still. The storm still raged without. Something wailed in the stove, in
the chimney, outside the walls, and it seemed to Savely that the wailing
was within him, in his ears. This evening had completely confirmed him
in his suspicions about his wife. He no longer doubted that his wife,
with the aid of the Evil One, controlled the winds and the post sledges.
But to add to his grief, this mysteriousness, this supernatural, weird
power gave the woman beside him a peculiar, incomprehensible charm of
which he had not been conscious before. The fact that in his stupidity
he unconsciously threw a poetic glamour over her made her seem, as it
were, whiter, sleeker, more unapproachable.
"Witch!" he muttered indignantly. "Tfoo, horrid creature!"
Yet, waiting till she was quiet and began breathing evenly, he touched
her head with his finger... held her thick plait in his hand for a
minute. She did not feel it. Then he grew bolder and stroked her neck.
"Leave off!" she shouted, and prodded him on the nose with her elbow
with such violence that he saw stars before his eyes.
The pain in his nose was soon over, but the torture in his heart
remained.
PEASANT WIVES
IN the village of Reybuzh, just facing the church, stands a two-storeyed
house with a stone foundation and an iron roof. In the lower storey the
owner himself, Filip Ivanov Kashin, nicknamed Dyudya, lives with his
family, and on the upper floor, where it is apt to be very hot in summer
and very cold in winter, they put up government officials, merchants, or
landowners, who chance to be travelling that way. Dyudya rents some bits
of land, keeps a tavern on the highroad, does a trade in tar, honey,
cattle, and jackdaws, and has already something like eight thousand
roubles put by in the bank in the town.
His elder son, Fyodor, is head engineer in the factory, and, as the
peasants say of him, he has risen so high in the world that he is quite
out of reach now. Fyodor's wife, Sofya, a plain, ailing woman, lives at
home at her father-in-law's. She is for ever crying, and every Sunday
she goes over to the hospital for medicine. Dyudya's second son, the
hunchback Alyoshka, is living at home at his father's. He has only
lately been married to Varvara, whom they singled out for him from a
poor family. She is a handsome young woman, smart and buxom. When
officials or merchants put up at the house, they always insist on having
Varvara to bring in the samovar and make their beds.
One June evening when the sun was setting and the air was full of the
smell of hay, of steaming dung-heaps and new milk, a plain-looking cart
drove into Dyudya's yard with three people in it: a man of about thirty
in a canvas suit, beside him a little boy of seven or eight in a long
black coat with big bone buttons, and on the driver's seat a young
fellow in a red shirt.
The young fellow took out the horses and led them out into the street to
walk them up and down a bit, while the traveller washed, said a prayer,
turning towards the church, then spread a rug near the cart and sat down
with the boy to supper. He ate without haste, sedately, and Dyudya, who
had seen a good many travellers in his time, knew him from his manners
for a businesslike man, serious and aware of his own value.
Dyudya was sitting on the step in his waistcoat without a cap on,
waiting for the visitor to speak first. He was used to hearing all kinds
of stories from the travellers in the evening, and he liked listening to
them before going to bed. His old wife, Afanasyevna, and his daughter-
in-law Sofya, were milking in the cowshed. The other daughter-in-law,
Varvara, was sitting at the open window of the upper storey, eating
sunflower seeds.
"The little chap will be your son, I'm thinking?" Dyudya asked the
traveller.
"No; adopted. An orphan. I took him for my soul's salvation."
They got into conversation. The stranger seemed to be a man fond of
talking and ready of speech, and Dyudya learned from him that he was
from the town, was of the tradesman class, and had a house of his own,
that his name was Matvey Savitch, that he was on his way now to look at
some gardens that he was renting from some German colonists, and that
the boy's name was Kuzka. The evening was hot and close, no one felt
inclined for sleep. When it was getting dark and pale stars began to
twinkle here and there in the sky, Matvey Savitch began to tell how he
had come by Kuzka. Afanasyevna and Sofya stood a little way off,
listening. Kuzka had gone to the gate.
"It's a complicated story, old man," began Matvey Savitch, "and if I
were to tell you all just as it happened, it would take all night and
more. Ten years ago in a little house in our street, next door to me,
where now there's a tallow and oil factory, there was living an old
widow, Marfa Semyonovna Kapluntsev, and she had two sons: one was a
guard on the railway, but the other, Vasya, who was just my own age,
lived at home with his mother. Old Kapluntsev had kept five pair of
horses and sent carriers all over the town; his widow had not given up
the business, but managed the carriers as well as her husband had done,
so that some days they would bring in as much as five roubles from their
rounds.
