"They have left off ringing ever so long! It's dreadful; you won't
be there before the service is over! Get up!"
"Two horses are racing, racing . . ." said Anna Akimovna, and she
woke up; before her, candle in hand, stood her maid, red-haired
Masha. "Well, what is it?"
"Service is over already," said Masha with despair. "I have called
you three times! Sleep till evening for me, but you told me yourself
to call you!"
Anna Akimovna raised herself on her elbow and glanced towards the
window. It was still quite dark outside, and only the lower edge
of the window-frame was white with snow. She could hear a low,
mellow chime of bells; it was not the parish church, but somewhere
further away. The watch on the little table showed three minutes
past six.
"Very well, Masha. . . . In three minutes . . ." said Anna Akimovna
in an imploring voice, and she snuggled under the bed-clothes.
She imagined the snow at the front door, the sledge, the dark sky,
the crowd in the church, and the smell of juniper, and she felt
dread at the thought; but all the same, she made up her mind that
she would get up at once and go to early service. And while she was
warm in bed and struggling with sleep--which seems, as though to
spite one, particularly sweet when one ought to get up--and while
she had visions of an immense garden on a mountain and then Gushtchin's
Buildings, she was worried all the time by the thought that she
ought to get up that very minute and go to church.
But when she got up it was quite light, and it turned out to be
half-past nine. There had been a heavy fall of snow in the night;
the trees were clothed in white, and the air was particularly light,
transparent, and tender, so that when Anna Akimovna looked out of
the window her first impulse was to draw a deep, deep breath. And
when she had washed, a relic of far-away childish feelings--joy
that today was Christmas--suddenly stirred within her; after that
she felt light-hearted, free and pure in soul, as though her soul,
too, had been washed or plunged in the white snow. Masha came in,
dressed up and tightly laced, and wished her a happy Christmas;
then she spent a long time combing her mistress's hair and helping
her to dress. The fragrance and feeling of the new, gorgeous,
splendid dress, its faint rustle, and the smell of fresh scent,
excited Anna Akimoyna.
"Well, it's Christmas," she said gaily to Masha. "Now we will try
our fortunes."
"Last year, I was to marry an old man. It turned up three times the
same."
"Well, God is merciful."
"Well, Anna Akimovna, what I think is, rather than neither one thing
nor the other, I'd marry an old man," said Masha mournfully, and
she heaved a sigh. "I am turned twenty; it's no joke."
Every one in the house knew that red-haired Masha was in love with
Mishenka, the footman, and this genuine, passionate, hopeless love
had already lasted three years.
"Come, don't talk nonsense," Anna Akimovna consoled her. "I am going
on for thirty, but I am still meaning to marry a young man."
While his mistress was dressing, Mishenka, in a new swallow-tail
and polished boots, walked about the hall and drawing-room and
waited for her to come out, to wish her a happy Christmas. He had
a peculiar walk, stepping softly and delicately; looking at his
feet, his hands, and the bend of his head, it might be imagined
that he was not simply walking, but learning to dance the first
figure of a quadrille. In spite of his fine velvety moustache and
handsome, rather flashy appearance, he was steady, prudent, and
devout as an old man. He said his prayers, bowing down to the ground,
and liked burning incense in his room. He respected people of wealth
and rank and had a reverence for them; he despised poor people, and
all who came to ask favours of any kind, with all the strength of
his cleanly flunkey soul. Under his starched shirt he wore a flannel,
winter and summer alike, being very careful of his health; his ears
were plugged with cotton-wool.
When Anna Akimovna crossed the hall with Masha, he bent his head
downwards a little and said in his agreeable, honeyed voice:
"I have the honour to congratulate you, Anna Akimovna, on the most
solemn feast of the birth of our Lord."
