reply to all the nonsense which the mistress might say to him in this regard.

The overseer had formerly been one of the household servants, and now, this autumn evening, he was holding conference with his mistress, and was standing before her, clean-shaven, in his long coat, the special dress of the overseer. The conference as the mistress understood it was to be devoted to reckoning the profits and losses of the past season, and in making arrangements for the one to come. As Yégor Mikhaïlovitch the overseer understood it, the conference consisted of the rite of standing in a corner firmly on his two feet, set wide apart, with his face turned to the sofa, listening to all the good lady’s unending and aimless babble, and leading her by various expedients to the point of saying hastily and impatiently, “Very good, very good,” to all his suggestions.

The point at issue just at present was the conscription. Three soldiers had to be sent from Pokrovskoé. Two were unquestionably named by Providence itself, with a due regard for family, moral, and economical conditions. Concerning them there could be neither hesitation nor quarrel on the part of the Commune,2 or the lady of the manor, or the people in general.

The third was harder to decide upon. The overseer wanted to avoid sending any of the three Dutlofs, and proposed Polikushka, a servant who had a family and a very bad reputation, having more than once been convicted of stealing corn, reins, and hay; but the mistress, who had often caressed Polikushka’s ragged children, and by means of evangelical teachings had improved his morals, did not wish to let him go. At the same time she had no ill-will against the Dutlofs, whom she did not know and had never seen. And so she could not come to any decision at all, and the overseer hadn’t the courage to explain to her explicitly that if Polikushka did not go Dutlof would have to go.

“Well, I don’t wish to cause the Dutlofs any unhappiness,” she said with feeling.

“If you don’t want them to go, then pay three hundred rubles for a substitute,” was the reply that he should have made her; but his diplomacy was not equal to such an emergency.

And so Yégor Mikhaïlovitch straightened himself up calmly, even leaned slightly on the door-post, and with a certain obsequiousness in his face watched how his mistress moved her lips, and how the shadow of the ruching on her head-dress moved up and down on the wall under the picture. But he did not find it necessary to penetrate the meaning of her words. She spoke long and rapidly. His ears were moved by the convulsion of a yawn, but he adroitly changed it into a cough, which he hid with his hand, making a hypocritical noise.

Not long ago I saw Lord Palmerston sitting with his hat on at the time when he was a member of the opposition, and destroyed the ministry, and, suddenly rising, replied in a three-hours’ speech to all the points of his opponent. I saw that, and was not filled with amazement, because something not unlike it I had seen a thousand times in the dealings of Yégor Mikhaïlovitch with his mistress. Either because he was afraid of going to sleep, or because it seemed to him that she had already gone to great lengths, he shifted the weight of his body from his left leg to his right, and began with the sacramental introduction as he always began:—

“As you please, my lady—only—only—the Commune is to meet at my office, and it must be decided. In the requisition it says that Pokrovskoé must send a recruit to the city. And out of all the serfs, they point to the Dutlofs, and to no one else. But the Commune doesn’t care for your interests; it’s all the same to them if we ruin the Dutlofs.... You see, I know how they have been struggling to get along. Since I have had charge, they have been in the depths of poverty. Now that the old man is just about to have his young nephew’s help, we’ve got to ruin them. But I, you will please take notice, am working as much for your interest as my own. ’Tis too bad, my lady, that you should set your mind on it so. They are no kith or kin of mine, and I have had nothing from them.”...

“Oh, I didn’t think, Yégor,” interrupted the lady, and immediately she felt convinced that he had been bribed by the Dutlofs.

“And they’ve got the best farm in all Pokrovskoé; God-fearing, work-loving muzhíks. The old man has been an elder in the church3 for thirty years. He doesn’t drink wine, nor use bad language, and he’s a church-goer. [The overseer knew how to be plausible.] And chief of all, I will tell you, he has only two sons, and the other one’s a nephew. The Commune make the decree; but, according to the existing rule, it would be necessary for a man with two to have a special vote. Others who have had three sons have given them farms of their own, and come to wretchedness; but these people are acting right, and this is the way their virtue is rewarded.”

The lady did not understand this at all,—did not understand what he meant by “special vote,” and “virtue.” She heard only sounds, and she looked at the nankeen buttons on the overseer’s coat: the upper button he rarely fastened, so that it was on tight; but the strain had come upon the middle one, and it hung by a thread, so that it would soon need to be sewed on again. But, as everybody knows, it is absolutely unnecessary in a business conversation for you to understand what is said, but it is necessary only to bear in mind what you yourself wish to say. And the lady acted on this principle.

“Why aren’t you willing to understand, Yégor Mikhailovïtch?” said she. “I am sure I don’t wish any of the Dutlofs to go as a soldier. I should think, that, as well as you know me, you might feel assured that I would do every thing to help my people, and that I do not wish them to be unhappy. You know that I am ready to sacrifice every thing to avoid this wretched necessity, and keep both of the men from going. [I know not whether it came into the overseer’s head, that the avoidance of the wretched necessity did not require the sacrifice of every thing, but merely three hundred rubles; but this thought might have easily occurred to him.] One thing I assure you, and that is, we will not let Polikéï go. When, after that affair of the clock, he confessed to me, and wept, and vowed that he would reform, I had a long talk with him; and I saw that he was touched, and that he really repented. [“Well, she’s in for it,” thought Yégor Mikhaïlovitch, and began to gaze at the jam which stood in a glass of water by her side. “Is it orange, or lemon? I think it must taste bitter,” he said to himself.] Since that time seven months have passed, and he has not been once drunk, and he has behaved admirably. His wife told me that he had become another man. And now, why do you wish me to punish him, when he has reformed? Yes; and wouldn’t it be inhumane, to send a man who has five children, and no one to help him? No, you had better not speak about that, Yégor.”... And the lady took a sip from the glass.

Yégor Mikhaïlovitch watched the water disappearing down her throat, and consequently his answer was short and dry:—

“Then you order one of the Dutlofs to be sent?”

The lady clasped her hands.

“Why can’t you understand me? Do I wish to make Dutlof unhappy? Have I any thing against him? God is my witness how ready I am to do every thing for them. [She glanced at the picture in the corner, but remembered that it was not a holy picture. “Well, it’s all the same, that’s not the point at all,” she thought. Again it was strange that it did not occur to her to offer the three hundred rubles!] But what can I do about it? Do I know the ways and means? I have no way of knowing. Well, I depend upon you; you know my wishes. Do what you can to satisfy everybody; but have it legal. What’s to be done? They are not the only ones. Troublous times come to all. Only, Polikéï must not be sent. You must know that that would be terrible for me.”

She would have gone on speaking,—she was so excited,—but just then a chambermaid came into the room.

“Is that you, Duniasha?”

“A muzhík is here, and asks for Yégor Mikhaïluitch; they are waiting for him at the meeting,” said Duniasha, and looked angrily at Yégor Mikhaïlovitch.

“What an overseer he is!” she said to herself, “stirring up my mistress. Now she won’t get to sleep till two o’clock again.”

“Now go, Yégor,” said the lady. “Do the best you can.”

“I obey. [He now said nothing at all about Dutlof.] But shall I send to the gardener for the money?”

“Hasn’t Petrushka got back from town.”

“Not yet.”

“But can’t Nikolaï go?”

“Papa has the lumbago,” said Duniasha.

“Won’t you have me go to-morrow?” asked the overseer.

“No, you are needed here, Yégor.” The lady paused to consider. “How much money?”

“Four hundred and sixty-two rubles.”

“Send Polikéï to me,” said the lady, looking resolutely into Yégor’s face.

The overseer not opening his teeth stretched his lips into a sort of smile, but did not alter his expression.

“Very well.”

“Send him to me.”

“Very well.” And Yégor Mikhaïlovitch went to his office.

II

Polikéï, as a man of no consequence, and inclined to be disreputable, and moreover as being from another village, had no one to look out for his interests, neither the housekeeper nor the butler, neither the overseer nor the housemaid. And his corner, where he lived with his wife and five children, was as wretched as it could be. The corners had been arranged by the late lamented bárin as follows: The hut was about twenty feet long, and built of stone; in the middle stood the great Russian stove; around it ran a corridor, as the servants called it; and in each corner a room was partitioned off by boards. Of course there was not much room, especially in Polikéï’s corner which was next the door. The nuptial couch, with quilted counterpane and chintz pillows; a cradle with a baby in it; a three-legged table which served for cooking, washing, piling up all the household utensils, and as a work-table for Polikéï, who was a horse-doctor; tubs, clothes, hens, a calf, and the seven members of the household,—occupied the corner; and there would mot have been room to move, had it not been that the common stove offered its share of room (though even this was covered with things and human beings), and that it was possible to get out upon the door-steps. It was not always possible, if you stop to think: in October it begins to grow cold, and there was only one warm sheep-skin garment for the whole family. And so the young children were obliged to get warm by running about, and the older ones by working and taking turns in climbing upon the big stove, where the temperature was as high as ninety degrees. It must have been terrible to live in such circumstances, but they did not find it so: they were able to get along.

Akulína did the washing and mending for her husband and children; she spun and wove and bleached her linen; she cooked and baked at the common stove, and scolded and quarrelled with her neighbors. The monthly rations sufficed not only for the children, but also for the feed of the cow. The firewood was plentiful, also fodder for the cattle; and hay from the stable fell to their share. They had an occasional bunch of vegetables. The cow would give them a calf; then they had their hens. Polikéï had charge of the stable: he took care of the young colts, and bled horses and cattle; he cleaned their hoofs, he tapped varicose veins, and made a salve of peculiar virtue, and this brought him in some money and provisions. Some of the oats belonging to the estate also made their way into his possession: in the village there was a man who regularly once a month, for two small measures, gave twenty pounds of mutton.

It would have been easy for them to get along, had there not been moral suffering. But this suffering was severe for the whole family. Polikéï had been from childhood in a stable, in another village. The groom who had charge of him was the worst thief in the neighborhood; the Commune banished him to Siberia. Polikéï soon began to follow this groom’s example, and thus became from early youth accustomed to these little tricks, so that afterward, when he would have been glad to break loose from the habit, he could not.

He was young and weak; his father and mother were dead, and his education had been neglected. He liked to get drunk, but he did not like to see things lying round loose: whether it were ropes or saddle, lock or coupling-bolt, or any thing even more costly, no matter, it found its way into Polikéï’s possession. Everywhere were men who would take these things, and pay for them in wine or money according to agreement. Money gained this way comes easy, the people say: no learning is needed, no hard work, nothing; and if you try it once, you won’t like other work. One thing is, however, not good in such labors: however cheaply and easily things are acquired in this way, and however pleasant life becomes, still there is danger that disaffected people may suddenly object to your profession, and cause you tears, and make your life unhappy.

This was what happened in Polikéï’s case. He got married, and God gave him great happiness: his wife, the daughter of a herder, proved to be a healthy, bright, industrious woman. Their children came in quick succession. Polikéï had not entirely abandoned his trade, and all went well. Suddenly temptation came to him, and he fell; and it was a mere trifle that caused his fall. He secreted a pair of leather reins that belonged to a muzhík. He was detected, thrashed, taken to the mistress, and afterwards watched. A second time, a third time, he fell. The people began to make complaints. The overseer threatened to send him to the army; the lady of the house expostulated; his wife wept, and began to pine away: in fact, every thing went entirely wrong. As a man, he was kindly, and not naturally bad, but weak; he loved to drink, and he had such a strong taste for it, that he could not resist. His wife would scold him and even beat him when he came in drunk, but he would weep. “Wretched man that I am,” he would say, “what shall I do? Tear out my eyes. I will swear off, I won’t do it again.” But lo! in a month’s time he goes out, gets drunk, and is not seen for two days.

“Where on earth does he get the money to go on sprees?” the people asked themselves. His latest escapade was in the matter of the office-clock. In the office there was an old clock hanging on the wall. It had not gone for years. Polikéï got into the office alone when it happened to be unlocked. He took a fancy to the clock, carried it off, and disposed of it in town. Not long afterward it happened that the shop-keeper, to whom he sold it, came out on some holiday to visit his daughter, who was married to one of the house-servants; and he happened to mention the clock. An investigation was made, though it was hardly necessary. The overseer especially disliked Polikéï. The theft was traced to him. They laid the matter before the lady of the house. The lady of the house summoned Polikéï. He fell at her feet, and, with touching contrition, confessed every thing as his wife had counselled him to do. He accomplished it admirably. The lady began to reason with him. She talked and she talked, she lectured and she lectured, about God and duty and the future life, and about his wife, and about his children; and she affected him to tears. The lady said,—

“I will forgive you, only promise me that you will never do it again.”

“Never in the world. May the earth swallow me, may I be torn in pieces!” said Polikéï; and he wept in a touching manner.

Polikéï went home, and at home wept all day like a calf, and lay on the stove. From that time forth Polikéï had conducted himself in a way above reproach. But his life ceased to be happy. The people regarded him as a thief; and now that the hour of conscription had come, all felt that it was a good way to get rid of him.

Polikéï was a horse-doctor, as we have already said. How he so suddenly developed into a horse-doctor, was a mystery to every one, and to himself most of all. In the stable where he had been with the groom who had been exiled to Siberia, he had fulfilled no other duty than that of clearing manure out of the stalls, or occasionally currying the horses, and carrying water. It was not there that he could have learned it. Then he became a weaver; then he worked in a garden, cleared paths; then he got leave of absence, and became a porter4 for a merchant. But he could not have got any practice there. But when he was last at home, somehow or other, little by little, his reputation began to spread for having an extraordinary, if not even supernatural, knowledge of the ailments of horses.

He let blood two or three times; then he tripped up a horse, and made an incision in its fetlock; then he asked to have the horse brought to a stall, and began to cut her with a needle until the blood came, although she kicked, and even squealed: and he said that this was meant “to let the blood out from under the hoof.” Then he explained to a muzhík that it was necessary to bleed the veins in both frogs “for greater comfort,” and he began to strike his wooden mallet upon the blunt lancet. Then under the side of the dvornik’s horse he twisted a bandage made of a woman’s kerchief. Finally he began to scatter oil of vitriol over the whole wound, wet it from a bottle, and to give occasionally something to take internally, as it occurred to him. And the more he tormented and killed the poor horses, the more people believed in him, and brought him their horses to cure.

