The son of a widowed peasant-woman died--a young fellow aged twenty, the
best labourer in the village.
The lady-proprietor of that village, on learning of the peasant-woman's
affliction, went to call upon her on the very day of the funeral.
She found her at home.
Standing in the middle of her cottage, in front of the table, she was
ladling out empty[73] cabbage-soup from the bottom of a smoke-begrimed
pot, in a leisurely way, with her right hand (her left hung limply by
her side), and swallowing spoonful after spoonful.
The woman's face had grown sunken and dark; her eyes were red and
swollen ... but she carried herself independently and uprightly, as in
church.[74]
"O Lord!" thought the lady; "she can eat at such a moment ... but what
coarse feelings they have!"
And then the lady-mistress recalled how, when she had lost her own
little daughter, aged nine months, a few years before, she had refused,
out of grief, to hire a very beautiful villa in the vicinity of
Petersburg, and had passed the entire summer in town!--But the
peasant-woman continued to sip her cabbage-soup.
At last the lady could endure it no longer.--"Tatyána!" said she....
"Good gracious!--I am amazed! Is it possible that thou didst not love
thy son? How is it that thy appetite has not disappeared?--How canst
thou eat that cabbage-soup?"
"My Vásya is dead," replied the woman softly, and tears of suffering
again began to stream down her sunken cheeks,--"and, of course, my own
end has come also: my head has been taken away from me while I am still
alive. But the cabbage-soup must not go to waste; for it is salted"
The lady-mistress merely shrugged her shoulders and went away. She got
salt cheaply.
May, 1878.