Anna Akimovna gave him five roubles, while poor Masha was numb with
ecstasy. His holiday get-up, his attitude, his voice, and what he
said, impressed her by their beauty and elegance; as she followed
her mistress she could think of nothing, could see nothing, she
could only smile, first blissfully and then bitterly. The upper
story of the house was called the best or visitors' half, while the
name of the business part--old people's or simply women's part
--was given to the rooms on the lower story where Aunt Tatyana
Ivanovna kept house. In the upper part the gentry and educated
visitors were entertained; in the lower story, simpler folk and the
aunt's personal friends. Handsome, plump, and healthy, still young
and fresh, and feeling she had on a magnificent dress which seemed
to her to diffuse a sort of radiance all about her, Anna Akimovna
went down to the lower story. Here she was met with reproaches for
forgetting God now that she was so highly educated, for sleeping
too late for the service, and for not coming downstairs to break
the fast, and they all clasped their hands and exclaimed with perfect
sincerity that she was lovely, wonderful; and she believed it,
laughed, kissed them, gave one a rouble, another three or five
according to their position. She liked being downstairs. Wherever
one looked there were shrines, ikons, little lamps, portraits of
ecclesiastical personages--the place smelt of monks; there was a
rattle of knives in the kitchen, and already a smell of something
savoury, exceedingly appetizing, was pervading all the rooms. The
yellow-painted floors shone, and from the doors narrow rugs with
bright blue stripes ran like little paths to the ikon corner, and
the sunshine was simply pouring in at the windows.
In the dining-room some old women, strangers, were sitting; in
Varvarushka's room, too, there were old women, and with them a deaf
and dumb girl, who seemed abashed about something and kept saying,
"Bli, bli! . . ." Two skinny-looking little girls who had been
brought out of the orphanage for Christmas came up to kiss Anna
Akimovna's hand, and stood before her transfixed with admiration
of her splendid dress; she noticed that one of the girls squinted,
and in the midst of her light-hearted holiday mood she felt a sick
pang at her heart at the thought that young men would despise the
girl, and that she would never marry. In the cook Agafya's room,
five huge peasants in new shirts were sitting round the samovar;
these were not workmen from the factory, but relations of the cook.
Seeing Anna Akimovna, all the peasants jumped up from their seats,
and from regard for decorum, ceased munching, though their mouths
were full. The cook Stepan, in a white cap, with a knife in his
hand, came into the room and gave her his greetings; porters in
high felt boots came in, and they, too, offered their greetings.
The water-carrier peeped in with icicles on his beard, but did not
venture to come in.
Anna Akimovna walked through the rooms followed by her retinue--
the aunt, Varvarushka, Nikandrovna, the sewing-maid Marfa Petrovna,
and the downstairs Masha. Varvarushka--a tall, thin, slender
woman, taller than any one in the house, dressed all in black,
smelling of cypress and coffee--crossed herself in each room
before the ikon, bowing down from the waist. And whenever one looked
at her one was reminded that she had already prepared her shroud
and that lottery tickets were hidden away by her in the same box.
"Anyutinka, be merciful at Christmas," she said, opening the door
into the kitchen. "Forgive him, bless the man! Have done with it!"
The coachman Panteley, who had been dismissed for drunkenness in
November, was on his knees in the middle of the kitchen. He was a
good-natured man, but he used to be unruly when he was drunk, and
could not go to sleep, but persisted in wandering about the buildings
and shouting in a threatening voice, "I know all about it!" Now
from his beefy and bloated face and from his bloodshot eyes it could
be seen that he had been drinking continually from November till
Christmas.
"Forgive me, Anna Akimovna," he brought out in a hoarse voice,
striking his forehead on the floor and showing his bull-like neck.
"It was Auntie dismissed you; ask her."
"What about auntie?" said her aunt, walking into the kitchen,
breathing heavily; she was very stout, and on her bosom one might
have stood a tray of teacups and a samovar. "What about auntie now?
You are mistress here, give your own orders; though these rascals
might be all dead for all I care. Come, get up, you hog!" she shouted
at Panteley, losing patience. "Get out of my sight! It's the last
time I forgive you, but if you transgress again--don't ask for
mercy!"
