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
_n_ecruits; 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.
[Footnote 5: Peasant diminutive for Anna.]