I think that it is pot quite seemly of us gentlemen to make sport of Polikéï. The remedies which he employed to stimulate belief in him were the very same which were efficacious for our fathers, and will be efficacious for us and our children. The muzhík, as he held down the head of his one mare, which not only constituted his wealth, but was almost a part of his family, and watched, with both confidence and terror, Polikéï’s face marked by a consequential frown, and his slender hands, with the sleeves rolled up, with which he managed always to pinch the very places that were most tender, and boldly to hack the living body with the secret thought, “Now here’s to luck,” and making believe that he knew where the blood was, and where the matter, where was the dry and where was the fluid vein, and holding the handkerchief of healing or the phial of sulphuric acid,—this muzhík could not imagine such a thing as Polikéï raising his hand to cut without the requisite knowledge. He himself could not have done such a thing. And, as soon as the incision was made, he did not reproach himself because he had hacked unnecessarily.

I don’t know how it is with you; but I have had experience with a doctor who, at my own request, treated people who were very dear to my heart in almost exactly the same way. The veterinary lancet and the mysterious white phial with corrosive sublimate, and the words, “apoplexy, hemorrhoids, blood-letting, pus,” and so forth, are they so different from “nerves, rheumatism, organism,” and the others? Wage du zu irren und zu träumen,—“dare to be in error and to dream,”—was said not only to poets, but to doctors and veterinary surgeons.

III

On that very evening, while the elders had come together at the office to settle upon a recruit, and while their voices were heard amid the chill darkness of the October night, Polikéï was sitting upon the edge of his bed at the table, and was triturating in a bottle some veterinary medicament, the nature of which he himself knew not. It was a mixture of corrosive sublimate, sulphur, Glauber’s salts, and grass, which he was compounding, under some impression that this grass was good for broken wind and other ailments.

The children were already abed; two on the stove, two on the couch, one in the cradle, beside which sat Akulína with her spinning. The candle-end, which remained from some of his mistress’s that had not been properly put away, and Polikéï had taken care of, stood in a wooden candlestick on the window; and in order that her husband might not be disturbed in his important task, Akulína got up to snuff the candle with her fingers. There were conceited fellows who considered Polikéï as a worthless horse-doctor, and a worthless man. Others—and they were in the majority—considered him worthless as a man, but a great master of his calling. Akulína, notwithstanding the fact that she often berated and even beat her husband, considered him beyond a peradventure the first horse-doctor and the first man in the world.

Polikéï poured into the hollow of his hand some spice. (He did not use scales, and he spoke ironically of the Germans who used scales. “This,” he would say, “is not an apothecary-shop.”) Polikéï hefted the spice in his hand, and shook it up; but it seemed to him too little in quantity, and, for the tenth time, he added more. “I will put it all in, it will have a better effect,” he said to himself. Akulína quickly looked up as she heard the voice of her lord and master, expecting orders; but seeing that it was nothing that concerned her, she shrugged her shoulders. “Ho! great chemist! Where did he learn it all?” she thought to herself, and again took up her work. The paper from which the spice was taken fell under the table. Akulína did not let this pass.

“Aniutka!”5 she cried, “here, your father has dropped something: come and pick it up.”

Aniutka stuck out her slender bare legs from under the dress that covered her, and, like a kitten, crept under the table, and picked up the paper.

“Here it is, papa,” said she, and again plunged into the bed with her cold feet.

“Stop pushing me,” whimpered her younger sister, in a sleepy voice, hissing her s’s.

“I’ll give it to you,” said Akulína, and both heads disappeared under the wrapper.

“If he will pay three silver rubles,” muttered Polikéï, shaking the bottle, “I will cure his horse. Cheap enough,” he added. “I’ve racked my brains for it. Come now, Akulína, go and borrow some tobacco of Nikíta. We will pay it back to-morrow.”

And Polikéï drew from his trousers a linden-wood pipe, that had once been painted, and that had sealing-wax for a mouthpiece, and began to put it in order.

Akulína pushed aside her flax-wheel, and went out without a word of reply, though it was a struggle for her. Polikéï opened the cupboard, put away his bottle, and applied to his mouth an empty jug. But the vodka was all gone. He scowled; but when his wife brought him the tobacco, and he had lighted his pipe, and began to smoke, sitting on the couch, his face gleamed with complacency and the pride that a man feels when he has ended his day’s work.

He was even thinking how, on the morrow, he would seize the tongue of a horse, and pour into her mouth that marvellous mixture, or he was ruminating on the fact of how a man of importance met with no refusals, as was proved by Nikíta sending him the tobacco; and the thought was pleasant to him. Suddenly the door, which swung upon one hinge, was flung open; and into the room came a girl from the upper house,—not the second girl, but a small damsel employed to run of errands. (Everybody calls the manor-house upper, even though it may be built on a lower level.) Aksintka, as the damsel was called, always flew like lightning; and on this account her arms were not folded, but swung like pendulums, in proportion to the swiftness of her motions, not by her side, but in front of her body. Her cheeks were always redder than her pink dress; her tongue always ran as swiftly as her legs. She flew into the room, and holding by the stove, for some reason or other, she began to wave her arms; and as though she wished to utter not less than two or three words at once, and scarcely stopping to get breath, she suddenly broke out as follows, addressing Akulína:—

“Our lady bids Polikéï Ilyitch to come up to the house this minute,—she does. [Here she stopped, and drew a long breath.] Yégor Mikháltch was at the house, and talked with our lady about the necruits; and they’ve took Polikéï Ilyitch.... Avdót’ya Mikolávna bids you come up this very minute.... Avdót’ya Mikolávna bids you [again a long breath] come up this minute.”

For thirty seconds Aksiutka stared at Polikéï, at Akulína, at the children, who were asleep under the wrapper; then she seized a hazel-nut shell that was rolling around on the stove, and threw it at Aniutka, and once more repeating, “Come up this minute,” flew like a whirlwind out of the room; and the pendulums, with their wonted quickness, outstripped the course of her feet.

Akulína got up again, and fetched her husband his boots. The boots were soiled and ripped: they had been made for a soldier. She took down from the stove a kaftan, and handed it to him without looking at him.

“Ilyitch, are you going to change your shirt?”

“Nay,” said Polikéï.

Akulína did not look into his face once while he silently put on his boots and coat, and she did well not to look at him. Polikéï’s face was pale, his chin trembled, and in his eyes there came that expression of deep and submissive unhappiness, akin to tears, peculiar to weak and kindly men who have fallen into sin. He brushed his hair, and was about to go. His wife kept him back, and arranged his shirt-band, which hung below his cloak, and straightened his cap.

“Say, Polikéï Ilyitch, what does the mistress want of you?” said the voice of the joiner’s wife on the other side of the partition.

The joiner’s wife had, that very morning, been engaged in a warm dispute with Akulína, in regard to a pot of lye which Polikéï’s children had spilt; and, at the first moment, she was glad to hear that Polikéï was summoned to the mistress. It could not be for any thing good. Moreover, she was a sharp, shrewd, and shrewish woman. No one understood better than she how to use her tongue; at least, so she herself thought.

“It must be that they are going to send you to the city to be a merchant,” she continued. “I suppose they want to get a trusty man, and so will send you. You must sell me then some tea for a quarter, Polikéï Ilyitch.”

Akulína restrained her tears, and her lips took on an expression of bitter anger, as though she would have wound her fingers in the untidy hair of that slattern, the joiner’s wife; but when she glanced at her children, and thought that they might be left orphans, and she a soldier’s widow, she forgot the shrewish joiner’s wife, covered her face with her hands, sat down on the bed, and leaned her head on the pillow.

“Mámuska, you are squeesing me,” cried the little girl who hissed her s’s, and she pulled away her dress from under her mother’s elbow.

“I wish you were all of you dead! You were born for misfortune,” cried Akulína; and she began to walk up and down the corner, wailing, much to the delight of the joiner’s wife, who had not yet forgotten about the lye.

IV

A half-hour passed by. The baby began to cry. Akulína took him, and gave him the breast. She was no longer weeping; but resting her thin, tear-stained face on her hand, she fixed her eyes on the flickering candle, and asked herself why she had got married, and why so many soldiers were needed, and, still more, how she might pay back the joiner’s wife.

Her husband’s steps were heard; she wiped away the traces of the tears, and got up to light his way. Polikéï came in with an air of triumph, threw his hat on the bed, drew a long breath, and began to take off his clothes.

“Well, what was it? why did she call you?”

“Hm! a good reason! Polikushka is the lowest of men; but, when there is something needed, who is called on? Polikushka!”

“What is it?”

Polikéï did not make haste to reply: he smoked his pipe, and kept spitting.

“She wants me to go to the merchant, and get her money.”

“Get her money!” repeated Akulína.

Polikéï grinned and nodded.

“How well she knows how to talk! ‘You had,’ says she, ‘the reputation of being untrustworthy, but I have more faith in you than in any one else. [Polikéï raised his voice so that his neighbors might hear.] ‘You promised me to reform,’ says she, ’and here is the first proof that I believe in you: go,’ says she, ‘to the merchant, get some money for me, and bring it back.’ And says I, ‘My lady,’ says I, ‘we be all your slaves, and it be our duty to serve you as faithfully as we serve God, and so I feel that I can do every thing for your well-being, because I owe it to you, and I could not refuse no service; so, whatever you order, that I will perform, because I be your slave.’ [He again smiled with that peculiar smile of a man who is weak, but good-natured, and has been guilty of some sin.] ‘And so,’ says she, ‘will you do this faithfully? Do you understand,’ says she, ‘that your fate depends upon this?’—‘How can I help comprehending that I can do it? People may slander me, and any one may fall into sin; but it would be a moral impossibility for me do any thing contrary to your interest, nor even think of it.’ So, you see, I talked to her till my lady was just as soft as wax. ‘You will be,’ says she, ’my principal man.’ [He was quiet for a moment, and again the same smile played over his face.] I know very well how to talk with her. When I used to go on leave of absence, I got practice in talking. Only let me talk with ’em, I make ’em just like silk.”

“Much money?” asked Akulína.

“Fifteen hundred rubles,” replied Polikéï carelessly.

She shook her head.

“When do you go?”

“To-morrow, she said. ‘Take a horse,’ says she, ‘any one you wish, come to the office, and God be with you.’”

“Glory to thee, O Lord!” exclaimed Akulína, getting up and crossing herself. “God be thy help, Ilyitch,” she added in a whisper, so as not to be heard beyond the partition, and holding him by the sleeve of his shirt. “Ilyitch, heed what I say; I will pray Christ the Lord, that you go in safety. Kiss the cross, that you will not take a drop into your mouth.”

“But of course I am not going to drink, when I have all that money with me!” he said with a snort. “Some one was playing there on the piano,—handsomely, my!” he added, after a silence breaking into a laugh. “It must have been the young lady. I was standing right before her, near the shiffonere—that is, before her ladyship; but the young lady was there behind the door, pounding away. She bangs and she bangs so harmoniously—like—She just makes it sing, I tell you! I should like to play a little, that’s a fact. I’d have liked to gone in just for once. I am just right for such things. To-morrow give me a clean shirt.”

And they went to bed happy.

V

Meantime the office was buzzing with the voices of the muzhíks. It was no laughing matter. Almost all the muzhíks were in the meeting; and while Yégor Mikháïlovitch was conferring with her ladyship, the men put on their hats, more voices began to be heard above the general conversation, and the voices became louder.

The murmur of many voices, occasionally interrupted by some eager, heated discourse, filled the air; and this murmur, like the sound of the roaring sea, came to the ears of the lady of the house, who felt at hearing it a nervous unrest analogous to the feeling excited by a heavy thunder-shower. It was neither terrible nor yet unpleasant to her. It seemed to her that the voices kept growing louder and more turbulent, and then some one person would make himself heard. “Why should it be impossible to do every thing gently, peaceably, without quarrel, without noise?” she said, “according to the sweet law of Christianity and brotherly love?”

Many voices suddenly were heard together, but louder than all shouted Feódor Rézun, the carpenter. He was a man who had two grown sons, and he attacked the Dutlofs. The old man Dutlof spoke in his own defence; he came out in front of the crowd, behind which he had been standing, and spreading his arms wide and lifting up his beard spoke so rapidly, in a choked voice, that it would have been hard for himself to know what he was saying. His children and nephews, fine young fellows, stood and pressed behind him; and the old man Dutlof reminded one of the one who is the old hen in the game of Korshun,6 or “Hawk.” Rézun was the hawk; and not Rézun alone, but all those who had two sons, and all the bachelors, almost all the meeting, in fact, united against Dutlof. The trouble lay in this: Dutlofs brother had been sent as a soldier thirty years before; and therefore he did not wish to be considered as one of those who had three men in the family, but he desired his brother’s service to be taken into account, and that he should be reckoned as one who had two grown assistants, and that the third recruit should be taken from that set.

There were four families, besides Dutlofs, that had three able-bodied men. But one was the village elder’s, and his mistress had freed him from service. From another family, a recruit had been taken at the last conscription. From the other two families, two men had been already nominated, and one of them had not come to the meeting; but his wife stood, heavy at heart, in the very rear, anxiously hoping that somehow the wheel would turn in favor of her happiness. The other of the two nominees, the red-haired Román, in a torn cloak (though he was not poor), stood leaning against the door-step, with downcast head; he said nothing all the while, but occasionally looked up attentively when any one spoke louder than usual, and then dropped his head again; and thus his unhappiness was expressed in his whole appearance. The old man, Sem’yón Dutlof, would have given the impression, even to these who knew him slightly, that he had laid up hundreds and thousands of rubles. He was dignified, God-fearing, substantial; he was, moreover, an elder of the Church. So much the more striking was the chance in which he found himself.

Rézun the carpenter was, on the contrary, a tall, dark, dissipated man, quick to quarrel, and fond of speaking in meetings and in the market-place, with workmen, merchants, muzhíks, or gentlemen. Now he was calm and sarcastic, and with all the advantage of his stature, all the force of his loud voice, and his oratorical talent, was nagging the elder of the church, who was such a slip-shod speaker, and had been driven far out of his path.