Then they went into the dining-room to coffee. But they had hardly
sat down, when the downstairs Masha rushed headlong in, saying with
horror, "The singers!" And ran back again. They heard some one
blowing his nose, a low bass cough, and footsteps that sounded like
horses' iron-shod hoofs tramping about the entry near the hall. For
half a minute all was hushed. . . . The singers burst out so suddenly
and loudly that every one started. While they were singing, the
priest from the almshouses with the deacon and the sexton arrived.
Putting on the stole, the priest slowly said that when they were
ringing for matins it was snowing and not cold, but that the frost
was sharper towards morning, God bless it! and now there must be
twenty degrees of frost.
"Many people maintain, though, that winter is healthier than summer,"
said the deacon; then immediately assumed an austere expression and
chanted after the priest. "Thy Birth, O Christ our Lord. . . ."
Soon the priest from the workmen's hospital came with the deacon,
then the Sisters from the hospital, children from the orphanage,
and then singing could be heard almost uninterruptedly. They sang,
had lunch, and went away.
About twenty men from the factory came to offer their Christmas
greetings. They were only the foremen, mechanicians, and their
assistants, the pattern-makers, the accountant, and so on--all
of good appearance, in new black coats. They were all first-rate
men, as it were picked men; each one knew his value--that is,
knew that if he lost his berth today, people would be glad to take
him on at another factory. Evidently they liked Auntie, as they
behaved freely in her presence and even smoked, and when they had
all trooped in to have something to eat, the accountant put his arm
round her immense waist. They were free-and-easy, perhaps, partly
also because Varvarushka, who under the old masters had wielded
great power and had kept watch over the morals of the clerks, had
now no authority whatever in the house; and perhaps because many
of them still remembered the time when Auntie Tatyana Ivanovna,
whose brothers kept a strict hand over her, had been dressed like
a simple peasant woman like Agafya, and when Anna Akimovna used to
run about the yard near the factory buildings and every one used
to call her Anyutya.
The foremen ate, talked, and kept looking with amazement at Anna
Akimovna, how she had grown up and how handsome she had become! But
this elegant girl, educated by governesses and teachers, was a
stranger to them; they could not understand her, and they instinctively
kept closer to "Auntie," who called them by their names, continually
pressed them to eat and drink, and, clinking glasses with them, had
already drunk two wineglasses of rowanberry wine with them. Anna
Akimovna was always afraid of their thinking her proud, an upstart,
or a crow in peacock's feathers; and now while the foremen were
crowding round the food, she did not leave the dining-room, but
took part in the conversation. She asked Pimenov, her acquaintance
of the previous day:
"Why have you so many clocks in your room?"
"I mend clocks," he answered. "I take the work up between times,
on holidays, or when I can't sleep."
"So if my watch goes wrong I can bring it to you to be repaired?"
Anna Akimovna asked, laughing.
"To be sure, I will do it with pleasure," said Pimenov, and there
was an expression of tender devotion in his face, when, not herself
knowing why, she unfastened her magnificent watch from its chain
and handed it to him; he looked at it in silence and gave it back.
"To be sure, I will do it with pleasure," he repeated. "I don't
mend watches now. My eyes are weak, and the doctors have forbidden
me to do fine work. But for you I can make an exception."
"Doctors talk nonsense," said the accountant. They all laughed.
"Don't you believe them," he went on, flattered by the laughing;
"last year a tooth flew out of a cylinder and hit old Kalmykov such
a crack on the head that you could see his brains, and the doctor
said he would die; but he is alive and working to this day, only
he has taken to stammering since that mishap."
"Doctors do talk nonsense, they do, but not so much," sighed Auntie.
"Pyotr Andreyitch, poor dear, lost his sight. Just like you, he
used to work day in day out at the factory near the hot furnace,
and he went blind. The eyes don't like heat. But what are we talking
about?" she said, rousing herself. "Come and have a drink. My best
wishes for Christmas, my dears. I never drink with any one else,
but I drink with you, sinful woman as I am. Please God!"