"The young fellow, too, made a trifle on his own account. He used to
breed fancy pigeons and sell them to fanciers; at times he would stand
for hours on the roof, waving a broom in the air and whistling; his
pigeons were right up in the clouds, but it wasn't enough for him, and
he'd want them to go higher yet. Siskins and starlings, too, he used to
catch, and he made cages for sale. All trifles, but, mind you, he'd pick
up some ten roubles a month over such trifles. Well, as time went on,
the old lady lost the use of her legs and took to her bed. In
consequence of which event the house was left without a woman to look
after it, and that's for all the world like a man without an eye. The
old lady bestirred herself and made up her mind to marry Vasya. They
called in a matchmaker at once, the women got to talking of one thing
and another, and Vasya went off to have a look at the girls. He picked
out Mashenka, a widow's daughter. They made up their minds without loss
of time and in a week it was all settled. The girl was a little slip of
a thing, seventeen, but fair-skinned and pretty-looking, and like a lady
in all her ways; and a decent dowry with her, five hundred roubles, a
cow, a bed.... Well, the old lady--it seemed as though she had known it
was coming--three days after the wedding, departed to the Heavenly
Jerusalem where is neither sickness nor sighing. The young people gave
her a good funeral and began their life together. For just six months
they got on splendidly, and then all of a sudden another misfortune. It
never rains but it pours: Vasya was summoned to the recruiting office to
draw lots for the service. He was taken, poor chap, for a soldier, and
not even granted exemption. They shaved his head and packed him off to
Poland. It was God's will; there was nothing to be done. When he said
good-bye to his wife in the yard, he bore it all right; but as he
glanced up at the hay-loft and his pigeons for the last time, he burst
out crying. It was pitiful to see him.
"At first Mashenka got her mother to stay with her, that she mightn't be
dull all alone; she stayed till the baby--this very Kuzka here--was born,
and then she went off to Oboyan to another married daughter's and left
Mashenka alone with the baby. There were five peasants--the carriers--a
drunken saucy lot; horses, too, and dray-carts to see to, and then the
fence would be broken or the soot afire in the chimney--jobs beyond a
woman, and through our being neighbours, she got into the way of turning
to me for every little thing.... Well, I'd go over, set things to
rights, and give advice.... Naturally, not without going indoors,
drinking a cup of tea and having a little chat with her. I was a young
fellow, intellectual, and fond of talking on all sorts of subjects; she,
too, was well-bred and educated. She was always neatly dressed, and in
summer she walked out with a sunshade. Sometimes I would begin upon
religion or politics with her, and she was flattered and would entertain
me with tea and jam.... In a word, not to make a long story of it, I
must tell you, old man, a year had not passed before the Evil One, the
enemy of all mankind, confounded me. I began to notice that any day I
didn't go to see her, I seemed out of sorts and dull. And I'd be
continually making up something that I must see her about: 'It's high
time,' I'd say to myself, 'to put the double windows in for the winter,'
and the whole day I'd idle away over at her place putting in the windows
and take good care to leave a couple of them over for the next day too.
"'I ought to count over Vasya's pigeons, to see none of them have
strayed,' and so on. I used always to be talking to her across the
fence, and in the end I made a little gate in the fence so as not to
have to go so far round. From womankind comes much evil into the world
and every kind of abomination. Not we sinners only; even the saints
themselves have been led astray by them. Mashenka did not try to keep me
at a distance. Instead of thinking of her husband and being on her
guard, she fell in love with me. I began to notice that she was dull
without me, and was always walking to and fro by the fence looking into
my yard through the cracks.
"My brains were going round in my head in a sort of frenzy. On Thursday
in Holy Week I was going early in the morning--it was scarcely light--to
market. I passed close by her gate, and the Evil One was by me--at my
elbow. I looked--she had a gate with open trellis work at the top--and
there she was, up already, standing in the middle of the yard, feeding
the ducks. I could not restrain myself, and I called her name. She came
up and looked at me through the trellis.... Her little face was white,
her eyes soft and sleepy-looking.... I liked her looks immensely, and I
began paying her compliments, as though we were not at the gate, but
just as one does on namedays, while she blushed, and laughed, and kept
looking straight into my eyes without winking.... I lost all sense and
began to declare my love to her.... She opened the gate, and from that
morning we began to live as man and wife...."
