IX

But the “order” came, at last. One Sunday a rumour began to circulate

in Durnovka that the village assembly had worked out a plan for an

attack upon the manor. With maliciously merry eyes, a feeling of

unusual strength and daring, and a readiness to “break the horns of the

devil himself,” Tikhon Ilitch shouted orders to have the colt harnessed

to the runabout, and within ten minutes he was driving him at high

speed along the highway to Durnovka. The sun was setting, after a rainy

day, in greyish-red clouds; the boles of the trees in the birch-grove

were crimson; the country dirt-road, which stood out as a line of

blackish-purple mud amid the fresh greenery, afforded heavy going.

Rose-hued foam dripped from the haunches of the colt and from the

breeching which jerked about on them. But he was not considering the

colt. Slapping him stoutly with the reins, Tikhon Ilitch turned aside

from the railway, drove to the right along the road across the fields,

and, on coming within sight of Durnovka, was inclined to doubt, for

a moment, the correctness of the rumours about a rebellion. Peaceful

stillness lay all about, the larks were warbling their evening song in

peace, the air was simply and peacefully impregnated with an odour of

damp earth and with the fragrance of wild flowers. But all of a sudden

his glance fell upon the fallow-field alongside the manor, thickly sown

with sweet-clover. On that fallow-field, a drove of horses belonging to

the peasants was grazing!

So it had begun. And, tugging at the reins, Tikhon Ilitch flew past

the drove, past the barns overgrown with burdocks and nettles, past

a low-growing cherry-orchard filled with sparrows, past the stables

and the cottages of the domestics, and leaped with a bound into the

farmyard.

Then something incongruous happened. There, in the twilight, in the

middle of the field, sat Tikhon Ilitch in his runabout, overwhelmed

with wrath, mortification, and terror. His heart beat violently, his

hands trembled, his face burned, his hearing was as acute as that of a

wild animal. There he sat, listening to the shouts which were wafted

from Durnovka, and recalled how the crowd, which had seemed to him

immense, on catching sight of him from afar had swarmed across the

gorge to the manor and filled the yard with uproar and abusive words,

had massed themselves on the porch and pinioned him against the door.

All the weapon he had had was the whip in his hand. And he brandished

it, now retreating, now hurling himself in desperation against the

crowd. But the harness-maker, a vicious emaciated fellow with a sunken

belly and a sharp nose, wearing tall boots and a lavender print shirt,

advanced brandishing his stick even more furiously. On behalf of the

whole throng, he screeched that an order had been issued to “make an

end of that outfit”--to make an end on one and the same day and hour

throughout the entire government. The hired labourers from outside

were to be chased out of all the estates and replaced with local

labourers--at a ruble a day!--while the owners were to be expelled neck

and crop, in any direction, so that they would never be seen again. And

Tikhon Ilitch yelled still more frantically, in the endeavour to drown

out the harness-maker: “A--a! So that’s it! Have you been whetting

yourself, you tramp, on the deacon’s son? Have you lost your wits?”

But the harness-maker disputatiously caught his words on the fly:

“Tramp yourself!” he yelled until he was hoarse, and his face was

suffused with blood. “You’re an old fool! Haven’t I managed to get

along all my life without the deacon’s son? Don’t I know how much land

you own? How much is it, you skinflint? Two hundred desyatini? But

I--damn it!--own, in all, about as much ground as is covered by your

porch! And why? Who are you? Who are you, anyway, I ask you? What’s

your brew--any better sort than the rest of us?”

“Come to your senses, Mitka!” shouted Tikhon Ilitch helplessly at last;

and, conscious that his wits were getting muddled, he made a dash

through the crowd to his runabout. “I’ll pay you off for this!”