Anna Akimovna fancied that after yesterday Pimenov despised her as
a philanthropist, but was fascinated by her as a woman. She looked
at him and thought that he behaved very charmingly and was nicely
dressed. It is true that the sleeves of his coat were not quite
long enough, and the coat itself seemed short-waisted, and his
trousers were not wide and fashionable, but his tie was tied
carelessly and with taste and was not as gaudy as the others'. And
he seemed to be a good-natured man, for he ate submissively whatever
Auntie put on his plate. She remembered how black he had been the
day before, and how sleepy, and the thought of it for some reason
touched her.
When the men were preparing to go, Anna Akimovna put out her hand
to Pimenov. She wanted to ask him to come in sometimes to see her,
without ceremony, but she did not know how to--her tongue would
not obey her; and that they might not think she was attracted by
Pimenov, she shook hands with his companions, too.
Then the boys from the school of which she was a patroness came.
They all had their heads closely cropped and all wore grey blouses
of the same pattern. The teacher--a tall, beardless young man
with patches of red on his face--was visibly agitated as he formed
the boys into rows; the boys sang in tune, but with harsh, disagreeable
voices. The manager of the factory, Nazaritch, a bald, sharp-eyed
Old Believer, could never get on with the teachers, but the one who
was now anxiously waving his hands he despised and hated, though
he could not have said why. He behaved rudely and condescendingly
to the young man, kept back his salary, meddled with the teaching,
and had finally tried to dislodge him by appointing, a fortnight
before Christmas, as porter to the school a drunken peasant, a
distant relation of his wife's, who disobeyed the teacher and said
rude things to him before the boys.
Anna Akimovna was aware of all this, but she could be of no help,
for she was afraid of Nazaritch herself. Now she wanted at least
to be very nice to the schoolmaster, to tell him she was very much
pleased with him; but when after the singing he began apologizing
for something in great confusion, and Auntie began to address him
familiarly as she drew him without ceremony to the table, she felt,
for some reason, bored and awkward, and giving orders that the
children should be given sweets, went upstairs.
"In reality there is something cruel in these Christmas customs,"
she said a little while afterwards, as it were to herself, looking
out of window at the boys, who were flocking from the house to the
gates and shivering with cold, putting their coats on as they ran.
"At Christmas one wants to rest, to sit at home with one's own
people, and the poor boys, the teacher, and the clerks and foremen,
are obliged for some reason to go through the frost, then to offer
their greetings, show their respect, be put to confusion . . ."
Mishenka, who was standing at the door of the drawing-room and
overheard this, said:
"It has not come from us, and it will not end with us. Of course,
I am not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but I do understand that
the poor must always respect the rich. It is well said, 'God marks
the rogue.' In prisons, night refuges, and pot-houses you never see
any but the poor, while decent people, you may notice, are always
rich. It has been said of the rich, 'Deep calls to deep.'"
"You always express yourself so tediously and incomprehensibly,"
said Anna Akimovna, and she walked to the other end of the big
drawing-room.
It was only just past eleven. The stillness of the big room, only
broken by the singing that floated up from below, made her yawn.
The bronzes, the albums, and the pictures on the walls, representing
a ship at sea, cows in a meadow, and views of the Rhine, were so
absolutely stale that her eyes simply glided over them without
observing them. The holiday mood was already growing tedious. As
before, Anna Akimovna felt that she was beautiful, good-natured,
and wonderful, but now it seemed to her that that was of no use to
any one; it seemed to her that she did not know for whom and for
what she had put on this expensive dress, too, and, as always
happened on all holidays, she began to be fretted by loneliness and
the persistent thought that her beauty, her health, and her wealth,
were a mere cheat, since she was not wanted, was of no use to any
one, and nobody loved her. She walked through all the rooms, humming
and looking out of window; stopping in the drawing-room, she could
not resist beginning to talk to Mishenka.
"I don't know what you think of yourself, Misha," she said, and
heaved a sigh. "Really, God might punish you for it."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. Excuse my meddling in your affairs. But it
seems you are spoiling your own life out of obstinacy. You'll admit
that it is high time you got married, and she is an excellent and
deserving girl. You will never find any one better. She's a beauty,
clever, gentle, and devoted. . . . And her appearance! . . . If she
belonged to our circle or a higher one, people would be falling in
love with her for her red hair alone. See how beautifully her hair
goes with her complexion. Oh, goodness! You don't understand anything,
and don't know what you want," Anna Akimovna said bitterly, and
tears came into her eyes. "Poor girl, I am so sorry for her! I know
you want a wife with money, but I have told you already I will give
Masha a dowry."