The hunchback Alyoshka came into the yard from the street and ran out of
breath into the house, not looking at any one. A minute later he ran out
of the house with a concertina. Jingling some coppers in his pocket, and
cracking sunflower seeds as he ran, he went out at the gate.
"And who's that, pray?" asked Matvey Savitch.
"My son Alexey," answered Dyudya. "He's off on a spree, the rascal. God
has afflicted him with a hump, so we are not very hard on him."
"And he's always drinking with the other fellows, always drinking,"
sighed Afanasyevna. "Before Carnival we married him, thinking he'd be
steadier, but there! he's worse than ever."
"It's been no use. Simply keeping another man's daughter for nothing,"
said Dyudya.
Somewhere behind the church they began to sing a glorious, mournful
song. The words they could not catch and only the voices could be
heard--two tenors and a bass. All were listening; there was complete
stillness in the yard.... Two voices suddenly broke off with a loud roar
of laughter, but the third, a tenor, still sang on, and took so high a
note that every one instinctively looked upwards, as though the voice
had soared to heaven itself.
Varvara came out of the house, and screening her eyes with her hand, as
though from the sun, she looked towards the church.
"It's the priest's sons with the schoolmaster," she said.
Again all the three voices began to sing together. Matvey Savitch sighed
and went on:
"Well, that's how it was, old man. Two years later we got a letter from
Vasya from Warsaw. He wrote that he was being sent home sick. He was
ill. By that time I had put all that foolishness out of my head, and I
had a fine match picked out all ready for me, only I didn't know how to
break it off with my sweetheart. Every day I'd make up my mind to have
it out with Mashenka, but I didn't know how to approach her so as not to
have a woman's screeching about my ears. The letter freed my hands. I
read it through with Mashenka; she turned white as a sheet, while I said
to her: 'Thank God; now,' says I, 'you'll be a married woman again.' But
says she: 'I'm not going to live with him.' 'Why, isn't he your
husband?' said I. 'Is it an easy thing?... I never loved him and I
married him not of my own free will. My mother made me.' 'Don't try to
get out of it, silly,' said I, 'but tell me this: were you married to
him in church or not?' 'I was married,' she said, 'but it's you that I
love, and I will stay with you to the day of my death. Folks may jeer. I
don't care....' 'You're a Christian woman,' said I, 'and have read the
Scriptures; what is written there?'
"Once married, with her husband she must live," said Dyudya.
"'Man and wife are one flesh. We have sinned,' I said, 'you and I, and
it is enough; we must repent and fear God. We must confess it all to
Vasya,' said I; 'he's a quiet fellow and soft--he won't kill you. And
indeed,' said I, 'better to suffer torments in this world at the hands
of your lawful master than to gnash your teeth at the dread Seat of
Judgment.' The wench wouldn't listen; she stuck to her silly, 'It's you
I love!' and nothing more could I get out of her.
"Vasya came back on the Saturday before Trinity, early in the morning.
From my fence I could see everything; he ran into the house, and came
back a minute later with Kuzka in his arms, and he was laughing and
crying all at once; he was kissing Kuzka and looking up at the hay-loft,
and hadn't the heart to put the child down, and yet he was longing to go
to his pigeons. He was always a soft sort of chap--sentimental. That day
passed off very well, all quiet and proper. They had begun ringing the
church bells for the evening service, when the thought struck me: 'To-
morrow's Trinity Sunday; how is it they are not decking the gates and
the fence with green? Something's wrong,' I thought. I went over to
them. I peeped in, and there he was, sitting on the floor in the middle
of the room, his eyes staring like a drunken man's, the tears streaming
down his cheeks and his hands shaking; he was pulling cracknels,
necklaces, gingerbread nuts, and all sorts of little presents out of his
bundle and flinging them on the floor. Kuzka--he was three years old--was
crawling on the floor, munching the gingerbreads, while Mashenka stood
by the stove, white and shivering all over, muttering: 'I'm not your
wife; I can't live with you,' and all sorts of foolishness. I bowed down
at Vasya's feet, and said: 'We have sinned against you, Vassily
Maximitch; forgive us, for Christ's sake!' Then I got up and spoke to
Mashenka: 'You, Marya Semyonovna, ought now to wash Vassily Maximitch's
feet and drink the water. Do you be an obedient wife to him, and pray to
God for me, that He in His mercy may forgive my transgression.' It came
to me like an inspiration from an angel of Heaven; I gave her solemn
counsel and spoke with such feeling that my own tears flowed too. And so
two days later Vasya comes to me: 'Matyusha,' says he, 'I forgive you
and my wife; God have mercy on you! She was a soldier's wife, a young
thing all alone; it was hard for her to be on her guard. She's not the
first, nor will she be the last. Only,' he says, 'I beg you to behave as
though there had never been anything between you, and to make no sign,
while I,' says he, 'will do my best to please her in every way, so that
she may come to love me again.' He gave me his hand on it, drank a cup
of tea, and went away more cheerful.
