factory to find her in this ridiculous position. As ill-luck would have
it, the lodger came in at the very moment when, having broken the catch
at last, she was giving Tchalikov some notes, and Tchalikov, grunting as
though he were paraylzed, was feeling about with his lips where he could
kiss her. In the lodger she recognized the workman who had once clanked
the sheet-iron before her in the forge, and had explained things to her.
Evidently he had come in straight from the factory; his face looked dark
and grimy, and on one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot. His
hands were perfectly black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and
grease. He was a man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and
broad shoulders, and a look of great physical strength. At the first
glance Anna Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must be
receiving at least thirty-five roubles a month, and a stern, loud-voiced
man who struck the workmen in the face; all this was evident from his
manner of standing, from the attitude he involuntarily assumed at once
on seeing a lady in his room, and most of all from the fact that he did
not wear top-boots, that he had breast pockets, and a pointed,
picturesquely clipped beard. Her father, Akim Ivanovitch, had been the
brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been afraid of foremen like
this lodger and had tried to win their favour.
"Excuse me for having come in here in your absence," said Anna Akimovna.
The workman looked at her in surprise, smiled in confusion and did not
speak.
"You must speak a little louder, madam . . . ." said Tchalikov softly.
"When Mr. Pimenov comes home from the factory in the evenings he is a
little hard of hearing."
But Anna Akimovna was by now relieved that there was nothing more for
her to do here; she nodded to them and went rapidly out of the room.
Pimenov went to see her out.
"Have you been long in our employment?" she asked in a loud voice,
without turning to him.
"From nine years old. I entered the factory in your uncle's time."
"That's a long while! My uncle and my father knew all the workpeople,
and I know hardly any of them. I had seen you before, but I did not know
your name was Pimenov."
Anna Akimovna felt a desire to justify herself before him, to pretend
that she had just given the money not seriously, but as a joke.
"Oh, this poverty," she sighed. "We give charity on holidays and working
days, and still there is no sense in it. I believe it is useless to help
such people as this Tchalikov."
"Of course it is useless," he agreed. "However much you give him, he
will drink it all away. And now the husband and wife will be snatching
it from one another and fighting all night," he added with a laugh.
"Yes, one must admit that our philanthropy is useless, boring, and
absurd. But still, you must agree, one can't sit with one's hand in
one's lap; one must do something. What's to be done with the Tchalikovs,
for instance?"
She turned to Pimenov and stopped, expecting an answer from him; he,
too, stopped and slowly, without speaking, shrugged his shoulders.
Obviously he knew what to do with the Tchalikovs, but the treatment
would have been so coarse and inhuman that he did not venture to put it
into words. And the Tchalikovs were to him so utterly uninteresting and
worthless, that a moment later he had forgotten them; looking into Anna
Akimovna's eyes, he smiled with pleasure, and his face wore an
expression as though he were dreaming about something very pleasant.
Only, now standing close to him, Anna Akimovna saw from his face, and
especially from his eyes, how exhausted and sleepy he was.
"Here, I ought to give him the fifteen hundred roubles!" she thought,
but for some reason this idea seemed to her incongruous and insulting to
Pimenov.
"I am sure you are aching all over after your work, and you come to the
door with me," she said as they went down the stairs. "Go home."
But he did not catch her words. When they came out into the street, he
ran on ahead, unfastened the cover of the sledge, and helping Anna
Akimovna in, said:
"I wish you a happy Christmas!" II
Christmas Morning
"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!"