The others who took part in the discussion were as follows: The round-faced, young-looking Garaska Kopilof, stocky, with a four-square head, and curly beard; one of the speakers who imitated Rézun rather than the younger generation, always distinguished for his bitter speech, and already a man of weight in the meeting. Then Féodor Melnitchnui, a tall, yellow, gaunt, round-shouldered muzhík, also young, with thin hair and beard, and with small eyes; always prone to anger, sour-tempered, ready to see every one’s bad side, and frequently embarrassing the meeting with his abrupt and unexpected questions and remarks. Both of these speakers were on Rézun’s side. Moreover, two chatterers occasionally took part,—one who had a good-natured phiz, and a large and bushy red beard; his name was Khrapkof, and he was forever saying, “My dearly beloved friend:” and the other, Zhidkof, a small man, with a bird-like face, who was also in the habit of saying, “It follows, my brethren;” he kept turning to all sides, and his words were without rhyme or reason. One of these two took one side, the other the other; but no one heeded what they said. There were others like them; but these two kept moving in and out in the crowd, shouted more than anybody else, disturbing the mistress, were listened to less than anybody else, and, being confused by the racket and shouting, found full satisfaction in talking nonsense.

There were many different characters in this group of peasants: some were morose, some courteous, some indifferent, some disputatious; there were also a few women behind the muzhíks, with sticks. But about all these I will tell some other time, as God shall give. The throng consisted, for the most part, however, of muzhíks, who behaved during the meeting as though it were church, and standing in the rear talked in a whisper about their domestic affairs, exchanging views, for instance, about the best time for beginning to cut their wood, or quietly hoped that they soon adjourn the meeting. And then there were some well-to-do men, whose comfort the meeting could not benefit or curtail. To this number belonged Yermil, with his broad, shiny face, whom the muzhíks called “big-belly” because he was rich. To this number also belonged Starostin, on whose face a self-satisfied expression of power was habitual: “Say whatever you please among yourselves, but I am safe enough. I have four sons, but you won’t take any of them.” Occasionally, the opinionated young orators, like Kopilof or Rézun, would have a fling at them; and they would reply, but calmly and decidedly in the consciousness of their unassailable position.

However much Dutlof was like the old hen in the game of “Hawk,” it could not be said that his lads were like the chickens. They did not hop about nor scream, but stood calmly behind him. The oldest, Ignat, was now thirty years old; the second, Vasíli, was already married, but was not old enough to come under the conscription; the third, Ilyushka, the nephew who had just been married, had a red and white complexion, and was dressed in an elegant sheepskin coat (he was a driver7 by profession); he stood gazing at the people, occasionally scratching the back of his head under the cap, as though the affair did not concern him at all any more than if it were the game of “Hawk.”

“Because my grandfather went as a soldier,” Rézun was saying, “that’s no reason why I should refuse the lot. Friends, it is no kind of a law at all. At the last conscription they took Mikhéichef, and his uncle is still in the service.”

“Neither your father nor your uncle ever served the Tsar both at once,” said Dutlof, “and you never served gentlemen nor the Commune; but you’ve always been a tippler, and your children take after you. It’s impossible to live with you, and yet you point out other men. But for ten years I have been police-commissioner,8 and I have been elder, and twice I have been burnt out, and no one ever helped me; and is it because we live peaceably at our place, ay and honorably, that I am to be ruined? Give me back my brother. He died there, didn’t he? Judge right, judge according to God’s law, O orthodox Commune! and do not listen to the lies of that drunkard.”

At this instant Gerásim said to Dutlof,—

“You refer to your brother. But he was not sent by the Commune, but the master sent him because of his good-for-nothingness; so he’s no excuse for you.”

Gerásim had no chance to say another word, for the tall, yellow Feódor Melnitchnui leaning forward began to speak in a gloomy tone:—

“Well, masters send whomever they please; then let the Commune make the best of it. The Commune tells your son to go; and if you don’t like it, ask the mistress: she has the right to command me or any of my children to wear the uniform. A fine law!” said he bitterly; and, again waving his hand, took his former place.

The red-haired Román, whose son had been drafted, lifted his head, and said, “That’s so, that’s so,” and sat down morosely on the step.

But there were many other voices that also joined suddenly in the hubbub. Besides those who stood in the background and talked about their affairs, there were the babblers, who did not forget their duty.

“Certainly, O orthodox Commune,” said the little Zhidkof, slightly varying Dutlofs words, “it is necessary to decide according to Christianity; according to Christianity, my brethren, it is necessary to decide.”

“It is necessary to decide on our consciences, my dearly beloved friend,” said the good-natured Khrapkof, slightly varying Kopilof’s words, and taking hold of Dutlofs sheepskin coat; “it is according to the will of our lady, and not the decision of the Commune.”

“Indeed, how is that?” exclaimed several.

“What’s that drunken fellow barking about?” retorted Rézun. “Did you get me drunk, or was it your son whom they have found rolling round in the road, and does he dare to fling at me about drink? I tell you, brethren, we must act more wisely. If you want to let Dutlof off, though he is not of those who have two grown men, then name some one who has only one son; but he will laugh at us.”

“Let Dutlof go. What’s to be said?”

“Of course. We must cast lots for the men of large family9 first,” said several voices.

“Just as the mistress commands. Yégor Mikháiluitch said she wanted to send one of the household servants,” said some one’s voice.

This observation raised a great hubbub; but it quickly subsided, and single individuals again got the floor.

Ignat, who, according to Rerun’s remark, had been found drunk in the street, began to accuse Rézun of having stolen a saw of some passing carpenter, and of having beaten his wife almost to death during a drunken spree.

Rézun replied that he beat his wife when he was sober as well as when he was drunk, and very little anyway; and this made every one laugh. Referring to the saw he suddenly lost his temper, and pressing nearer to Ignat began to question him:—

“Who was it stole the saw?”

“You did,” replied the strong Ignat, boldly advancing still nearer to him.

“Who stole it? Wasn’t it yourself?”

“No, you!” screamed Ignat.

After the saw, they disputed about the stealing of a horse, then of some bags of oats, then of some vegetables from the fields, then of some dead body. And such strange things both muzhíks said of each other, that if the hundredth part of their mutual charges had been true, it would have been incumbent on the authorities according to law to send both of them instanter to Siberia at the least.

Dutlof meantime sought another kind of protection. His son’s outburst had not been pleasing to him; in order to restrain him he said, “It’s a sin! it’s no use, I tell you.” And he himself went to work to show that the men whose sons lived under the same roof with their fathers were no more to be put in the category of those liable to the subscription than those whose sons lived on separate farms: and he referred to Stárostin.

Stárostin smiled slightly, gave a snort, and, stroking his beard after the manner of the well-to-do muzhík, he replied that it was as it seemed fit to her ladyship; his son would go, of course, if she ordered him to go.

As regarded divided families, Gerásim also demolished Dutlofs arguments, remarking that it was far better not to allow families to live apart, as it had been in the time of the old bárin; that “at the end of summer it isn’t the time to get strawberries” (that is, it was too late to talk about it); that now it wasn’t the time to send those who were the sole protection of their families.

“Do we set up separate establishments just for the fun of it? Why shouldn’t we get some advantage for it?” asked some of those who had left their fathers’ houses; and the babblers took the same side.

“Well, hire a substitute if you don’t like it. You can afford it,” said Rézun to Dutlof.

Dutlof in despair buttoned up his kaftan, and turned to the other muzhíks.

“You seem to know a good deal about my affairs,” he replied viciously. “Here comes Yégor with word from the mistress.”

VI

In fact, Yégor Mikhaïlovitch at this moment came out of the house. The peasants one after another removed their hats, and, as the overseer advanced, there were exposed one after another heads in various stages of baldness, and shocks of white, gray, black, red, or blond hair; and little by little, little by little, the voices were hushed, and finally there was perfect silence. The overseer stood on the step, and made it evident that he had something to say.

Yégor Mikhaïlovitch, in his long frock coat, with his hands negligently thrust into his pockets, with his factory-made uniform cap pushed well forward, and standing firmly, with his legs set wide apart, on a height looking down upon all these faces lifted and turned to him, faces for the most part dignified with age, and for the most part handsome and full-bearded, had an entirely different mien from that which he wore in presence of his mistress. He was majestic.

“Well, boys, here’s the mistress’s message: she is not willing to let any of the household servants go, and whoever among you you may see fit to send will have to go. This time three are required. At present accounts the matter is five-sixths settled; now there’s only half a choice left. But it makes no difference: put it off till another time if you don’t want to decide to-day.”

“Now’s the time! let’s have it settled,” cried several voices.

“In my opinion,” continued Yégor Mikhaïlovitch, “if Khoriushkin and Mitiukhin’s Vaska go, it will be in accordance with the will of God.”

“That’s a fact, true enough,” cried a number of voices.

“For the third we shall have to send either Dutlof, or from one of the families where there are two grown sons.”

“Dutlof, Dutlof,” echoed the voices. “Dutlof has three.”

And again, little by little, little by little, the din began, and again recriminations flew about in regard to vegetables taken from the fields, and things stolen from the manor-house. Yégor Mikhaïlovitch had been manager of the estate now for twenty years, and was a man of sense and experience. He stood in silence for fifteen minutes and listened; then he suddenly commanded all to be silent, and bade Dutlof cast lots as to which of his family should go. They cast the lots into a cap, and when it had been well shaken Khrapkof drew from it. The lot fell to Ilyushkin. All were silent.

“So it’s mine, is it? Let me see,” said the nephew in a broken voice.

All looked on in silence. Yégor Mikhaïlovitch commanded to bring on the next day the conscription money, seven kopeks for each peasant farm, and, explaining that all the business was now at an end, adjourned the meeting. The crowd moved away, putting on their caps, as they went around the house with a noise of voices and shuffling steps. The overseer stood on the doorstep, gazing after the departing people. When the young Dutlofs had gone out of sight, he called the old man who had remained behind, and the two went into the office.

“I am sorry for you, old man,” said the overseer, sitting down in an arm-chair by the table. “It was your turn though. Will you hire a substitute for your nephew, or not?”

The old man without replying looked earnestly at the overseer.

“You won’t let him go?” queried the overseer in reply to his look.

“We’d gladly buy him off, but haven’t any thing, Yégor Mikhaïlovitch. Lost two horses this summer. I have just got my nephew married. You see, it’s our luck, just because we’ve lived decently. Fine for him to talk as he did.” (The old man referred to Rézun.)

The overseer rubbed his face with his hand, and yawned. It was getting tiresome to him, and besides it was tea-time.

“Well, old man, don’t be blue,” said he; “but just dig in your cellar, and perhaps you can find enough to make up four hundred silver rubles. I will hire you a substitute. A few days ago a man offered himself.”

“What! in the government?” asked Dutlof, meaning by “government” the chief city.

“Well, will you hire him?”

“I’d be glad to, but, before God, I”—

The overseer looked at him sternly.

“Now, you just listen to me, old man: don’t let Ilyushka do any harm to himself; when I send to-night or to-morrow, have him come immediately. You bring him, and you shall be answerable for him; and if any thing happens to him, God be my witness, I will take your oldest son. Do you hear?”

“But couldn’t they have taken some one else, Yégor Mikháiluitch?” he said in an aggrieved tone after a short silence; “because my brother died in the army, must they take his son also? Why should such luck come to me?” he added, almost weeping, and ready to get on his knees.

“Now, hold on, hold on!” said the overseer. “There’s no need of any trouble; it’s my orders. You look out for your nephew; you’re responsible for him.”

Dutlof went home, carefully helping himself with his cane over the irregularities of the road.

VII

On the next day, early in the morning, there was drawn up before the door of the wing a travelling carriage (the one which the overseer generally used), with a wide-tailed brown gelding called, for some inscrutable reason, Barabán, or the drum. At a safe distance from his head stood Aniutka, Polikéï’s oldest daughter, barefoot, in spite of the rain and sleet, and the cold wind, holding the bridle in one hand with evident terror, and protecting her own head with a yellow-green jacket, which fulfilled in the family the manifold functions of dress, sheepskin, head-dress, carpet, overcoat for Polikéï, and many other uses besides.

In the corner a tumult was let loose. It was still dark. The morning light, ushering in a rainy day, fell through the window, the broken panes of which were in places mended with pieces of paper.

Akulína, who was up betimes to get ready for breakfast, and her children, the younger of whom were not yet up, were shivering with cold, as their covering had been taken from them for Aniutka’s use, and they had only their mother’s kerchief for protection. Akulína was busily engaged in getting her husband started on his journey. His shirt was clean. His boots, which, as they say, were asking for gruel, caused her the greatest labor. In the first place, she took off her own long woollen stockings, and gave them to her spouse; next, out of the saddle-cloth which had been lying round in the stable, and Ilyitch had brought into the hut a few days before, she managed to make some insoles and lining, so as to stop up the holes, and protect Ilyitch’s feet from the dampness. Ilyitch himself, sitting with his feet on the bed, was busy in turning his belt so that it might not have the appearance of a dirty rope. The cross little girl who hissed her s’s, wearing a sheepskin, which not only covered her head, but protected her legs, had been sent to Nikíta to borrow a cap.

The hubbub was increased by the household servants, who came to ask Ilyitch to do errands for them in the city: to buy a needle for one woman, tea for another, olive-oil for another; tobacco for this muzhík, and sugar for the joiner’s wife, who had already made haste to set up her samovar, and in order to bribe Ilyitch had asked him to share in the concoction which she called tea.

Although Nikíta refused to loan his cap, and he was obliged to put his own in order, that is to say, to fasten on the shreds of wool that were falling off or hanging by a thread, and to sew up the holes with his veterinary needle; though he could not get on his boots with the felt insoles made out of the saddle-cloth; though Aniutka had got so chilled that she let Barabán go, and Mashka, in her sheepskin, went in her place; and then Mashka was obliged to give her father the sheepskin, and Akulína herself went to hold Barabán,—still at last Ilyitch managed to get dressed, making use of all the clothing that appertained to his family, and leaving only the one jacket and some dirty rags, and, now in spick and span order, took his seat in the telyéga, bundled himself up, arranged the hay, once more bundled himself up, picked up the reins, bundled himself up still more warmly, just as is done by very dignified people, and drove off.

His small boy Mishka rushing down the steps asked to be taken on. The sibilating Mashka began to ask for “a lide,” and would be “warm enough, even if she hadn’t any seepskin;”10 and Polikéï reined in the horse, smiled his ineffectual smile, and Akulína helped the children to get in, and, bending close, whispered to him to remember his promise, and not drink any thing on the road. Polikéï carried the children as far as the blacksmith-shop, helped them out, again tucked himself in, again settled his cap, and drove off alone in a slow, dignified trot, his fat cheeks shaking, and his feet thumping on the floor of the wagon.