"'Well,' thought I, 'thank God!' and I did feel glad that everything had
gone off so well. But no sooner had Vasya gone out of the yard, when in
came Mashenka. Ah! What I had to suffer! She hung on my neck, weeping
and praying: 'For God's sake, don't cast me off; I can't live without
you!'"
"The vile hussy!" sighed Dyudya.
"I swore at her, stamped my foot, and dragging her into the passage, I
fastened the door with the hook. 'Go to your husband,' I cried. 'Don't
shame me before folks. Fear God!' And every day there was a scene of
that sort.
"One morning I was standing in my yard near the stable cleaning a
bridle. All at once I saw her running through the little gate into my
yard, with bare feet, in her petticoat, and straight towards me; she
clutched at the bridle, getting all smeared with the pitch, and shaking
and weeping, she cried: 'I can't stand him; I loathe him; I can't bear
it! If you don't love me, better kill me!' I was angry, and I struck her
twice with the bridle, but at that instant Vasya ran in at the gate, and
in a despairing voice he shouted: 'Don't beat her! Don't beat her!' But
he ran up himself, and waving his arms, as though he were mad, he let
fly with his fists at her with all his might, then flung her on the
ground and kicked her. I tried to defend her, but he snatched up the
reins and thrashed her with them, and all the while, like a colt's
whinny, he went: 'He--he--he!'"
"I'd take the reins and let you feel them," muttered Varvara, moving
away; "murdering our sister, the damned brutes!..."
"Hold your tongue, you jade!" Dyudya shouted at her.
"'He--he--he!'" Matvey Savitch went on. "A carrier ran out of his yard; I
called to my workman, and the three of us got Mashenka away from him and
carried her home in our arms. The disgrace of it! The same day I went
over in the evening to see how things were. She was lying in bed, all
wrapped up in bandages, nothing but her eyes and nose to be seen; she
was looking at the ceiling. I said: 'Good-evening, Marya Semyonovna!'
She did not speak. And Vasya was sitting in the next room, his head in
his hands, crying and saying: 'Brute that I am! I've ruined my life! O
God, let me die!' I sat for half an hour by Mashenka and gave her a good
talking-to. I tried to frighten her a bit. 'The righteous,' said I,
'after this life go to Paradise, but you will go to a Gehenna of fire,
like all adulteresses. Don't strive against your husband, go and lay
yourself at his feet.' But never a word from her; she didn't so much as
blink an eyelid, for all the world as though I were talking to a post.
The next day Vasya fell ill with something like cholera, and in the
evening I heard that he was dead. Well, so they buried him, and Mashenka
did not go to the funeral; she didn't care to show her shameless face
and her bruises. And soon there began to be talk all over the district
that Vasya had not died a natural death, that Mashenka had made away
with him. It got to the ears of the police; they had Vasya dug up and
cut open, and in his stomach they found arsenic. It was clear he had
been poisoned; the police came and took Mashenka away, and with her the
innocent Kuzka. They were put in prison.... The woman had gone too
far--God punished her.... Eight months later they tried her. She sat, I
remember, on a low stool, with a little white kerchief on her head,
wearing a grey gown, and she was so thin, so pale, so sharp-eyed it made
one sad to look at her. Behind her stood a soldier with a gun. She would
not confess her guilt. Some in the court said she had poisoned her
husband and others declared he had poisoned himself for grief. I was one
of the witnesses. When they questioned me, I told the whole truth
according to my oath. 'Hers,' said I, 'is the guilt. It's no good to
conceal it; she did not love her husband, and she had a will of her
own....' The trial began in the morning and towards night they passed
this sentence: to send her to hard labour in Siberia for thirteen years.
After that sentence Mashenka remained three months longer in prison. I
went to see her, and from Christian charity I took her a little tea and
sugar. But as soon as she set eyes on me she began to shake all over,
wringing her hands and muttering: 'Go away! go away!' And Kuzka she
clasped to her as though she were afraid I would take him away. 'See,'
said I, 'what you have come to! Ah, Masha, Masha! you would not listen
to me when I gave you good advice, and now you must repent it. You are
yourself to blame,' said I; 'blame yourself!' I was giving her good
counsel, but she: 'Go away, go away!' huddling herself and Kuzka against
the wall, and trembling all over.
