The story ran that the tavern had been built in the time of Alexander
I, by a widow who had settled here with her son; her name was Avdotya
Terehov. The dark roofed-in courtyard and the gates always kept
locked excited, especially on moonlight nights, a feeling of
depression and unaccountable uneasiness in people who drove by with
posting-horses, as though sorcerers or robbers were living in it;
and the driver always looked back after he passed, and whipped up
his horses. Travellers did not care to put up here, as the people
of the house were always unfriendly and charged heavily. The yard
was muddy even in summer; huge fat pigs used to lie there in the
mud, and the horses in which the Terehovs dealt wandered about
untethered, and often it happened that they ran out of the yard and
dashed along the road like mad creatures, terrifying the pilgrim
women. At that time there was a great deal of traffic on the road;
long trains of loaded waggons trailed by, and all sorts of adventures
happened, such as, for instance, that thirty years ago some waggoners
got up a quarrel with a passing merchant and killed him, and a
slanting cross is standing to this day half a mile from the tavern;
posting-chaises with bells and the heavy _dormeuses_ of country
gentlemen drove by; and herds of horned cattle passed bellowing and
stirring up clouds of dust.
When the railway came there was at first at this place only a
platform, which was called simply a halt; ten years afterwards the
present station, Progonnaya, was built. The traffic on the old
posting-road almost ceased, and only local landowners and peasants
drove along it now, but the working people walked there in crowds
in spring and autumn. The posting-inn was transformed into a
restaurant; the upper storey was destroyed by fire, the roof had
grown yellow with rust, the roof over the yard had fallen by degrees,
but huge fat pigs, pink and revolting, still wallowed in the mud
in the yard. As before, the horses sometimes ran away and, lashing
their tails dashed madly along the road. In the tavern they sold
tea, hay oats and flour, as well as vodka and beer, to be drunk on
the premises and also to be taken away; they sold spirituous liquors
warily, for they had never taken out a licence.
The Terehovs had always been distinguished by their piety, so much
so that they had even been given the nickname of the "Godlies." But
perhaps because they lived apart like bears, avoided people and
thought out all their ideas for themselves, they were given to
dreams and to doubts and to changes of faith and almost each
generation had a peculiar faith of its own. The grandmother Avdotya,
who had built the inn, was an Old Believer; her son and both her
grandsons (the fathers of Matvey and Yakov) went to the Orthodox
church, entertained the clergy, and worshipped before the new ikons
as devoutly as they had done before the old. The son in old age
refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of silence,
considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the
grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought
in it a hidden meaning, declaring that every sacred word must contain
a mystery.
Avdotya's great-grandson Matvey had struggled from early childhood
with all sorts of dreams and fancies and had been almost ruined by
it; the other great-grandson, Yakov Ivanitch, was orthodox, but
after his wife's death he gave up going to church and prayed at
home. Following his example, his sister Aglaia had turned, too; she
did not go to church herself, and did not let Dashutka go. Of Aglaia
it was told that in her youth she used to attend the Flagellant
meetings in Vedenyapino, and that she was still a Flagellant in
secret, and that was why she wore a white kerchief.
Yakov Ivanitch was ten years older than Matvey--he was a very
handsome tall old man with a big grey beard almost to his waist,
and bushy eyebrows which gave his face a stern, even ill-natured
expression. He wore a long jerkin of good cloth or a black sheepskin
coat, and altogether tried to be clean and neat in dress; he wore
goloshes even in dry weather. He did not go to church, because, to
his thinking, the services were not properly celebrated and because
the priests drank wine at unlawful times and smoked tobacco. Every
day he read and sang the service at home with Aglaia. At Vedenyapino
they left out the "Praises" at early matins, and had no evening
service even on great holidays, but he used to read through at home
everything that was laid down for every day, without hurrying or
leaving out a single line, and even in his spare time read aloud
the Lives of the Saints. And in everyday life he adhered strictly
to the rules of the church; thus, if wine were allowed on some day
in Lent "for the sake of the vigil," then he never failed to drink
wine, even if he were not inclined.
He read, sang, burned incense and fasted, not for the sake of
receiving blessings of some sort from God, but for the sake of good
order. Man cannot live without religion, and religion ought to be
expressed from year to year and from day to day in a certain order,
so that every morning and every evening a man might turn to God
with exactly those words and thoughts that were befitting that
special day and hour. One must live, and, therefore, also pray as
is pleasing to God, and so every day one must read and sing what
is pleasing to God--that is, what is laid down in the rule of the
church. Thus the first chapter of St. John must only be read on
Easter Day, and "It is most meet" must not be sung from Easter to
Ascension, and so on. The consciousness of this order and its
importance afforded Yakov Ivanitch great gratification during his
religious exercises. When he was forced to break this order by some
necessity--to drive to town or to the bank, for instance his
conscience was uneasy and he felt miserable.
When his cousin Matvey had returned unexpectedly from the factory
and settled in the tavern as though it were his home, he had from
the very first day disturbed his settled order. He refused to pray
with them, had meals and drank tea at wrong times, got up late,
drank milk on Wednesdays and Fridays on the pretext of weak health;
almost every day he went into the prayer-room while they were at
prayers and cried: "Think what you are doing, brother! Repent,
brother!" These words threw Yakov into a fury, while Aglaia could
not refrain from beginning to scold; or at night Matvey would steal
into the prayer-room and say softly: "Cousin, your prayer is not
pleasing to God. For it is written, First be reconciled with thy
brother and then offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, you deal
in vodka--repent!"
In Matvey's words Yakov saw nothing but the usual evasions of
empty-headed and careless people who talk of loving your neighbour,
of being reconciled with your brother, and so on, simply to avoid
praying, fasting and reading holy books, and who talk contemptuously
of profit and interest simply because they don't like working. Of
course, to be poor, save nothing, and put by nothing was a great
deal easier than being rich.
But yet he was troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as
he went into the prayer-room and opened the book he began to be
afraid his cousin would come in and hinder him; and, in fact, Matvey
did soon appear and cry in a trembling voice: "Think what you are
doing, brother! Repent, brother!" Aglaia stormed and Yakov, too,
flew into a passion and shouted: "Go out of my house!" while Matvey
answered him: "The house belongs to both of us."
Yakov would begin singing and reading again, but he could not regain
his calm, and unconsciously fell to dreaming over his book. Though
he regarded his cousin's words as nonsense, yet for some reason it
had of late haunted his memory that it is hard for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year before last he had made
a very good bargain over buying a stolen horse, that one day when
his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern. . . .
He slept badly at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear
that Matvey, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining for
his tile factory. And while Yakov turned over from one side to
another at night he thought of the stolen horse and the drunken
man, and what was said in the gospels about the camel.
It looked as though his dreaminess were coming over him again. And
as ill-luck would have it, although it was the end of March, every
day it kept snowing, and the forest roared as though it were winter,
and there was no believing that spring would ever come. The weather
disposed one to depression, and to quarrelling and to hatred and
in the night, when the wind droned over the ceiling, it seemed as
though someone were living overhead in the empty storey; little by
little the broodings settled like a burden on his mind, his head
burned and he could not sleep.