Mashka and Mishka, both barefooted, flew home down the little hill with such fleetness, and with such a noise, that a dog running from the village to the manor gazed after them, and, suddenly casting his tail between his legs, fled home with a yelp; so that the noise made by the Polikushka hopefuls was increased tenfold.

The weather was wretched, the wind was cutting; and something that was neither snow nor rain, nor yet sleet, began to lash Polikéï’s face, and his bare hand with which he grasped the reins, protected as well as possible by the sleeve of his cloak; and it rattled on the leather cover of the horse-collar, and on the head of old Barabán, who lay back his ears, and blinked his eyes.

Then suddenly if stopped, and lighted up for an instant; the form of the dark purple snow-clouds became clearly visible; and the sun, as it were, prepared to glance forth, but irresolutely and gloomily, like Polikéï’s own smile.

Nevertheless, the son of Ilya was absorbed in pleasant thoughts. He,—a man whom they thought of exiling, whom they threatened with the conscription, whom no one except the lazy spared either abuse or blows, whom they always saddled with the most unpleasant jobs,—he was now going to collect a sum o’ money, and a big sum; and he had his mistress’s confidence; and he was driving in the overseer’s wagon with Barabán, his mistress’s own horse; and he was driving like some rich householder, with leather tugs and reins. And Polikéï straightened himself up, smoothed the wool on his cap, and once more bundled him up.

However, if Polikéï thought that he was like a rich householder, he was greatly mistaken. Everybody knows that merchants who do a business of ten thousand rubles ride in carriages with leather trappings. Well, sometimes it’s one way, and sometimes it’s another. There comes a man with a beard, in a blue or it may be a black kaftan, sitting alone on the box behind a plump steed: as soon as you look at him and see whether his horse is plump, whether he himself is plump, how he sits, how his horse is harnessed, how the carriage shines, how he himself is girdled, you know instantly whether he is a muzhík, who makes a thousand or a hundred rubles’ worth of sales. Every experienced man, as soon as he looked closely at Polikéï, at his hands, at his face, at his short neglected beard, at his girdle, at the hay spread carelessly over the box, at the lean Barabán, at the worn tire, would have known instantly that the rig belonged to a slave, and not a merchant, or a drover, or a householder with a thousand or a hundred or even ten rubles.

But Ilyitch did not realize this: he deceived himself, and deceived himself pleasantly. Fifteen hundred rubles he will carry in his bosom. It comes into his mind, that he might drive Barabán to Odesta instead of home, and then go where God might give. But he will not do that, but will certainly carry the money to his mistress, and it will be said that no amount of money tempted him.

As he came near a tavern, Barabán began to tug on the left rein, to slacken his pace, and to turn in; but Polikéï, in spite of the fact that he had money in his pocket given him for various commissions, cut Barabán with the knout, and drove by. The same thing took place at the next tavern; and at noon he dismounted from the telyéga, and opening the gate of the merchant’s house, where the people from the estate always put up, drove the team in, unharnessed the horse, and gave him some hay, and ate his own dinner with the merchant’s hired help, not failing to make the most of his important errand; and then, with his letter in his cap, betook himself to the gardener.

The gardener, who knew Polikéï, read the letter, and found it evidently difficult to believe that he was really to deliver the money to the bearer. Polikéï did his best to be offended, but was not able to accomplish it; he only smiled his peculiar smile. The gardener re-read the letter, and delivered the money. Polikéï placed the money in his bosom, and went back to his lodgings. Not a beer-saloon, not a tavern, nothing seduced him. He experienced a pleasant exhilaration in all his being; and not once did he loiter at the shops where all sorts of tempting wares were displayed,—boots, cloaks, caps. But as he walked along slowly, he had the pleasant consciousness: “I could buy all these things, but I’m not going to.”

He went to the bazaar to execute his commissions, made them into a bundle, and then tried to beat down the price of a tanned sheepskin shuba, which was set at twenty-five rubles. The vender, looking critically at Polikéï, did not believe that he had the money to buy it with; but Polikéï pointed to his breast, saying that he had enough to buy out his whole establishment if he wanted. He asked to try it on, hesitated, pulled on it, crumpled it, blew the fur, kept it on long enough to smell of it, then took it off with a sigh. “Unconscionable price! If you would only let it go for fifteen rubles,” he said. The dealer angrily pulled the garment over the counter, but Polikéï went out with a gay heart, and directed his steps to his lodgings. After eating his supper, and giving Barabán his water and oats, he climbed up on the stove, took out the envelope, and gazed at it long, and asked the lettered porter11 to read the address to him, and the words, “with an enclosure of sixteen hundred and seventy paper rubles.” The envelope was made of simple paper; the seals were of dark brown wax with the impression of an anchor; one large seal in the centre, four on the edge. On one side, a drop of wax had fallen. Ilyitch looked at all this, and fixed it in his memory, and even moved the sharp ends of the notes. He experienced a certain childish satisfaction in knowing that he held so much money in his hands. He put the envelope in the lining of his cap, made the cap into a pillow, and lay down; but several times during the night he woke up, and felt after the money. And every time, finding the envelope in its place, he experienced the same pleasurable feeling in the consciousness that he, the proscribed and ridiculed, was carrying so much money, and was going to deliver it faithfully,—as faithfully as the overseer himself.

VIII

About midnight the merchant’s people and Polikéï were aroused by a knocking at the gate and the shouting of muzhíks. It was the contingent of recruits, whom they were bringing in from Pokrovskoé. There were ten men in all: Khoriushkin, Mitiushkin, and Ilya, Dutlofs nephew, two substitutes, the stárosta or elder, the old man Dutlof, and three drivers. The night-lamp was burning in the house, and the cook was asleep on the bench under the holy images. She sprang up, and began to light the lamps. Polikéï also woke up, and bending down from the stove tried to see who the muzhíks were.

Some of them came in, crossed themselves, and sat down on the bench. They were all extremely quiet, so that it was impossible to make out who belonged to the detachment. They greeted each other, jested, and asked for something to eat. To be sure, some were silent and glum; on the other hand, others were extraordinarily gay, and apparently the worse for liquor. In this number was Ilya, who had never been drunk before.

“Well, boys, are you going to have something to eat, or are you going to bed?” asked the village elder.

“Have something to eat,” replied Ilya, throwing back his sheepskin, and sprawling out on the bench. “Send for some vodka.”

“You’ve had enough vodka!” rejoined the elder shortly, and turned to the others.... “Better lunch on some bread, boys, and not keep the people sitting up.”

“Give us some vodka,” repeated Ilya, not looking at any one, and in a tone of voice that made it evident that he was not going to be put off.

The muzhíks listened to the elder’s advice, brought from the cart a great loaf of bread, ate it up, asked for kvas,12 and lay down to sleep; some on the floor, some on the stove.

Ilya kept saying occasionally, “Give me vodka, I say, give me vodka.” Suddenly he caught sight of Polikéï. “Ilyitch—there’s Ilyitch! you here, dear old fellow! Here I am going as a soldier; said good-by to mamma, and my wife,—how bad she felt! They made me a soldier.—Set up some vodka!”

“No money,” said Polikéï. “However, it’s as God gives: maybe they’ll find you disqualified,” he added in a comforting tone.

“No, brother, I have always been as sound as a birch: how could they find me disqualified? How many soldiers more does the Tsar need?”

Polikéï began to relate a story of how a muzhík gave a bribe to a dokhter, and so escaped.

Ilya came up to the stove, and continued the conversation.

“No, Ilyitch, now it’s done, and I myself don’t want to get off. My uncle didn’t buy me off. Wouldn’t they have bought themselves off? No, he didn’t want to spare his son, and he didn’t want to spare his money; and they sent me instead.... And now I don’t want to get off. [He spoke quietly, confidentially, under the influence of deep dejection.] However, I’m sorry for mamma. And how the sweetheart took on! Yes, and my wife—that’s the way they kill the women. Now it’s all over; I am a soldier. Better not to have got married. Why did they make me marry? To-morrow we go.”

“Why did they take you away with short notice?” asked Polikéï “Nothing had been said about it, and then suddenly”...

“You see, they were afraid I should do something to myself,” replied Ilyushka smiling. “I wouldn’t have done any thing, of course. I sha’n’t be ruined by going as a soldier; but I’m sorry for the old woman. Why did they make me marry?” he repeated in a soft and melancholy tone.

The door opened, squeaking loudly, and the old man Dutlof, shaking the wet from his hat, came into the room in his huge sabots, which fitted his feet almost like canoes.

“Afanási,” said he, crossing himself and addressing the porter,13 “isn’t there some one to hold a lantern while I give the horses their oats?”

Dutlof did not look at his nephew, but quietly busied himself with making a candle-end burn. His glove and whip were thrust into his belt, and his cloak was closely buttoned; he had just come with the baggage. His ordinarily calm, peaceful, and thoughtful face was full of care.

Ilya, when he saw his uncle, stopped talking, again turned his eyes gloomily toward the bench, and then addressing the stárosta said,—

“Give me some vodka, Yermil; I want something to drink.”

His voice was angry and stern.

“This is no time for wine now,” replied the stárosta, sipping his cup of kvas.—“Don’t you see the folks have gone to bed? What do you want to make a disturbance for?”

The words “make a disturbance” apparently suggested to him the idea of making a disturbance.

“Stárosta, I’ll do myself some harm, if you don’t give me some vodka.”

“You’d better bring him to reason,” said the stárosta to Dutlof, who had now lighted the lantern, but stood listening to what was coming, and looking askance with deep commiseration at his nephew, as though wondering at his childishness.

Ilya, in a tone of desperation, repeated his threat,—

“Give me wine, or I’ll do myself some harm.”

“Don’t, Ilya,” said the stárosta gently, “please don’t. It’s better not.”

But these words had scarcely passed his lips ere Ilya leaped up, smashed the window-pane with his fist, and screamed with all his might.

“You won’t listen, here’s for you,” and darted for the other window to smash that also.

Polikéï, in the twinkling of an eye, rolled over twice, and hid himself in an angle of the stove, raising a panic among all the cockroaches. The elder threw aside his cup, and hastened after Ilya. Dutlof slowly put down the lantern, took off his girdle, clucked with his tongue, shook his head, and went to Ilya, who was already struggling with the elder and the porter, who tried to keep him from the window. They had his hands behind his back, and held him tight apparently; but as soon as he saw his uncle with the belt in his hand, tenfold strength was given to him. He tore himself away, and, rolling his eyes in frenzy, flung himself upon Dutlof with doubled fist.

“I’ll kill you, don’t you dare—You have ruined me! Why did you make me marry? Don’t you dare—I will kill you!”

Ilyushka was frantic. His face was purple, his eyes were wild, his whole healthy young body trembled as in an ague. It seemed as if he could and would kill all three of the muzhíks who were trying to subdue him.

“You will shed your kinsman’s blood, you blood-hound!”

Something passed over Dutlofs ever-calm face. He made a step forward.

“You’d better not do it,” he said; and then, however he got his energy, he threw himself with a quick motion on his nephew, rolled over with him on the floor, and with the help of the elder, began to bind his hands. Within five minutes they had him fast. At last Dutlof, with the aid of the muzhíks, got up, tearing Ilya’s hands from his sheepskin, in which they were convulsively clutched, got up himself, and then carried the young man, with his hands behind his back, to a bench in one corner of the room.

“I said it would be worse,” he remarked, getting his breath after the struggle, and adjusting his shirt-band. “Why should he sin? We must all die. Let him have a cloak for a pillow,” he added, turning to the dvornik; “the blood will run to his head” and, after girding himself with a rope, he took his lantern, and went out to his horses.

Ilya with dishevelled locks, pale face, and disordered linen, glared about the room as though he were trying to remember where he was. The porter picked up the broken glass, and put a jacket in the window so as to keep out the cold. The elder again sat down with his cup of kvas.

“Ay, Ilyúkha, Ilyúkha, I’m sorry for you, indeed I am. What’s to be done? Here’s Khoriushkin, he’s married too. No way of avoiding it.”

“My uncle is my enemy, and he wants to kill me,” reiterated Ilya with tearless wrath. “Much he pities his own!... Mátushka said the overseer told him to hire a substitute. He wouldn’t do it. He says he wouldn’t borrow. Did I and my brother bring nothing into the house?... He is our enemy.”

Dutlof came into the house, said a prayer before the holy images, took off his coat and hat, and sat down by the elder. The maid brought him also a cup of kvas and a spoon. Ilya said nothing, shut his eyes, and lay still on the cloak. The stárosta silently pointed to him, and shook his head. Dutlof waved his hand.

“Am I not sorry to have him go? He’s my own brother’s son. And though I pity him so, they make it out that I’m his enemy. His wife14 put it into his head; a crafty woman, but quite too young. The idea of her thinking that we had money enough to hire a substitute! And so she blamed me. And yet I’m sorry for him.”

“Akh, he’s a fine young fellow,” said the stárosta.

“With my little means I couldn’t do any thing for him. To-morrow I am going to send Ignat in, and his wife will want to go.”

“Send her along, first-rate,” said the stárosta, and he got up and mounted the stove. “What’s money? Money’s dust.”

“Who would begrudge money if he had it?” asked one of the merchant’s people, lifting his head.

“Ekh! money, money! it causes many a sin,” replied Dutlof. “Nothing in the world causes so much sin as money, and it says so in the Scriptures.”

“It says every thing,” said the porter. “A man told me the other day: there was a merchant, he had made a lot of money, and he did not want any of it to remain behind him. He loved his money so that he took it with him into his tomb. He came to die, and ordered every penny that he had to be put into a pillow in the grave with him. And so they did. By and by his sons began to seek for his money. None anywhere. One of them suspected that it was in the cushion. They go to the Tsar, and get permission to dig it up. And what do you think? They discovered that there was nothing there, but the grave was full of mould and worms; and then they dig again, and there they find the money.”

“Truly, much sin!” said Dutlof, and, standing up, he began to say his prayers.

After he had prayed, he looked at his nephew. He was asleep. Dutlof went to him, took off his belt, and then lay down. Another muzhík went out to sleep with the horses.

IX

As soon as all was quiet, Polikéï, like one engaged in some guilty deed, quietly slipped down from the stove, and began to make ready to depart. It somehow seemed to him a trying task to spend the night here with the recruits. The cocks were already calling to each other.

Barabán had eaten all his oats, and was stretching after water. Ilyitch harnessed him, and led him out past the teams of the muzhíks. His cap with its precious contents was safe, and his carriage-wheels were soon rolling anew over the frosty Pokrovskí road. Polikéï began to breathe more easily as soon as he got out of the city. At first, somehow, it seemed to him that he heard some one right behind him, following him; it was as though they stopped him, and bound his hands behind him instead of Ilya, and to-morrow he would have to go to camp. It was neither from the cold nor from terror that a chill struck down his back, and he urged and urged Barabán to his utmost endeavor. The first man whom he met was a priest in a high winter cap, walking with a one-eyed workman. Polikéï grew even more troubled. But as he left the city behind, this terror gradually diminished. Barabán proceeded in a slow walk. It grew lighter, so that it was possible to see the road before him. Ilyitch took his cap, felt to see that the money was all right. “Shall I put it in my bosom?” he queried. “I should have to untie my girdle. Now I am coming to the hill. I’ll get out of the telyéga when I get there. I’ll be careful. My cap fits tight, and it can’t slip out from under the lining, and I won’t take off my cap till I get home.”

When he came to the hill, Barabán, in his peculiar trot, dashed up the slope; and Polikéï, who, like the horse, felt a strong desire to get home, did not hinder him in his endeavor.

Every thing was in order, or, at least, seemed to him so; and he gave free course to his imagination in respect to his mistress’s delight, and the five-silver-ruble piece which she would give him, and the joy of his family. He took off his cap, once more felt of the letter, crushed his cap down closer to his head, and smiled. The wool on his cap was rotten; and for the very reason that Akulína, the day before, had carefully sewed the torn place, he tore the other end; and the very motion that Polikéï made when he thought that he was pulling down the envelope with the money closer under the wool,—that same motion tore away the cap, and, gave the envelope a chance to escape from one corner under the pelt.

It began to grow light, and Polikéï, who had not slept all night, grew drowsy. Adjusting his cap again, and still more loosening the envelope, Polikéï leaned his head on the side of the wagon, and drowsed.

He woke up just as he reached home. His first impulse was to feel for his cap: it was firm on his head. He did not take it off, being convinced that the envelope was there. He whipped up Barabán, adjusted the hay, again assumed the dignity of a householder, and, looking around him with an air of importance, rattled up toward his home.

There was the cook-house, there the wing, there the joiner’s wife hanging out her wash, there the office; there the manor-house, where, in a moment, Polikéï would give proof that he was a faithful and honest man, “for any man can be slandered,” and the mistress would say, “Well, thank you, Polikéï, here’s three—or maybe five, or maybe even ten—silver rubles for you;” and would have some tea brought to him, and perhaps some spirits besides. It would not come amiss after the chilly ride. “And with the ten rubles we’ll have a holiday, and buy some boots, and pay back Nikíta the four rubles and a half, since he’s begun to dun me for them.”

Not driving the two hundred steps that remained, Polikéï straightened himself up, tightened his belt, adjusted his collar, took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and with confidence thrust his hand under the lining. His hand moved more and more nervously; he inserted the other also. His face grew paler and paler. One hand came out on the other side.... Polikéï fell on his knees, stopped the horse, and began to search all over the telyéga, the hay, the bundle of purchases, to feel in his bosom, in his overalls. The money was nowhere to be found.

“Mercy on me!15 What does this mean? What will be done to me?” he roared, tearing his hair.

But just then, remembering that he might be seen, he turned Barabán around, put on his cap, and drove the astonished and reluctant animal up the road again.

“I can’t bear to have Polikéï drive me,” Barabán must have said to himself. “Once in my life he has fed me and watered me in time, and just for the sake of deceiving me in the most unpleasant manner. How I put myself out to get home! He stopped me, and just as I smelled our hay, he drives me back again.”

“You devilish good-for-nothing beast!” cried Polikéï through his tears, standing up in the telyéga, and sawing on Barabán’s mouth, and plying the whip.

X

That whole day no one at Pokrovskoé saw Polikéï. The mistress several times after dinner made inquiries, and Aksiutka flew down to Akulína: but Akulína said that he had not come; that the merchant must have detained him, or something had happened to the horse. “Can’t he have gone lame?” she suggested. “The last time Maksim was gone four and twenty hours,—walked the whole way.” And Aksiutka’s pendulums brought back the message to the house; and Akulína thought over all the reasons for her husband’s delay, and tried hard to calm her fears, but she did not succeed. Her heart was heavy, and her preparations for the next day’s festival made little progress in her hands. She tormented herself all the more because the joiner’s wife was convinced that she had seen him.

“A man just like Ilyitch had driven up the proshpect, and then turned back again.”

The children also waited restlessly and impatiently for their papa; but for other reasons. Aniutka and Mashka were without any sheepskin or cloak; and so they were deprived of the possibility of taking turns in going into the street, and were therefore obliged to content themselves in their single garments, and to make circuits around the house with strenuous swiftness so as to be troubled as little as possible by the inhabitants of the wing coming and going. Once Mashka tripped over the feet of the joiner’s wife, who was lugging water; and though she was crying lustily from the knock that she received on her knee, yet her hair was pulled violently, and she began to cry still more grievously. When she did not meet any one, she flew straight into the door, and mounted the stove by means of the tub.

The mistress and Akulína began to be really worried about Polikéï himself; the children, about what he wore. But Yégor Mikhailovitch, in reply to her ladyship’s question, “Hasn’t Polikéï come yet, and where can he be?” smiled, and said, “I cannot tell;” and it was evident that he was satisfied to have his pre-supposition confirmed. “He would have to come to dinner,” he said significantly.

All that day no one at Pokrovskoé had any tidings of Polikéï: except it was noised abroad that some neighboring muzhíks had seen him without his cap, and asking every one “if they seen a letter.”

Another man had seen him asleep by the side of the road, near a horse hitched into a telyéga. “I thought he was drunk,” said this man, “and that the horse had not been fed or watered for a couple of days, his belly was so drawn up.”

Akulína did not sleep all night, but sat up waiting for him; but not even in the night did he put in an appearance. If she had lived alone, and had a cook and second girl, she would have been still more unhappy; but as soon as the cocks began to crow for the third time, and the joiner’s wife got up, Akulína was obliged to rise and betake herself to the stove. It was a holiday; so it was necessary before daylight to take out her bread, to make kvas, to bake cookies, to milk the cow, to iron the dresses and shirts, to wash the children, to bring water, and keep her neighbor from occupying the whole oven. Akulína ceased not to keep her ears open while she was fulfilling these duties. It was already broad daylight: already the bells had begun to peal, already the children were up, and still no Polikéï. Yesterday, winter had really set in; the fields, roads, and roofs were covered with patches of snow; but to-day, as though in honor of a festival, it was clear, sunny, and cool, so that one could see and hear a long distance. But Akulína standing by the oven, and with her head thrust into the door so as to watch the baking of her cookies, did not hear Polikéï as he came in, and only by the cries of the children did she know that her husband had come. Aniutka, as the eldest, had oiled her hair and dressed herself. She had on a new calico dress, somewhat rumpled, the gift of the gracious lady, and it fitted her like the bark on a tree, and dazzled the neighbors’ eyes; her hair was shiny, having been rubbed with a candle-end; her shoos were not exactly new, but were elegant.

Mashka was still in jacket and rags, so Aniutka would not let her come near to her lest she should soil her clean things. Mashka was in the yard when her father came along with a bag.

“Papa’s come!” she shouted, beginning to cry, and threw herself head-first into the door past Aniutka, leaving a great smutch on her dress. Aniutka, no longer afraid of getting soiled, immediately struck Mashka. Akulína could not leave her work, and had to shout to the children, “There now, stop! I’ll give you both a good thrashing!” and she glanced toward the door. Ilyitch, with his sack in his hand, came through the entry, and instantly threw himself into his corner. Akulína noticed that he was pale, and that his face had an expression as though he had been neither weeping nor laughing: she could not understand it.

“Well, Ilyitch,” she asked, not leaving the oven, “what luck?”

Ilyitch muttered something which she did not hear.

“How?” she screamed, “have you been to our lady’s?”

Ilyitch sat down on the bed, looked wildly around, and smiled his guilty and deeply unhappy smile. For a long time he said nothing.

“Well, Ilyitch? why so long?” rang Akulína’s voice.

“I, Akulína,—I gave the money to our lady; how thankful she was!” said he suddenly, and looked around even more restlessly than ever, still smiling. Two objects especially attracted his restless, feverishly-staring eyes,—the rope fastened to the cradle, and the baby. He went to the cradle, and with his slender fingers began rapidly to untie a knot in the rope. Then his eyes rested on the babe; but here Akulína, with the cookies on a platter, came into the corner. Ilyitch quickly hid the rope in his bosom, and sat down on the bed.

“What’s the matter, Ilyitch? you don’t seem like yourself,” said Akulna.

“I haven’t had any sleep,” was his reply.

Suddenly something flashed by the window; and in an instant Aksiutka, the maid from the upper house, darted into the room.

“The gracious lady16 commands Polikéï Ilyitch to come to her this minute,” said she. “Avdót’ya Mikolávna commands you to come this minute,—this minute.”

Polikéï gazed at Akulína, at the maid-servant.

“Right away! what more is wanted?” he asked so simply that Akulína’s apprehensions were quieted: maybe he is going to be rewarded. “Say I will come right away.”

He got up and went out. Akulína took a trough, placed it on the bench, poured in water from the buckets which stood by the door, filled it up with boiling water from the kettle, began to roll up her sleeves, and try the temperature of the water.

“Come, Mashka, I want to wash you.”

The cross sibilating little girl began to cry.

“Come, you scabby wench! I want to put you on a clean shirt. Now, make up faces, will you? Come, I’ve got to wash your sister yet.”

Polikéï meantime was going, not in the direction taken by the maid from the house, but exactly opposite. In the entry next the wall was a straight staircase leading to the loft. When Polikéï reached the entry he looked around, and, seeing no one, he bent down, and almost running climbed up this stairs quickly and with agility.

“What in the world does it mean that Polikéï doesn’t come?” asked the lady impatiently, turning to Duniasha, who was combing her hair. “Where is Polikéï? Why doesn’t he come?”

Aksiutka again flew down to the servants’ wing, and again flew into the entry, and summoned Ilyitch to the mistress. “But he went long ago,” said Akulína, who, having washed Mashka, was at this time in the act of putting her contumacious little boy in the trough, and silently, in spite of his cries, was washing his red head. The boy screamed, wrinkled up his face, and tried to clutch something with his helpless hands. Akulína with one big hand supported his weak, soft little back, all dimples, and soaped it.

“See if he isn’t asleep somewhere,” she said, glancing around nervously.

The joiner’s wife at this time with her hair unkempt, with her bosom open, and holding up her dress, was climbing up to the loft to get her clothes which were drying there. Suddenly a cry of horror was heard from the loft, and the joiner’s wife, like one crazy, with wide-open eyes, came down on her hands and feet backwards, quicker than a cat, and fled from the stairs.

“Ilyitch,” she cried.

Akulína dropped the child which she was holding.

“He has hung himself!” roared the joiner’s wife.

Akulína—not noticing that the child, like a ball, rolled over and over on his face, and, kicking his little legs, fell head first into the water—ran to the entry.

“From the beam—he is hanging,” repeated the joiner’s wife, but stopped when she saw Akulína.

Akulína flew to the stairs, and before any one could prevent her climbed up, and with a terrible cry fell back like a dead body on the steps; and she would have killed herself if the people, coming from all parts, had not been in time to seize her.

XI

For some minutes it was impossible to bring any order out of the general chaos. The people ran about in crowds, all screaming, all talking; children and old people weeping. Akulína lay in a dead faint. At last some peasants, the joiner, and the overseer, who came running up, mounted the stairs; and the joiner’s wife for the twentieth time related how she, without any thought of any thing, went after her clothes, looked in this way: “I see a man; I look more close: there’s a cap lying on one side. I see his legs twitching. Then a cold chill ran down my back. At last I make out a man hanging there, and... that I should have to see that! How ever I got down is more than I can tell. And it is a miracle that God saved me. Truly the Lord had mercy. It was so steep, and—such a height! I might have got my death.”

The men who went into the loft told the same story. Ilyitch was hanging from the beam, in his shirt and stockings alone, with the very rope that he had taken off from the cradle. His cap which had fallen off lay beside him. He had taken off his jacket and sheepskin shuba, and folded them neatly. His feet just touched the floor, and there was not a sign of life. Akulína came to herself, and tried to climb to the loft again; but they would not let her.

“Mamma,17 little brother has fallen into the water,” suddenly screamed the sibilating girl from the corner. Akulína tore herself away, and darted back to the house. The babe, not stirring, lay head downwards in the tub, and his legs were motionless. Akulína seized him, but the child did not breathe, and gave no signs of life. Akulína threw him on the bed, put her arms akimbo, and burst into a fit of laughter so loud, discordant, and terrible, that Mashka, who at first began to laugh too, put her fingers in her ears, and ran weeping into the entry.

The people also poured into the corner, and filled it with their lamentations. They picked up the child, and tried to bring him to; but it was in vain. Akulína jumped about on the bed, and laughed and laughed so uncannily, that it threw a terror over those who heard it.

And now to see this heterogeneous throng of lusty peasants and women, of old men and children, pressing into the entry, one could get some idea of the number of people who lived in the servants’ quarters.18 All were running about this way and that, all talking at once; many were weeping, and no one did any thing useful. The joiner’s wife kept finding new-comers who had not heard her story; and again and again she repeated how her deepest feelings had been stirred up by the unexpected sight, and how God had saved her from falling down the stairs. The old butler, in a woman’s jacket, told how a woman in the time of the late bárin had drowned herself in the pond. The overseer sent messengers after the police inspector19 and a priest, and stationed guards. The maid-servant Aksiutka, her eyes red with weeping, peeped through a hole in the loft; and though she could not see any thing there, yet she could not tear herself away and go to her mistress.

Agáfya Mikhaïlovna, who had been the dowager’s lady’s-maid, made some tea to calm her nerves, and wept. The experienced old grandmother, Anna, with her swollen hands smeared with olive-oil, was laying out upon the table the dead body of the little babe. The women stood around Akulína, and looked at her in silence. The children who lived in the corners looked at the mother, and began to cry, then choked down their sobs, and then again, looking at her, began to weep louder than ever. The boys and men collected around the steps, and with terror-stricken faces peered into the door and into the windows, unable to see any thing, and not understanding it all, and asking each other questions about what had happened. One said that the joiner had cut his wife’s leg off with an axe. Another said that the laundress had had triplets. A third said that the cook’s cat had had a fit, and bitten the people. But the truth gradually became generally known, and at last reached the mistress’s ears. And it seems that they hadn’t the wit to break the news gently to her: the rough Yégor told her point-blank, and so shattered her nerves that for a long time afterwards she could not get over it.

The crowd now began to grow calmer! The joiner’s wife set up her samovar, and made some warm tea; and so those from outside, not receiving an invitation, took the hint that it was incumbent upon them to go home. The boys began to tear themselves away from the steps. Everybody now knew what the trouble was, and crossing themselves were beginning to scatter in different directions, when suddenly the cry was raised, “bárinya, bárinya.”20 and all came rushing back again, and crowding together so as to give her room to pass. Nevertheless, all wanted to see what the lady would do.

The bárinya, pale, and with tears in her eyes, passed through the entry, and crossed the threshold into Akulína’s corner. A dozen heads crowded together and peered through the door. They pressed so violently against one woman who was heavy with child, that she screamed, but nevertheless, taking advantage of the situation, this same woman managed to get the foremost place. And how could they help wishing to see the mistress in Akulína’s corner! For the domestics it was much the same as a Bengal fire at the end of an exhibition. Of course it’s a fine thing to burn the Bengal fire; and of course it’s a fine thing when the mistress, in her silk and laces, goes into Akulína’s corner. The lady went up to Akulína, and took her by the hand. But Akulína snatched it away. The old domestics shook their heads disapprovingly.

“Akulína,” said the lady, “for your children’s sake calm yourself.”

Akulína gave a loud laugh and drew herself up.

“My children are solid silver, solid silver! I don’t deal in paper notes,” she muttered rapidly. “I told Ilyitch, ‘Don’t keep the bank-notes,’ and now they’ve smeared him with tar, smeared him—with tar and soap, lady. So if he’s got the barn-itch, it’ll cure him right away;” and again she went into a fit of laughter, louder than before.

The mistress turned around, and asked for the doctor’s boy with some mustard. “Give me some cold water,” and she herself began to look about for water. But when she saw the dead child, and the old grandmother Anna standing by him, the mistress turned away, and all saw that she covered her face with a handkerchief and wept. But the grandmother Anna (it was a pity that the mistress did not see it: she would have appreciated it, and it was all done for her too) covered the child with a piece of linen, folded the little arms with her soft, skilful hand, and arranged the little head, composed the lips, and feelingly closed the eyes, and sighed, so that every one could see what a beautiful heart she had. But the mistress did not see it, and she could not have seen it. She began to sob, and when the first attack of hysterics was over they led her out into the entry, and they led her home.

“That’s all she could do,” was what many thought, and they began to separate. Akulína was still laughing, and talking nonsense. They led her into another room, cupped her, put on mustard-plasters, applied ice to her forehead; but all the time she did not understand it in the least, did not weep, but laughed, and said and did such things that the kind people who were waiting on her could not restrain themselves, but even laughed.

XII

The festival was not gay at Pokrovskoé. Notwithstanding the fact that the day was beautiful, the people did not go out to enjoy themselves: the girls did not collect to sing songs: the factory-boys who came out from the city did not play the harmonica or on the balaláïka;21 they did not jest with the girls. All sat around in the corners; and if they talked, they talked quietly, as though some ill-disposed person were there, and might overhear them.

All day nothing happened. But in the evening, as it grew dusk, the dogs began to howl: and, as though signifying some misfortune, a wind sprang up and howled in the chimneys; and such fear fell upon all the inhabitants of the dvor, that those who had candles lighted them before, it was necessary; those who were alone in any corner went to ask their neighbors to give them a night’s lodging where there were more people; and whoever had to go to the stables did not go, and did not hesitate to leave the cattle without fodder that night. And the holy water, which every one keeps in a vial, was all that night in constant requisition. Many were sure that they heard, during the night, some one walking up and down with a heavy tread over the loft; and the blacksmith saw how a serpent flew straight to the loft.

None of the family staid in Polikéï’s corner. The children and the crazy woman had been carried to other quarters. The dead little baby lay there, however. And there were two old grandmothers and a pilgrim-woman22 who diligently read the psalter, not for the sake of the child so much as for the solace of all this unhappiness. This was the mistress’s desire. These old grandmothers and the pilgrim-woman themselves heard, while one portion of the psalter was read, how the beam above creaked, and some one groaned. When they read the words, “Let God rise up,” the sounds ceased.

The joiner’s wife asked in one of her cronies; and that night they did not sleep, but drank up enough tea to last her a week. They also heard how the beam creaked, and something sounded like the falling of heavy bags. The muzhíks on guard imparted some courage to the domestics, otherwise they would all have perished with fear. The muzhíks lay in the entry on the hay, and afterwards they also became convinced that they heard marvels in the loft; although that same night they calmly talked about the necruits, munched their bread, combed their hair, and, most of all, filled the entry with that odor peculiar to the muzhíks, so that the joiner’s wife, passing by them, spat, and scolded them for foul peasants.

However it was, the suicide all the time was hanging in the loft; and it seemed as if the evil spirit himself that night overshadowed the premises with his monstrous pinions, showing his power, and coming nearer to all these people than ever before. At least, all of them had that impression.

I don’t know whether they were right. I am inclined to think that they were entirely wrong. I think that if some man, that terrible night, had had courage enough to take a candle or a lantern, and blessing himself, or even not blessing himself, with the sign of the cross, had gone to the loft, slowly driving before him, by the flame of the candle, the terror of the night, and lighting up the beams, the sand, the cobweb-garlanded chimney, and the forgotten washing of the joiner’s wife,—had gone straight up to Ilyitch, and if, not giving way to the feeling of fear, he had lifted the lantern to the level of his face, then he would have seen the familiar, emaciated body, with the legs touching the floor (the rope had stretched), lifelessly falling to one side, the unbuttoned shirt, under the opening of which his baptismal cross could not be seen, and with the head bent over on the breast, and the good-natured face, with the sightless eyes wide open, and the sweet, guilty smile, and a stern calmness, and silence over all.

Truly the joiner’s wife, huddling up in the corner of her bed, with dishevelled hair and frightened eyes, telling how she heard what seemed like bags falling, was a far more terrible and fear-inspiring object than Ilyitch, though he had taken off his cross and laid it on a bench.

Above—that is, at the great house—there was the same fear that reigned in the wing. In the lady’s room there was an odor of eau de cologne and medicine. Duniasha was melting beeswax, and making a cerate. Why a cerate especialty, is more than I can tell; but I know that a beeswax plaster was always made when the mistress was ill. And now she was so disturbed that she was really ill. Duniasha’s aunt had come to spend the night with her, so as to keep her courage up. Four of them were sitting in the girls’ sitting-room,—among them the little maid,—and were quietly conversing.

“Who is going after the oil?” asked Duniasha.

“I wouldn’t go, not for any thing, Avdót’ya Mikolávna,” said the second girl in atone of determination.

“Come now, go with Aksiutka.”

“I will run alone. I ain’t afraid of nothing,” said Aksiutka, “but she’s afraid of every thing.”

“Well, then, go ahead, dear; borrow it of the old granny Anna, and don’t spill it,” said Duniasha.

Aksiutka lifted her skirt with one hand, and though on account of this she could not swing both arms, she swung one twice as violently across the line of her direction, and flew off. It was terrible to her; and she felt that if she should see or hear any thing whatsoever, even though it were her own mother, she should fall with fright. She flew, with her eyes shut, over the well-known path.

XIII

“Is our lady asleep, or not?” asked a muzhík’s hoarse voice suddenly near Aksiutka. She opened her eyes, which had been tightly shut, and saw a form which it seemed to her was higher than the wing. She wheeled round, and sped back so fast that her petticoat did not have time to catch up with her. With one bound she was on the steps, with another in the sitting-room, and giving a wild shriek flung herself on the lounge.

Duniasha, her aunt, and the second girl almost died of fright; but they had no time to open their eyes, ere heavy, deliberate, and irresolute steps were heard in the entry and at the door. Duniasha ran into her mistress’s room, dropping the cerate. The second girl hid behind a skirt that was hanging on the wall. The aunt, who had more resolution, was about to hold the door; but the door opened, and a muzhík strode into the room.

It was Dutlof in his huge boots. Not paying any heed to the affrighted women, his eyes sought the ikons; and, not finding the small holy image that hung in a corner, he crossed himself toward the cupboard, laid his cap down on the window, and thrusting his thick hand into his sheepskin coat, as though he were trying to scratch himself under the arm, he drew out a letter with five brown seals, imprinted with an anchor. Duniasha’s aunt put her hand to her breast; she was scarcely able to articulate,—

“How you frightened me, Naumuitch!23 I ca-n-n’t sa-y a wo-r-d. I thought that the end... had... come.”

“What do you want?” asked the second girl, emerging from behind the skirt.

“And they have stirred up our lady so,” said Duniasha coming from the other room. “What made you come up to the sitting-room without knocking? You stupid muzhík!”

Dutlof, without making any excuse, said that he must see the mistress.

“She is ill,” said Duniasha.

By this time Aksiutka was snorting with such unbecomingly loud laughter, that she was again obliged to hide her head under the pillows, from which, for a whole hour, notwithstanding Duniasha’s and her aunt’s threats, she was unable to lift it without falling into renewed fits of laughter, as though something were loose in her rosy bosom and red cheeks. It seemed to her so ridiculous that they were all so frightened—and she again would hide her head, and, as it were in convulsions, shuffle her shoes, and shake with her whole body.

Dutlof straightened himself up, looked at her attentively as though wishing to account for this peculiar manifestation; but, not finding any solution, he turned away and continued to explain his errand.

“Of course, as this is a very important business,” he said, “just tell her that a muzhík has brought her the letter with the money.”

“What money?”

Duniasha, before referring the matter to the mistress, read the address, and asked Dutlof when and how he had got this money which Ilyitch should have brought back from the city. Having learned all the particulars, and sent the errand-girl, who still continued to laugh, out into the entry, Duniasha went to the mistress; but to Dutlof’s surprise the lady would not receive him at all, and sent no message to him through Duniasha.

“I know nothing about it, and wish to know nothing,” said the mistress, “about any muzhík or any money. I can not and I will not see any one. Let him leave me in peace.”

“But what shall I do?” asked Dutlof, turning the envelope around and around; “it’s no small amount of money. It’s written on there, isn’t it?” he inquired of Duniasha, who again read to him the superscription.

It seemed hard for Dutlof to believe Duniasha. He seemed to hope that the money did not belong to the gracious lady, and that the address read otherwise. But Duniasha repeated it a second time. He sighed, placed the envelope in his breast, and prepared to go out.

“I must give it to the police inspector,” he said.

“Simpleton, I will ask her again; I will tell her,” said Duniasha, detaining him when she saw the envelope disappearing under his coat. “Give me the letter.”

Dutlof took it out again, but did not immediately put it into Duniasha’s outstretched hand.

“Tell her that Dutlof Sem’yón found it on the road.”

“Well, give it here.”

“I was thinking—well, take it. A soldier read the address for me—that it had money.”

“Well, let me have it.”

“I didn’t dare to go home on account of this,” said Dutlof again, not letting go the precious envelope. “Well, let her see it.”

Duniasha took the envelope, and once more went to her ladyship.

“Duniasha,”24 said the mistress in a reproachful tone, “don’t speak to me about that money. I can’t think of any thing else except that poor little babe.”

“The muzhík, my lady,25 knows not who you want him to give it to,” insisted Duniasha.

The lady broke the seals, shuddered as soon as she saw the money, and pondered for a moment.

“Horrible money! it has brought nothing but woe,” she mused.

“It is Dutlof, my lady. Do you wish him to go, or will you come and see him? Is all the money there?” asked Duniasha.

“I do not wish this money. This is horrible money. What harm it has done! Tell him that he may have it if he wants it,” suddenly exclaimed the lady, seizing Duniasha’s hand.

“Fifteen hundred rubles,” remarked Duniasha, smiling gently as to a child.

“Let him have it all,” repeated the lady impatiently. “Why, don’t you understand me? This is misfortune’s money: don’t ever speak about it to me again. Let this muzhík have it, if he brought it. Go, go right away!”

Duniasha returned into the sitting-room.

“Was it all there?” asked Dutlof.

“Count for yourself,” said Duniasha, handing him the envelope: “she told me to give it to you.”

Dutlof stuffed his cap under his arm, and bending over tried to count.

“Haven’t you got a counting-machine?”

Dutlof understood that it was a whim of the mistress’s not to count, and that she had bidden him to do it.

“Take it home, and count it. It’s yours,—your money,” said Duniasha severely. “Says she, ‘I don’t want it; let the man have it who found it.’”

Dutlof, not straightening himself up, fixed his eyes on Duniasha.

Duniasha’s aunt also clapped her hands. “Goodness gracious!26 God has given you such luck! Goodness gracious!”

The second girl could not believe it. “You’re joking! Did really Avdót’ya Nikolóvna say that?”

“What do you mean—joking! She told me to give it to the muzhík. Now take your money, and be off,” said Duniasha, not hiding her vexation. “One has sorrow, another joy.”

“It must be a joke,—fifteen hundred rubles!” said the aunt.

“More than that,” said Duniasha sharply. “Now you will place a great big candle for Mikola,”27 she continued maliciously. “What! have you lost your wits? It would be good for some poor fellow. And you have so much of your own.”

Dutlof finally arrived at a comprehension that it was meant in earnest; and he began to fold together and smooth down the envelope with the money, which in the counting he had burst open: but his hands trembled, and he kept looking at the women, to persuade himself that it was not a jest.

“You see you haven’t come to your senses with joy,” said Duniasha, making it evident that she despised both the muzhík and money. “Give it to me, I’ll fix it for you.”

And she offered to take it, but Dutlof did not trust it in her hands. He doubled the money up, thrust it in still farther, and took his cap.

“Glad?”

“I don’t know; what’s to be said? Here it’s”—He did not finish his sentence, but waved his hand, grinned, almost burst into tears, and went out.