"When they were taking her away to the chief town of our province, I
walked by the escort as far as the station and slipped a rouble into her
bundle for my soul's salvation. But she did not get as far as
Siberia.... She fell sick of fever and died in prison."
"Live like a dog and you must die a dog's death," said Dyudya.
"Kuzka was sent back home.... I thought it over and took him to bring
up. After all--though a convict's child--still he was a living soul, a
Christian.... I was sorry for him. I shall make him my clerk, and if I
have no children of my own, I'll make a merchant of him. Wherever I go
now, I take him with me; let him learn his work."
All the while Matvey Savitch had been telling his story, Kuzka had sat
on a little stone near the gate. His head propped in both hands, he
gazed at the sky, and in the distance he looked in the dark like a stump
of wood.
"Kuzka, come to bed," Matvey Savitch bawled to him.
"Yes, it's time," said Dyudya, getting up; he yawned loudly and added:
"Folks will go their own way, and that's what comes of it."
Over the yard the moon was floating now in the heavens; she was moving
one way, while the clouds beneath moved the other way; the clouds were
disappearing into the darkness, but still the moon could be seen high
above the yard.
Matvey Savitch said a prayer, facing the church, and saying good-night,
he lay down on the ground near his cart. Kuzka, too, said a prayer, lay
down in the cart, and covered himself with his little overcoat; he made
himself a little hole in the hay so as to be more comfortable, and
curled up so that his elbows looked like knees. From the yard Dyudya
could be seen lighting a candle in his room below, putting on his
spectacles and standing in the corner with a book. He was a long while
reading and crossing himself.
The travellers fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sofya came up to the cart
and began looking at Kuzka.
"The little orphan's asleep," said the old woman. "He's thin and frail,
nothing but bones. No mother and no one to care for him properly."
"My Grishutka must be two years older," said Sofya. "Up at the factory
he lives like a slave without his mother. The foreman beats him, I dare
say. When I looked at this poor mite just now, I thought of my own
Grishutka, and my heart went cold within me."
A minute passed in silence.
"Doesn't remember his mother, I suppose," said the old woman.
"How could he remember?"
And big tears began dropping from Sofya's eyes.
"He's curled himself up like a cat," she said, sobbing and laughing with
tenderness and sorrow.... "Poor motherless mite!"
Kuzka started and opened his eyes. He saw before him an ugly, wrinkled,
tear-stained face, and beside it another, aged and toothless, with a
sharp chin and hooked nose, and high above them the infinite sky with
the flying clouds and the moon. He cried out in fright, and Sofya, too,
uttered a cry; both were answered by the echo, and a faint stir passed
over the stifling air; a watchman tapped somewhere near, a dog barked.
Matvey Savitch muttered something in his sleep and turned over on the
other side.
Late at night when Dyudya and the old woman and the neighbouring
watchman were all asleep, Sofya went out to the gate and sat down on the
bench. She felt stifled and her head ached from weeping. The street was
a wide and long one; it stretched for nearly two miles to the right and
as far to the left, and the end of it was out of sight. The moon was now
not over the yard, but behind the church. One side of the street was
flooded with moonlight, while the other side lay in black shadow. The
long shadows of the poplars and the starling-cotes stretched right
across the street, while the church cast a broad shadow, black and
terrible that enfolded Dyudya's gates and half his house. The street was
still and deserted. From time to time the strains of music floated
faintly from the end of the street--Alyoshka, most likely, playing his
concertina.
Someone moved in the shadow near the church enclosure, and Sofya could
not make out whether it were a man or a cow, or perhaps merely a big
bird rustling in the trees. But then a figure stepped out of the shadow,
halted, and said something in a man's voice, then vanished down the
turning by the church. A little later, not three yards from the gate,
another figure came into sight; it walked straight from the church to
the gate and stopped short, seeing Sofya on the bench.
"Varvara, is that you?" said Sofya.
"And if it were?"
It was Varvara. She stood still a minute, then came up to the bench and
sat down.
"Where have you been?" asked Sofya.
Varvara made no answer.
"You'd better mind you don't get into trouble with such goings-on, my
girl," said Sofya. "Did you hear how Mashenka was kicked and lashed with
the reins? You'd better look out, or they'll treat you the same."
"Well, let them!"
Varvara laughed into her kerchief and whispered: