The engineer seemed to grow irritable and petty, and in every trivial
incident saw an act of robbery or outrage. His gate was kept bolted even
by day, and at night two watchmen walked up and down the garden beating
a board; and they gave up employing anyone from Obrutchanovo as a
labourer. As ill-luck would have it someone (either a peasant or one of
the workmen) took the new wheels off the cart and replaced them by
old ones, then soon afterwards two bridles and a pair of pincers were
carried off, and murmurs arose even in the village. People began to say
that a search should be made at the Lytchkovs’ and at Volodka’s, and
then the bridles and the pincers were found under the hedge in the
engineer’s garden; someone had thrown them down there.
It happened that the peasants were coming in a crowd out of the forest,
and again they met the engineer on the road. He stopped, and without
wishing them good-day he began, looking angrily first at one, then at
another:
“I have begged you not to gather mushrooms in the park and near the
yard, but to leave them for my wife and children, but your girls come
before daybreak and there is not a mushroom left....Whether one asks
you or not it makes no difference. Entreaties, and friendliness, and
persuasion I see are all useless.”
He fixed his indignant eyes on Rodion and went on:
“My wife and I behaved to you as human beings, as to our equals, and
you? But what’s the use of talking! It will end by our looking down upon
you. There is nothing left!”
And making an effort to restrain his anger, not to say too much, he
turned and went on.
On getting home Rodion said his prayer, took off his boots, and sat down
beside his wife.
“Yes...” he began with a sigh. “We were walking along just now, and Mr.
Kutcherov met us.... Yes.... He saw the girls at daybreak... ‘Why don’t
they bring mushrooms,’... he said ‘to my wife and children?’ he said....
And then he looked at me and he said: ‘I and my wife will look after
you,’ he said. I wanted to fall down at his feet, but I hadn’t the
courage.... God give him health... God bless him!...”
Stephania crossed herself and sighed.
“They are kind, simple-hearted people,” Rodion went on. “‘We shall look
after you.’... He promised me that before everyone. In our old age...
it wouldn’t be a bad thing.... I should always pray for them.... Holy
Mother, bless them....”
The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the fourteenth of September,
was the festival of the village church. The Lytchkovs, father and son,
went across the river early in the morning and returned to dinner drunk;
they spent a long time going about the village, alternately singing and
swearing; then they had a fight and went to the New Villa to complain.
First Lytchkov the father went into the yard with a long ashen stick in
his hands. He stopped irresolutely and took off his hat. Just at
that moment the engineer and his family were sitting on the verandah,
drinking tea.
“What do you want?” shouted the engineer.
“Your honour...” Lytchkov began, and burst into tears. “Show the Divine
mercy, protect me... my son makes my life a misery... your honour...”
Lytchkov the son walked up, too; he, too, was bareheaded and had a stick
in his hand; he stopped and fixed his drunken senseless eyes on the
verandah.
“It is not my business to settle your affairs,” said the engineer. “Go
to the rural captain or the police officer.”
“I have been everywhere.... I have lodged a petition...” said Lytchkov
the father, and he sobbed. “Where can I go now? He can kill me now, it
seems. He can do anything. Is that the way to treat a father? A father?”
He raised his stick and hit his son on the head; the son raised his
stick and struck his father just on his bald patch such a blow that
the stick bounced back. The father did not even flinch, but hit his
son again and again on the head. And so they stood and kept hitting one
another on the head, and it looked not so much like a fight as some sort
of a game. And peasants, men and women, stood in a crowd at the gate and
looked into the garden, and the faces of all were grave. They were the
peasants who had come to greet them for the holiday, but seeing the
Lytchkovs, they were ashamed and did not go in.
The next morning Elena Ivanovna went with the children to Moscow. And
there was a rumour that the engineer was selling his house....
V
The peasants had long ago grown used to the sight of the bridge, and it
was difficult to imagine the river at that place without a bridge. The
heap of rubble left from the building of it had long been overgrown with
grass, the navvies were forgotten, and instead of the strains of the
“Dubinushka” that they used to sing, the peasants heard almost every
hour the sounds of a passing train.
The New Villa has long ago been sold; now it belongs to a government
clerk who comes here from the town for the holidays with his family,
drinks tea on the terrace, and then goes back to the town again. He
wears a cockade on his cap; he talks and clears his throat as though
he were a very important official, though he is only of the rank of a
collegiate secretary, and when the peasants bow he makes no response.
In Obrutchanovo everyone has grown older; Kozov is dead. In Rodion’s hut
there are even more children. Volodka has grown a long red beard. They
are still as poor as ever.
In the early spring the Obrutchanovo peasants were sawing wood near the
station. And after work they were going home; they walked without haste
one after the other. Broad saws curved over their shoulders; the sun was
reflected in them. The nightingales were singing in the bushes on the
bank, larks were trilling in the heavens. It was quiet at the New Villa;
there was not a soul there, and only golden pigeons--golden because the
sunlight was streaming upon them--were flying over the house. All of
them--Rodion, the two Lytchkovs, and Volodka--thought of the white
horses, the little ponies, the fireworks, the boat with the lanterns;
they remembered how the engineer’s wife, so beautiful and so grandly
dressed, had come into the village and talked to them in such a friendly
way. And it seemed as though all that had never been; it was like a
dream or a fairy-tale.
They trudged along, tired out, and mused as they went.... In their
village, they mused, the people were good, quiet, sensible, fearing God,
and Elena Ivanovna, too, was quiet, kind, and gentle; it made one sad to
look at her, but why had they not got on together? Why had they parted
like enemies? How was it that some mist had shrouded from their eyes
what mattered most, and had let them see nothing but damage done by
cattle, bridles, pincers, and all those trivial things which now, as
they remembered them, seemed so nonsensical? How was it that with the
new owner they lived in peace, and yet had been on bad terms with the
engineer?
And not knowing what answer to make to these questions they were all
silent except Volodka, who muttered something.
“What is it?” Rodion asked.
“We lived without a bridge...” said Volodka gloomily. “We lived without
a bridge, and did not ask for one... and we don’t want it....”
No one answered him and they walked on in silence with drooping heads.