But no one was afraid of his threats, and unanimous laughter, yells,

and whistling followed him. Then he had made the round of the

manor-estate, his heart sinking within him, and listened. He drove

out upon the road to the cross-roads and halted with his face to

the darkening west, toward the railway station, holding himself in

readiness to whip up his horse at any moment. It was very quiet, warm,

damp, and dark. The land, which rose toward the horizon, where a faint

reddish gleam still smouldered, was as black as the nethermost abyss.

“Sta-and still, you carrion!” Tikhon Ilitch whispered through set teeth

to his restive horse. “Sta-and still!”

And, from afar, first shouts, then songs, were wafted to him. And among

all the voices the voice of Vanka Krasny, who had already been twice

in the mines of the Donetz Basin, was distinguishable above the rest.

And then, suddenly, a dark-fiery column rose above the manor-house:

the peasants had shaken off all the immature fruit in the orchard and

set fire to the watchman’s hut. A pistol which the gardener, a petty

burgher, had left behind him in the hut began to discharge itself, out

of the fire.

It became known, later on, that in truth a remarkable thing had taken

place. On one and the same day, the peasants had risen through almost

the entire county. The inns in the town were crowded for a long

time thereafter with land-owners who had sought protection of the

authorities. Afterwards, Tikhon Ilitch recalled with shame that he

also had sought it--with shame, because the whole uprising had been

limited to the Durnovka people’s shouting for a while, doing a lot

of damage, and then quieting down. The harness-maker began, before

long, to present himself in the shop at Vorgol as though nothing

whatever had happened, and doffed his cap on the threshold as if he

did not perceive that Tikhon Ilitch’s face darkened at his appearance.

Nevertheless, rumours were still in circulation to the effect that the

Durnovka folk intended to murder Tikhon Ilitch. And he, afraid to be

caught out after dark on the road from Durnovka, fumbled in his pocket

for his bulldog revolver, which weighed down the pocket of his full

trousers in an annoying manner, and registered a vow that he would burn

Durnovka to the ground some fine night, or poison the water in the

Durnovka wells. Then even these rumours died away. But Tikhon Ilitch

began to think seriously of ridding himself of Durnovka. “Real money is

the money in your pocket, not the money you’re going to inherit from

your grandmother!” Moreover, the peasants had become impudent in their

manner to him, and they seemed peculiarly well-informed. The Durnovka

folks knew “all the ins and outs of things,” and for that reason alone,

if for no other, it was stupid to entrust the oversight and management

of affairs at the manor to any of the Durnovka labourers. More than

that, Rodka was the village Elder.

That year--the most alarming of all recent years--Tikhon Ilitch reached

the age of fifty. But he had not abandoned his dream of becoming a

father. And, lo and behold, precisely that was what brought him into

collision with Rodka.

X

Rodka, a tall, thin, sullen young fellow from Ulianovka, had gone two

years previously to live with Fedot, the brother of Yakoff; he had

married, and had buried Fedot, who had died from over-drinking at the

wedding; and he had then gone away to do his military service. But the

bride, a young woman with fine figure, an extremely white, soft skin

faintly tinged with crimson, and eyelashes for ever downcast, began to

work for daily wages at the farm. And those eyelashes perturbed Tikhon

Ilitch terribly. The peasant women of Durnovka wear “horns” on their

heads: immediately after the wedding they coil their braided hair on

the crown of the head and cover it with a kerchief, which produces a

queer effect, similar to the horns of a cow. They wear dark-blue skirts

of the antique pattern, trimmed with galloon, a white apron not unlike

a sarafan[8] in shape, and bast-slippers. But the Bride--that name

stuck to her--was beautiful in that garb. And one evening in the dark

barn, where the Bride was alone and finishing the clearing up of the

rye-ears, Tikhon Ilitch, after casting a precautionary glance around

him, entered, went up to her, and said hastily: “You shall have pretty

shoes and silk kerchiefs. I shall not begrudge a twenty-five-ruble

banknote!”

But the Bride remained silent as death.

“Do you hear what I say?” cried Tikhon Ilitch, in a whisper.