The bell tinkled in the mistress’s room.

“Well, did you give it to him?”

“I did.”

“Well, was he very glad?”

“He was like one gone crazy.”

“Oh, bring him back! I want to ask him how he found it. Bring him in here. I can’t go out to him.”

Duniasha flew out, and overtook the muzhík in the hall. He had not put on his hat, but had taken out his purse, and bending over was opening it; but the money he held between his teeth. Maybe it seemed to him that it was not his until he had put it in his purse. When Duniasha called him back, he was startled.

“What... Avdót’ya?... Avdót’ya Mikolavna? Is she going to take it away from me? If you would only take my part, I would bring you some honey,—before God I would.”

“All right, bring it,’”

Again the door opened, and the muzhík was led into the mistress’s presence. It was not a happy moment for him. “Akh! she’s going to take it back!” he said to himself, as he went through the rooms, lifting his feet very high, as though walking through tall grass, so as not to make a noise with his big wooden shoes. He did not comprehend, and he scarcely noticed what was around him. He passed by the mirror; he saw some flowers, some muzhík or other lifting up his feet shod in sabots, the bárin painted with one eye and something that seemed to him like a green tub, and a white object.... Suddenly, from the white object issued a voice. It was the mistress. He could not distinguish any one clearly, but he rolled his eyes around. He knew not where he was, and every thing seemed to be in a mist.

“Is it you, Dutlof?”

“It’s me, your ladyship.28 It’s just as it was. I didn’t touch it,” he said. “I wasn’t glad,—before God, I wasn’t. I almost killed my horse.”

“It’s your good luck,” she said with a perfectly sweet smile. “Keep it, keep it. It’s yours.”

He only opened wide his eyes.

“I am glad that you have it. God grant that it prove useful to you. Are you glad to have it?”

“How could I help being glad? Glad as I can be, mátushka! I will always pray to God for you. I am as glad as I can be, that, glory to God, our mistress is alive. Only it was my fault.”

“How did you find it?”

“You know that we can always work for our lady for honor’s sake, and, if not that”...

“He’s getting all mixed up, my lady said,” Duniasha.

“I carried my nephew, who’s gone as a necruit, and on my way back I found it on the road. Polikéï must have dropped it accidentally.”

“Well, now go, now go! I am glad.”

“So am I glad, mátushka,” said the muzhík.

Then he recollected that he had not thanked her, but he did not know how to go about it in the proper manner. The lady and Duniasha both smiled, as he again started to walk, as though through tall grass, and by main force conquered his impulse to break into a run. But all the time it seemed to him that they were going to hold him, and take it from him.

XIV

Making his way out into the fresh air, Dutlof turned off from the road to the lindens, unloosed his belt so the more conveniently to get at his purse, and then began to put away the money. He moved his lips, sucking them in and pushing them out again, though he made no sound. After he had stowed away the money, and buckled his girdle again, he crossed himself, and went roiling along the path as though he were drunk; so absorbed was he by the thoughts rushing through his brain. Suddenly he saw before him the form of a muzhík, coming to meet him. He screamed. It was Yefím, who with a club was acting as guard on the outside of the wing.

“Ah, uncle Sem’yón,” said Yefímka joyfully as he came nearer. [It was rather gloomy for him to be all alone.] “Well, have you got the recruits off?”

“Yes. What are you doing?”

“They stationed me here to guard Ilyitch, who hung himself.”

“But where is Ilyitch?”

“Here in the loft: they say he’s hanging there,” replied Yefímka, pointing with his stick through the darkness, to the roof of the wing.

Dutlof looked in the direction indicated; and though he saw nothing, he blinked his eyes and shook his head.

“The police inspector has come,” said Yefímka. “The coachman told me. They are going to take him right down. Kind of a fearful night, uncle.29 I wouldn’t go in there to-night, not even if orders had come from the upper house. Not if Yégor Mikhaluitch beat me to death would I go in there.”

“What a terrible misfortune!” said Dutlof, evidently from a sense of propriety; for in reality he was not thinking of what he was saying, and was anxious to go his way. But the overseer’s voice chained him to the spot.

“Hey, guard, come here!” cried Yégor Mikháilovitch, from the steps.

Yefímka responded to the call.

“What muzhík was standing there with you?”

“Dutlof.”

“You too, Sem’yón, come here.”

As Dutlof drew near, he saw, by the light of the lantern carried by the coachman, not only the overseer, but a strange man in a uniform cap with a cockade, and wearing a cloak: this was the police inspector.

“Here is an old man will go with us,” said the overseer, pointing to him.

The old man winced, but there was nothing to be done.

“And you, Yefímka, you’re only a young man; just run on ahead to the loft where he’s hanging, and clear away the stairs so that his honor can get up.”

Yefímka, although he would not for any thing go into the wing, started off, tramping with his feet as though they were beams.

The police inspector struck a light, and began to smoke his pipe. He lived two versts away; and he had just been engaged in receiving from the captain of police30 a sharp dressing for drunkenness, and was, consequently, still suffering from an attack of ill humor. The overseer asked Dutlof why he was there. Dutlof told him in a straightforward way about the finding of the money, and what the bárinya had done. Dutlof said that he was going to ask the overseer’s permission. The overseer, to Dutlof’s horror, asked for the envelope, and looked at it. The police inspector also took the envelope, and asked, in a few dry words, about the particulars.

“Now, good-by to my money,” thought Dutlof, and began already to excuse himself. But the police inspector gave him the money.

“That’s luck for the rascal!” he said.

“Comes in good time,” said the overseer. “He’s just taken his nephew to camp. Now he can buy him off.”

“Ah!” said the police inspector, and started on.

“Are you going to get Ilyushka a substitute?” inquired the overseer.

“How get him a substitute? Is there money enough? And, besides, it’s too late.”

“You know best,” said the overseer, and both followed the police inspector.

They went into the wing, at the entry of which the ill-smelling guards were waiting with a lantern. Dutlof followed them. The guards had a guilty look, which was to be attributed only to the odor arising from them, because they had been doing nothing wrong. All were silent.

“Where?” asked the police inspector.

“Here,” whispered the overseer. “Yefímka,” he added, “you’re a fine young man, go ahead with the lantern.”

Yefímka straightened his forelock; it seemed as if he had lost all his fear. Going up two or three steps, he kept turning round, with a glad countenance, and throwing the light on the police inspector’s way. Behind the inspector followed the overseer. When they were out of sight, Dutlof, resting one foot on the step, sighed and stopped. In the course of two minutes, the sound of the steps ceased; evidently they were approaching the body.

“Uncle! you’re wanted,” cried Yefímka, in the skylight.

Dutlof went up. The police inspector and the overseer could be seen in the light of the lantern, but the beam partly hid them from sight. Near them stood some one with back toward them. It was Polikéï. Dutlof went beyond the beam, and, crossing himself, halted.

“Turn him round, boys,” commanded the coroner. No one stirred.

“Yefímka, you’re a fine young man,” said the overseer.

The “fine young man” walked up to the beam, and turning Ilyitch’s body round stood by him, looking with the same pleased expression, now at Ilyitch, now at the officer, just as a showman exhibiting an albino, or some monstrosity,31 looks now at the public, now at the object of his exhibition, and is ready to fulfil all the desires of his spectators.

“Turn him round again.”

The body turned around once more, waved its hands slightly, and the leg made a circle on the sanded floor.

“Come now, take him down.”

“Do you order him cut down, Vasíli Borisovitch?” demanded the overseer. “Bring an axe, friends!”

Twice the order had to be given to Dutlof and the guards to lift him up. But the “fine young man” handled Ilyitch as he would the carcass of a sheep. Finally they cut the rope, took down the body, and threw a cloth over it. The police inspector said that the doctor would come on the next day, and sent the people away.

XV

Dutlof, still moving his lips, went home. At first, it was hard for him; but in proportion as he drew near the village, this feeling passed away, and a feeling of pleasure more and more penetrated his heart. Songs and drunken voices were heard in the village. Dutlof never drank, and now he went straight home. It was already late when he reached his cottage.32 His old woman was asleep. His oldest son and the grand-children were asleep on the oven, the other son in the closet. The nephew’s wife33 was the only person awake; and she, in a dirty, every-day shirt, with her hair unkempt, was sitting on the bench and weeping. She did not get up to open the door for the uncle, but began to weep more bitterly, and to reproach him, as soon as he came into the cottage. By the old woman’s advice she talked very clearly and well, though, being still young, she could not have had any practice.

The old woman got up, and began to get her husband something to eat. Dutlof drove his nephew’s wife away from the table. “That’ll do! that’ll do!” said he. Aksínya got up, and then throwing herself down on the bench still continued to weep. The old woman silently set the things on the table, and then put them in order. The old man also refrained from saying a single word. After performing his devotions, he belched once or twice, washed his hands, and, taking the abacus down from the nail, went to his closet. There he began to whisper with his old wife: then the old woman left him alone, and he began to rattle the abacus; finally he lifted the lid of a chest, and climbed down into a sort of cellar. He rummaged round long in the closet and in the cellar. When he came out, it was dark in the cottage; the pitch-pine knot had burnt out.

The old woman, who by day was ordinarily mild and quiet, had retired to her room, and was snoring so as to be heard all over the cottage. The noisy niece,34 on the other hand, was also asleep, and her breathing could not be heard. She was asleep on the bench just as she was, not having undressed, and without any thing under her head. Dutlof said his prayers, then glanced at his niece, raised her head a little, slipped a stick under it, and, after belching again, climbed upon the oven, and lay down next his grandson. In the darkness he took off his shoes, and lay on his back, and tried to make out the objects on the stove, barely visible above his head; and listened to the cockroaches rustling over the wall, to the breathing, and the restless moving of feet, and to the noises of the cattle in the yard.

It was long before he went to sleep. The moon came up, and it grew lighter in the cottage. He could see Aksínya in the corner, and something which he could not make out. Was it a cloak that his son had forgotten? or had the women left a tub there? or was it some one standing? Whether he drowsed or not, who can say? but now he began to look again.... Evidently that dark spirit which led Ilyitch to commit the terrible deed, and which impressed the domestics that night with its presence,—evidently that spirit spread its pinions over the whole estate, and over Dutlof’s cottage, where was concealed that money which he enjoyed at the cost of Ilyitch’s ruin. At all events, Dutlof felt it there. And Dutlof was not in his usual spirits,—could not sleep, nor sit up. When he saw something that he could not explain, he remembered his nephew with his pinioned arms, he remembered Aksínya’s face and her flowing discourse, he remembered Ilyitch with his dangling hands.

Suddenly it seemed to the old man that some one passed by the window. “What is that? Can it be the elder35 has come to ask the news?” he said to himself. “How did he unlock the door?” the old man asked himself in surprise, hearing steps in the entry; “or did the old woman leave it open when she went to the door?” The dog howled in the back yard, but IT passed along the entry, and, as the old man afterwards related the story, seemed to hunt for the door, passed by, once more tried to feel along the wall, stumbled across the tub, and it rang. And once more IT tried to feel along the wall, actually found the latch-string. Then IT took hold of it. A chill ran over the old man’s body. Here the latch was lifted, and the form of a man came in. Dutlof already knew that it was IT. He tried to get hold of his cross, but could not. IT came to the table, on which lay a cloth, threw it on the floor, and came to the oven. The old man knew that IT was in Ilyitch’s form. He trembled; his hands shook. IT came to the oven, threw itself on the old man, and began to choke him.

“My money,” said Ilyitch.

Sem’yón tried, but could not say, “Let me go, I will not.”

Ilyitch pressed down upon him with all the weight of a mountain of stone resting upon his breast. Dutlof knew that if he could say a prayer, IT would leave him; and he knew what kind of a prayer he ought to say, but this prayer would not form itself on his lips.

His grandson was sleeping next him. The boy uttered a piercing scream, and began to weep. The grandfather had crowded him against the wall. The child’s cry unsealed the old man’s lips. “Let God arise up,” he repeated. IT loosed its hold a little. “And scatter our enemies,” whispered Dutlof. IT got down from the stove. Dutlof listened as IT touched both feet to the floor. Dutlof kept repeating all the prayers that he knew; said them all in order. IT went to the door, passed the table, and struck the door such a rap that the cottage trembled. Every one was asleep except the old man and his grandson. The grandfather repeated the prayers, and trembled all over: the grandson wept as he fell asleep, and cuddled up to his grandfather.

All became quiet again. The old man lay motionless. The cock crowed behind the wall at Dutlof’s ear. He heard how the hens began to stir themselves; how the young cockerel endeavored to imitate the old cock, and did not succeed. Something moved on the old man’s legs. It was the cat. She jumped down on her soft paws from the oven to the ground, and began to miaw at the door.

The grandfather got up, opened the window. In the street it was dark, muddy. The corpse stood there under the very window. He went in his stocking-feet to the yard,36 crossing himself as he went. And here it was evident that the master37 was coming. The mare, standing under the shed by the wall, with her leg caught in the bridle, was lying in the husks, and raised her head, waiting for the master. The foal was stretched out on the manure. The old man lifted him on his legs, freed the mare, gave her some fodder, and went back to the cottage. The old woman got up, and kindled the fire.

“Wake the boys; I am going to town.”

And lighting one of the wax candles that stood before the sacred images, he took it, and went with it down into the cellar. When he came up, not only was his own fire burning, but those in the neighboring cottages were lighted. The children were up, and all ready. Women were coming and going with pails and tubs of milk. Ignat was harnessing a telyéga. The other son was oiling another. The niece38 was not to be seen, but, dressed in her best, and with a shawl on, was sitting on the bench in the cottage, and waiting for the time to go to town and say good-by to her husband.

The old man had an appearance of peculiar sternness. He said not a word to any one: put on his new kaftan, girdled himself tightly, and with all of Polikéï’s money under his coat, went to the overseer.

“You wait for me,” he shouted to Ignat, who was whirling the wheel round on the raised axle, and oiling it. “I’ll be back in a moment. Be all ready.”

The overseer, who was just up, was drinking his tea, and had made his preparations to go to the city to deliver the recruits over to the authorities.

“What do you wish?” he asked.

“Yégor Mikháluitch, I want to buy the young fellow off. Be so good. You told me a day or two ago that you knew a substitute in the city. Tell me how. I am ignorant.”

“What! have you reconsidered it?”