Mishenka could not picture his future spouse in his imagination
except as a tall, plump, substantial, pious woman, stepping like a
peacock, and, for some reason, with a long shawl over her shoulders;
while Masha was thin, slender, tightly laced, and walked with little
steps, and, worst of all, she was too fascinating and at times
extremely attractive to Mishenka, and that, in his opinion, was
incongruous with matrimony and only in keeping with loose behaviour.
When Anna Akimovna had promised to give Masha a dowry, he had
hesitated for a time; but once a poor student in a brown overcoat
over his uniform, coming with a letter for Anna Akimovna, was
fascinated by Masha, and could not resist embracing her near the
hat-stand, and she had uttered a faint shriek; Mishenka, standing
on the stairs above, had seen this, and from that time had begun
to cherish a feeling of disgust for Masha. A poor student! Who
knows, if she had been embraced by a rich student or an officer the
consequences might have been different.
"Why don't you wish it?" Anna Akimovna asked. "What more do you
want?"
Mishenka was silent and looked at the arm-chair fixedly, and raised
his eyebrows.
"Do you love some one else?"
Silence. The red-haired Masha came in with letters and visiting
cards on a tray. Guessing that they were talking about her, she
blushed to tears.
"The postmen have come," she muttered. "And there is a clerk called
Tchalikov waiting below. He says you told him to come to-day for
something."
"What insolence!" said Anna Akimovna, moved to anger. "I gave him
no orders. Tell him to take himself off; say I am not at home!"
A ring was heard. It was the priests from her parish. They were
always shown into the aristocratic part of the house--that is,
upstairs. After the priests, Nazaritch, the manager of the factory,
came to pay his visit, and then the factory doctor; then Mishenka
announced the inspector of the elementary schools. Visitors kept
arriving.
When there was a moment free, Anna Akimovna sat down in a deep
arm-chair in the drawing-room, and shutting her eyes, thought that
her loneliness was quite natural because she had not married and
never would marry. . . . But that was not her fault. Fate itself
had flung her out of the simple working-class surroundings in which,
if she could trust her memory, she had felt so snug and at home,
into these immense rooms, where she could never think what to do
with herself, and could not understand why so many people kept
passing before her eyes. What was happening now seemed to her
trivial, useless, since it did not and could not give her happiness
for one minute.
"If I could fall in love," she thought, stretching; the very thought
of this sent a rush of warmth to her heart. "And if I could escape
from the factory . . ." she mused, imagining how the weight of those
factory buildings, barracks, and schools would roll off her conscience,
roll off her mind. . . . Then she remembered her father, and thought
if he had lived longer he would certainly have married her to a
working man--to Pimenov, for instance. He would have told her to
marry, and that would have been all about it. And it would have
been a good thing; then the factory would have passed into capable
hands.
She pictured his curly head, his bold profile, his delicate, ironical
lips and the strength, the tremendous strength, in his shoulders,
in his arms, in his chest, and the tenderness with which he had
looked at her watch that day.
"Well," she said, "it would have been all right. I would have married
him."
"Anna Akimovna," said Mishenka, coming noiselessly into the
drawing-room.
"How you frightened me!" she said, trembling all over. "What do you
want?"
"Anna Akimovna," he said, laying his hand on his heart and raising
his eyebrows, "you are my mistress and my benefactress, and no one
but you can tell me what I ought to do about marriage, for you are
as good as a mother to me. . . . But kindly forbid them to laugh
and jeer at me downstairs. They won't let me pass without it."
"How do they jeer at you?"
"They call me Mashenka's Mishenka."
"Pooh, what nonsense!" cried Anna Akimovna indignantly. "How stupid
you all are! What a stupid you are, Misha! How sick I am of you! I
can't bear the sight of you."