By the time Tikhon Hitch was about forty years of age his beard
resembled silver with patterns of black enamel. But he was handsome
and tall, with a fine figure, as before. He was austere and swarthy of
face, slightly pock-marked, with broad, lean shoulders; authoritative
and abrupt of speech, quick and supple in his movements. Only--his
eyebrows had begun to come closer together and his eyes to flash more
frequently and more sharply than before. Business demanded it!
Indefatigably he followed up the rural police on those dull autumnal
days when taxes are collected and forced sale follows forced sale.
Unweariedly he bought standing grain on the stalk from the landed
proprietors and took land from them and from the peasants, in small
parcels, not scorning even half a meadow. He lived for a long time
with his dumb cook--“A dumb woman can’t betray anything with her
chatter!”--and had by her one child, whom she overlay and crushed
in her sleep, after which he married an elderly waiting-maid of old
Princess Schakhovoy. And on marrying and receiving the dowry he
“finished off” the last scion of the impoverished Durnovo family, a
fat, affable young nobleman, bald at twenty-five, but possessed of a
magnificent chestnut beard. And the peasants fairly grunted with pride
when Tikhon took possession of the Durnovo estate--for almost the
whole of Durnovka consisted of Krasoffs!
They _sh_-ed and _oh_-ed, also, over the way in which he had cunningly
contrived not to ruin himself. He bargained and bought, went to the
estate almost every day, kept watch with the eye of a vulture over
every hand’s breadth of the land. They uttered admiring exclamations
and said: “Yes, there’s nothing to be done with us devils by kindness,
you know! There’s a master for you! You couldn’t have one more just!”
And Tikhon Ilitch dealt with them in the same spirit. When he was in
an amiable mood he read them their lesson thus: “It’s all right to
live--but not to squander. I shall pluck you if I get the chance!
I shall bring you back. But I shall be just. I’m a Russian man,
brother.” When in an evil mood, he would say curtly, with eyes blazing:
“Pigs! There is not a juster man in the world than I am!” “Pigs, all
right--but that’s not me,” the peasant would think, averting his eyes
from that gaze. And he would mumble submissively: “Oh, Lord, don’t we
know it?” “Yes, you know it, but you have forgotten. I don’t want your
property gratis, but bear this in mind: I won’t give you a scrap of
what’s mine! There’s that brother of mine: he’s a rascal, a toper, but
I would help him if he came and implored me. I call God as my witness
that I would help him! But coddle him--! No, take note of that: I do no
coddling. I’m no brainless Little Russian, brother!”
And Nastasya Petrovna, who walked like a duck, with her toes turned
inward, and waddled, thanks to her incessant pregnancies which
always ended up with dead girl-babies--Nastasya Petrovna, a yellow,
puffy woman with scanty whitish-blond hair, would groan and back
him up: “Okh, you are a simpleton, in my opinion! Why do you bother
with him, with that stupid man? Is he a fit associate for you? You
just knock some sense into him; ’twill do him no harm. Look at
the way he’s straddling with his legs--as if he were a bokhar of
emir!”[2] She was “terribly fond” of pigs and fowls, and Tikhon
Ilitch began to fatten sucking pigs, turkey chicks, hens, and geese.
But his ruling passion was amassing grain. In autumn, alongside his
house, which stood with one side turned toward the highway and the
other toward the posting-station, the creaking of wheels arose in a
groan; the wagon trains turned in from above and below. And in the
farmyard horse-traders, peddlers, chicken-vendors, cracknel peddlers,
scythe-vendors, and pilgrims passed the night. Every moment a pulley
was squeaking--now on the door of the dram-shop, where Nastasya
Petrovna bustled about; now on the approach to the shop, a dark, dirty
place, reeking of soap, herrings, rank tobacco, gingerbread flavoured
with peppermint, horse-collars, and kerosene. And incessantly there
rang out in the dram-shop:
“U-ukh! Your vodka is strong, Petrovna! It has knocked me in the head,
devil take it!”
“’Twill make your mouth water, my dear man!”
“Is there snuff in your vodka?”
“Well, now, you fool yourself!”
In the shop the crowd was even more dense.
“Ilitch, weigh me out a pound of ham.”
“This year, brother, I’m so well stocked with ham--so well stocked,
thank God!”
“What’s the price?”
“’Tis cheap!”
“Hey, proprietor, have you good tar?”
“Better tar than your grandfather had at his wedding, my good man!”[3]
“What’s the price?”
And it seemed as if, at the Krasoffs’, there were never any other
conversation than that about the prices of things: What’s the price of
ham, what’s the price of boards, what’s the price of groats, what’s the
price of tar?