“I have, Yégor Mikháluitch. It’s too bad,—my brother’s son. Whatever he did, I’m sorry for him. Much sin comes from it, from this money. So please tell me,” said he, making a low bow.

The overseer, as always in such circumstances, drew in his lips silently, and went into a brown study; then having made up his mind, wrote two letters, and told him what and how he must do in town.

When Dutlof reached home, the niece was just coming out with Ignat; and the gray, pot-bellied mare, completely harnessed, was standing at the gate. He broke off a switch from the hedge. Wrapping himself up, he took his seat on the box, and started up the horse.

Dutlof drove the mare so fast that her belly seemed to shrink away, and he did not dare to look at her lest he should feel compunction. He was tormented by the thought that he might be late in reaching camp, that Ilyúkha would have already gone as a soldier, and that the devilish money would still be in his hands.

I am not going to give a detailed description of all Dutlof’s adventures that morning. I will only say that he was remarkably successful. At the house of the man to whom the overseer gave him a letter, there was a substitute ready and waiting, who had spent twenty-three silver rubles of his bounty-money, and had already passed muster. His master39 wanted to get for him four hundred rubles; but another man,40 who had already been after him for three weeks, was anxious to beat him down to three hundred.

Dutlof concluded the business with few words. “Will you take three hundred and twenty-five?” said he, offering his hand, but with an expression that made it evident that he was ready to give even more. The master held out his hand, and continued to demand four hundred.

“Won’t you take three hundred and twenty-five?” repeated Dutlof, seizing the master’s right hand with his left, and making the motion to clap it with the other. “You won’t take it? Well, God be with you,” he exclaimed, suddenly striking hands with the master, and, with the violence of the motion, swinging his whole body round from him. “Then, make it this way! Take three hundred and fifty. Make out the fitanets.41 Bring the young man. And now for the earnest-money. Will two ten-ruble pieces do?”

And Dutlof unbuckled his belt, and drew out the money.

Though the master did not withdraw his hand, yet apparently he was not wholly satisfied, and before accepting the earnest-money, he demanded a fee, and entertainment money for the substitute.

“Don’t commit a sin,” said Dutlof, pressing the money upon him. “We must all die,” he went on in such a short, didactic, and confident voice that the master said, “There’s nothing to be done,” once more shook hands, and began to say a prayer. “With God’s blessing,” he said.

They awoke the substitute, who was still sleeping off his yesterday’s spree; they inspected him, and then all went to the authorities. The substitute was hilarious, asked to be refreshed with some rum, for which Dutlof gave him money, and began to feel scared only at the moment when they first entered the vestibule of the court-house. They stood long in the vestibule: the old master42 in a blue overcoat, and the substitute in a short sheepskin, with lifted eyebrows and wide-staring eyes; long they stood there whispering together, asked questions of this man and that, were sent from pillar to post, took off their hats and bowed before every petty clerk, and solemnly listened to the speech made by a clerk whom the master knew. All hope of finishing the business that day was vanishing, and the substitute was already beginning to feel more cheerful and easy, when Dutlof caught sight of Yégor Mikhailovitch, immediately went to him, and began to beseech him, and make low bows. The overseer’s influence was so powerful, that by three o’clock the substitute, much to his disgust and surprise, was conducted into the audience-chamber, enrolled on the army list, and to the satisfaction of every one, from door-tender to president, was stripped, shaved, dressed in uniform, and sent out to camp. And at the end of five minutes Dutlof had paid the money over, and taken his receipt; and after saying good-by to the recruit and his master, he went to the merchant’s lodging-house where the recruits from Pokrovskoé were stopping.

His nephew and the wife were sitting in one corner of the merchant’s kitchen; and when the old man came in, they ceased talking, and behaved toward him in a humble and yet hostile manner.

“Don’t be vexed, Ilyúkha,” he said, approaching his nephew. “Day before yesterday you said a harsh word to me. Am I not sorry for you? I remember how my brother commended you to my care. If it had been in my power, would I have let you go? God granted me a piece of good fortune: you see I have not been mean. Here is this paper,” said he, laying the receipt on the table, and carefully smoothing it out with his crooked, stiffened fingers.

All of the Prokrovski muzhíks, and the merchant’s people, and also some of the neighbors, came into the inn.43 All watched inquisitively what was going on. No one interrupted the old man’s triumphal words.

“Here’s the paper. I paid nearly four hundred silver rubles for it. Don’t blame your uncle!”

Ilyúkha stood up; but said nothing, not knowing what to say. His lips trembled with emotion. His old mother came to him sobbing, and wanted to throw herself on his neck; but the old man slowly and imperiously pushed her away with his hand, and proceeded to speak:—

“You said a harsh word to me,” repeated the old man. “With that word you stabbed me to the heart, as with a knife. Your dying father commended you to my care. You have taken the place of my own son; but if I have done you any harm, I am sorry. We are all sinners. Is that not so, Orthodox believers?” he asked, turning to the muzhíks standing around. “Here is your own mother, and your young wife;44 here is the fitanets for you. God bless it,—the money. But forgive me, for Christ’s sake!”

And spreading his cloak out on the floor, he slowly got down upon his knees, and bent low before the feet of Ilyushka and his wife. The young people tried in vain to raise him: not until he had touched his head to the ground, did he rise, and shaking himself sit down upon the bench. Ilyushka’s mother and the young wife wept for joy. In the crowd were heard voices expressing approbation.

“That’s right, that’s God’s way,” said one.

“What money? It must have taken a lot.”

“What a joy!” said a third. “A righteous man, that’s the word for it.”

But the muzhíks, who had been named as recruits, said nothing, and went noiselessly out into the court-yard.

In two hours’ time, the two Dutlofs’ telyégas drove through the suburbs of the city. In the first, drawn by the pot-bellied gray mare with sweaty neck, sat the old man and Ignat. Behind rattled a number of pretzels and crackers. In the second telyéga, which no one drove, dignified and happy, sat the young wife and her mother-in-law wrapped up in shawls. The young woman held a jug under her apron. Ilyúshka, bending over with his back to the horse, with ruddy face, shaking on the dasher, was munching a cracker45 and talking in a steady stream. And the voices, and the rumble of the wheels on the bridge, and the occasional snorting of the horses, all united into one merry sound. The horses, switching their tails, trotted along steadily, feeling that they were on the home stretch. Those whom they passed and those whom they met looked upon a happy family.

Just as they were leaving the city the Dutlofs overtook a detachment of recruits. A group of the soldiers stood in a circle in front of a drinking-saloon. One recruit, with that peculiarly unnatural expression which a shorn brow gives a man, with his gray uniform cap pushed on the back of his head, was skilfully picking on a three-stringed balaláïka; another, without any thing on his head, and holding a jug of vodka in one hand, was dancing in the midst of the circle. Ignat halted his horse, and got out to gather up the reins. All the Dutlofs looked on with curiosity, satisfaction, and joy, at the man who was dancing.

The recruit did not seem to notice any one, but had the consciousness that an admiring public was attracted by his antics, and this gave him strength and ability. He danced dexterously. His forehead was wrinkled, his ruddy face was motionless, his mouth was parted in a smile which had long lost all expression. It seemed as though all the energies of his soul were directed to making one leg follow the other with all possible swiftness, now on the heel and now on the toe. Sometimes he would suddenly stop, and signal to the accompanist, who would instantly begin to thrum on all the strings, and even to rap on the back of the instrument with his knuckles. The recruit stopped, but even when he stopped still, he seemed, as it were, to be all the time dancing. Suddenly he began to slacken his pace, shrugging his shoulders, and, leaping into the air, landed on his heels, and with a wild shriek set up the Russian national dance.

The lads laughed, the women shook their heads, the lusty peasants smiled with satisfaction. An old non-commissioned officer stood calmly near the dancer with a look that said, “To you this is wonderful, but to us it’s an old story.” The balaláïka-player stood up in plain sight, surveyed the crowd with a cool stare, struck a false chord, and suddenly rapped his fingers on the back, and the dance was done.

“Hey! Alyókha,” cried the accompanist to the dancer, and pointed to Dutlof. “Isn’t that your sponsor?”

“Where? O my dearly beloved friend!” screamed the recruit,—the same one whom Dutlof had bought,—and stumbling out on his weary feet, and lifting his jug of vodka above his head, he made for the team. “Mishka! waiter! a glass,” he shouted. “Master! O my dear old friend! How glad I am! fact!” he went on, jerking his tipsy head towards the telyéga, and began to treat the muzhíks and the women to vodka. The muzhíks accepted, the women declined. “You are darlings, why shouldn’t I treat you?” cried the recruit, throwing his arms around the old women.

A woman peddling eatables was standing in the throng. The recruit saw her, grabbed her tray, and flung its contents into the telyéga.

“D-don’t worry, I’ll p-pay—the d-deuce,” he began to scream in a drunken voice; and here he drew out of his stocking a purse with money in it, and flung it to the waiter.

He stood leaning with his elbows on the wagon, and stared, with moist eyes, at those who sat in it.

“Which is my mátushka?” he asked. “Be you her? I’ve got something for her too.”

He pondered a moment, and diving into his pocket brought out a new handkerchief folded, untied another which he had put on as a girdle under his coat, hastily took the red scarf from his neck, bundled them together, and thrust them into the old woman’s lap.

“Na! I give ’em to you,” he said, in a voice that grew weaker and weaker.

“Why? thank you, friend!—What a simple lad he is!” said she, addressing the old man Dutlof, who came up to their telyéga.

The recruit was now entirely quiet and dumb, and kept dropping his head lower and lower, as though he were going to sleep then and there.

“I’m going for you, I’m going to destruction for you,” he repeated. “And so I make you a present.”

“I s’pose he’s really got a mother,” cried some one in the crowd. “Fine young fellow! Too bad!”

The recruit lifted his head. “I’ve got a mother,” he said. “I’ve got a father46 too. They’ve all given me up, though. Listen, old woman!” he added, seizing Ilyushkin’s mother by the hand. “I made you a present. Listen to me, for Christ’s sake. Go to my village of Vodnoe, ask there for Nikonof’s old woman,—she’s my own mother, you understand,—and tell this same old woman, Nikonof’s old woman—third hut at the end—new pump—tell her that Alyókha—your son—you know—Come! musician, strike up!” he screamed.

And once more he began to dance, talking all the time, and spilling the vodka that was left in the jug all over the ground.

Ignat climbed into his wagon, and started to drive on.

“Good-by, good luck to you,” cried the old woman, as she wrapped herself up in her sheepskin.

The recruit suddenly stopped.

“Go to the devil!” he shouted, threatening the teams with his doubled fist.

“Oh, good Lord!”47 ejaculated Ilyushkin’s mother, crossing herself.

Ignat started up the mare, and the teams drove away. Alekséi the recruit still stood in the middle of the road, and doubling up his fists, with an expression of wrath on his face, berated the mushíks to the best of his ability.

“What are you standing here for? She’s gone. The devil, cannibals!” he screamed. “You won’t escape from me! You devils! You dotards!”

With these words his voice failed him; he fell at full length, just where he stood in the middle of the road.

Swiftly the Dutlofs drove across the country, and as they looked around, the crowd of recruits were already lost from sight. When they had gone five versts, and were slowing up a little, Ignat got out of his father’s wagon, when the old man was drowsing, and got in with his cousin.

The two young men drank up the jug of vodka which they had brought from the city. Then after a little, Ilya struck up a song; the women joined in with him; Ignat gayly shouted in harmony. A jolly party, in a post-wagon, dashed swiftly by. The driver shouted to the horses harnessed to the two jolly telyégas. The postilion glanced at the handsome faces of the muzhíks and the women in the telyéga as they dashed by, singing their merry songs, and waved his hand.

Notes

1 Most of the serfs in Russia were attached to the land, and could not be sold apart from It. Others, called dvoróvui, constituted the class of domestic servants, and plied various trades. Their owners gave them monthly rations or a small allowance for rations. Often they were allowed to go to the large cities on obrok, a sort of leave of absence, for which they paid their masters out of their earnings. The bárin or báruin’ya—that is, the lord or lady of the estate—had the right to excuse any one from the conscription; but unless a substitute were sent, a sum of money was required. Other things being equal, the draft was made first on families where there were three or more grown-up men besides the head of the house, the troïniki; next, on the dvoïniki, families where there were two grown-up sons or nephews; and last of all, where there was only one. Families where several generations, and even with collateral branches, lived under one roof, were apt to be more prosperous than when the sous scattered, and took separate farms.

2 mir

3 stárosta tserkovnui, a small office, giving the man the privilege of selling candles, etc.

4 dvornik.

5 Peasant diminutive for Anna.

6 A game somewhat like “snap the whip.”

7 yamshchík.

8 sotsky, centurion; an officer chosen by the Commune.

9 troïniki: a peasant family with three able-bodied men.

10 suba for shuba.

11 dvornik.

12 A sort of beer made of rye-bread soaked in water and fermented.

13 dvornik.

14 khozyáïka.

15 bátiushki.

16 bárinya.

17 mámuska.

18 fliger, peasant corruption of flügel, the wing; the collection of izbás occupied by the dvoróvui or domestic servants.

19 stanovóï.

20 “The mistress, the mistress,” or, “the gracious lady.” Bárin and báruinya or bárinya are the terms used by the domestics for the master and mistress.

21 A sort of primitive guitar, with long neck, and short three-cornered sounding-board, strung with two or three strings, and thrummed with the fingers.

22 stránnitsa.

23 The son of Nahum. It is customary among the peasantry to call each other by the patronymic. Thus Polikéï is generally called Ilyitch, son of Ilya, instead of the more formal Polikéï Ilyitch.

24 Akh Bozhe moï.

25 sudárinya.

26 mátushki rodimuïa!

27 St. Nicholas.

28 Ya-s sudárinya.

29 d’yadiushka, diminutive of d’yád’ya.

30 ispravnik.

31 Tulia Pastrana: a girl like a monkey, with hairy arms and face, exhibited all over Europe, some years ago.

32 izbá.

33 Ilyushkin’s baba.

34 Ilyushkina baba.

35 stárosta.

36 dvor.

37 khozyáïn.

38 molodáïka.

39 khozhyáïn.

40 a meshchánin.

41 Mispronunciation of quittance.

42 starik-khozhyáïn.

43 izbá.

44 khozyáïka.

45 kalátch.

46 bátiushka.

47 okh Gospodi.
⁂