But the Bride seemed turned to stone, and with bowed head went on

wielding her rake.

So he accomplished nothing at all. All of a sudden, Rodka

appeared--ahead of his time, and minus an eye. That was soon after the

rebellion of the Durnovka peasants, and Tikhon Ilitch immediately hired

him and his wife for the Durnovka farm, on the ground that “nowadays

it won’t do to be without a soldier on the place.” About St. Ilya’s

Day, while Rodka had gone off to the town, the Bride was scrubbing the

floors in the house. Picking his way among the puddles, Tikhon Ilitch

entered the room, cast a glance at the Bride, who was bending over the

floor--at her white calves bespattered with dirty water--at the whole

of her plump body as it flattened out before him. And, suddenly turning

the key in the door, he strode up to the Bride. She straightened up

hastily, raised her flushed, agitated face and, clutching in her hand

the dripping floor-rag, screamed at him in a strange tone: “I’ll give

you a soaking, young fellow!”

An odour of hot soapsuds, heated body, perspiration, pervaded the air.

Seizing the Bride by the hand, he squeezed it in a brutal grip, shaking

it and making her drop the rag. Tikhon Ilitch grasped the Bride by the

waist with his right arm--pressed her to him with such force that her

bones cracked--and bore her off into another room where there was a

bed. And the Bride, with head thrown back and eyes staring wide open,

no longer struggled, no longer resisted.

After that incident it was painful to the point of torment to see his

wife, to see Rodka; to know that Rodka slept with the Bride, that he

beat her ferociously every day and every night. But before long the

situation became alarming as well. Inscrutable are the ways by which a

jealous man arrives at the truth. And Rodka found out. Lean, one-eyed,

long-armed, and strong as an ape, with a small closely-cropped black

head which he always carried bent forward as he shot sidelong glances

from his deep-set eyes, he became downright terrifying. During his

service as a soldier he had acquired a stock of Little Russian words

and an accent. And if the Bride ventured to make any reply to his curt,

harsh speeches, he calmly picked up his leather-strap knout, approached

her with a vicious grin, and calmly inquired, accenting the “re”:

“What’s that you’re _re_marking?” Thereupon he gave her such a flogging

that everything turned black before her eyes.

On one occasion Tikhon Ilitch himself happened upon a thrashing of

this sort and, unable to restrain his indignation, shouted: “What are

you doing, you damned rascal?” But Rodka quietly seated himself on the

bench and merely looked at him. “What’s that you’re _re_marking?” he

inquired. And Tikhon Ilitch made haste to retreat, slamming the door

behind him.

Wild thoughts began to dart through his mind. Should he poison his

wife?--with stove-gas, for example?--or should he arrange matters

so that Rodka would be crushed by a falling roof or earth? But one

month passed, then another--and hope, that hope which had inspired in

him these intoxicating thoughts, was cruelly deceived. The Bride was

not pregnant. Every one in Durnovka was convinced that it was Rodka’s

fault. Tikhon Ilitch himself was convinced of it, and cherished strong

hopes. But one day in September, when Rodka was absent at the railway

station, Tikhon Ilitch presented himself and fairly groaned aloud at

the sight of the face of the Bride, all its feminine beauty distorted

with terror.

“Are you done for again?” he cried, as he ran up the steps of the porch.

The Bride’s lips turned white, her nose became waxen in hue, and her

eyes opened very wide; yet again, it appeared, she was not with child.

She expected to receive a deadly blow on the head, and involuntarily

recoiled from it. But Tikhon Ilitch controlled himself, merely uttering

a groan of pain and rage.

A moment later he took his departure--and from that day forth Rodka had

no reason for jealousy. Conscious of that fact, Rodka began to feel

timid in the presence of Tikhon Ilitch. And the latter now harboured,

secretly, only one desire: to drive Rodka out of his sight, and that as

speedily as possible. But whom could he find to take his place?