Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories

The Novels Of Ivan Turgenev KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK And Other Stories

Translated From The Russian

By

Constance Garnett

CONTENTS

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

THE INN

LIEUTENANT YERGUNOV'S STORY

THE DOG

THE WATCH

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

A STUDY

I

We all settled down in a circle and our good friend Alexandr

Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to the

marrow of his bones) began as follows:

I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened to

me in the 'thirties ... forty years ago as you see. I will be

brief--and don't you interrupt me.

I was living at the time in Petersburg and had only just left the

University. My brother was a lieutenant in the horse-guard artillery.

His battery was stationed at Krasnoe Selo--it was summer time. My

brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of the

neighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made the

acquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decent

cottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name was

Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.

Marlinsky is out of date now--no one reads him--and even his name is

jeered at; but in the 'thirties his fame was above everyone's--and in

the opinion of the young people of the day Pushkin could not hold

candle to him. He not only enjoyed the reputation of being the

foremost Russian writer; but--something much more difficult and more

rarely met with--he did to some extent leave his mark on his

generation. One came across heroes à la Marlinsky everywhere,

especially in the provinces and especially among infantry and

artillery men; they talked and corresponded in his language; behaved

with gloomy reserve in society--"with tempest in the soul and flame in

the blood" like Lieutenant Byelosov in the "Frigate Hope."

Women's hearts were "devoured" by them. The adjective applied to them

in those days was "fatal." The type, as we all know, survived for many

years, to the days of Petchorin. [Footnote: The leading character in

Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time.--Translator's Note.] All

sorts of elements were mingled in that type. Byronism, romanticism,

reminiscences of the French Revolution, of the Dekabrists--and the

worship of Napoleon; faith in destiny, in one's star, in strength of

will; pose and fine phrases--and a miserable sense of the emptiness of

life; uneasy pangs of petty vanity--and genuine strength and daring;

generous impulses--and defective education, ignorance; aristocratic

airs--and delight in trivial foppery.... But enough of these general

reflections. I promised to tell you the story.

II

Lieutenant Tyeglev belonged precisely to the class of those "fatal"

individuals, though he did not possess the exterior commonly

associated with them; he was not, for instance, in the least like

Lermontov's "fatalist." He was a man of medium height, fairly solid

and round-shouldered, with fair, almost white eyebrows and eyelashes;

he had a round, fresh, rosy-cheeked face, a turn-up nose, a low

forehead with the hair growing thick over the temples, and full,

well-shaped, always immobile lips: he never laughed, never even smiled.

Only when he was tired and out of heart he showed his square teeth,

white as sugar. The same artificial immobility was imprinted on all his

features: had it not been for that, they would have had a good-natured

expression. His small green eyes with yellow lashes were the

only thing not quite ordinary in his face: his right eye was very

slightly higher than his left and the left eyelid drooped a little,

which made his eyes look different, strange and drowsy. Tyeglev's

countenance, which was not, however, without a certain attractiveness,

almost always wore an expression of discontent mingled with

perplexity, as though he were chasing within himself a gloomy thought

which he was never able to catch. At the same time he did not give one

the impression of being stuck up: he might rather have been taken for

an aggrieved than a haughty man. He spoke very little, hesitatingly,

in a husky voice, with unnecessary repetitions. Unlike most

"fatalists," he did not use particularly elaborate expressions in

speaking and only had recourse to them in writing; his handwriting was

quite like a child's. His superiors regarded him as an officer of no

great merit--not particularly capable and not over-zealous. The

brigadier-general, a man of German extraction, used to say of him: "He

has punctuality but not precision." With the soldiers, too, Tyeglev

had the character of being neither one thing nor the other. He lived

modestly, in accordance with his means. He had been left an orphan at

nine years old: his father and mother were drowned when they were

being ferried across the Oka in the spring floods. He had been

educated at a private school, where he had the reputation of being one

of the slowest and quietest of the boys, and at his own earnest desire

and through the good offices of a cousin who was a man of influence,

he obtained a commission in the horse-guards artillery; and, though

with some difficulty, passed his examination first as an ensign and

then as a second lieutenant. His relations with other officers were

somewhat strained. He was not liked, was rarely visited--and he

hardly went to see anyone. He felt the presence of strangers a

constraint; he instantly became awkward and unnatural ... he had no

instinct for comradeship and was not on really intimate terms with

anyone. But he was respected, and respected not for his character nor

for his intelligence and education--but because the stamp which

distinguishes "fatal" people was discerned in him. No one of his

fellow officers expected that Tyeglev would make a career or

distinguish himself in any way; but that Tyeglev might do something

extraordinary or that Tyeglev might become a Napoleon was not

considered impossible. For that is a matter of a man's "star"--and he

was regarded as a "man of destiny," just as there are "men of sighs"

and "of tears."

III

Two incidents that marked the first steps in his career did a great

deal to strengthen his "fatal" reputation. On the very first day after

receiving his commission--about the middle of March--he was walking

with other newly promoted officers in full dress uniform along the

embankment. The spring had come early that year, the Neva was melting;

the bigger blocks of ice had gone but the whole river was choked up

with a dense mass of thawing icicles. The young men were talking and

laughing ... suddenly one of them stopped: he saw a little dog some

twenty paces from the bank on the slowly moving surface of the river.

Perched on a projecting piece of ice it was whining and trembling all

over. "It will be drowned," said the officer through his teeth. The

dog was slowly being carried past one of the sloping gangways that led

down to the river. All at once Tyeglev without saying a word ran down

this gangway and over the thin ice, sinking in and leaping out again,

reached the dog, seized it by the scruff of the neck and getting

safely back to the bank, put it down on the pavement. The danger to

which Tyeglev had exposed himself was so great, his action was so

unexpected, that his companions were dumbfoundered--and only spoke all

at once, when he had called a cab to drive home: his uniform was wet

all over. In response to their exclamations, Tyeglev replied coolly

that there was no escaping one's destiny--and told the cabman to drive

on.

"You might at least take the dog with you as a souvenir," cried one of

the officers. But Tyeglev merely waved his hand, and his comrades

looked at each other in silent amazement.

The second incident occurred a few days later, at a card party at the

battery commander's. Tyeglev sat in the corner and took no part in the

play. "Oh, if only I had a grandmother to tell me beforehand what

cards will win, as in Pushkin's Queen of Spades," cried a

lieutenant whose losses had nearly reached three thousand. Tyeglev

approached the table in silence, took up a pack, cut it, and saying

"the six of diamonds," turned the pack up: the six of diamonds was the

bottom card. "The ace of clubs!" he said and cut again: the bottom

card turned out to be the ace of clubs. "The king of diamonds!" he

said for the third time in an angry whisper through his clenched

teeth--and he was right the third time, too ... and he suddenly turned

crimson. He probably had not expected it himself. "A capital trick! Do

it again," observed the commanding officer of the battery. "I don't go

in for tricks," Tyeglev answered drily and walked into the other room.

How it happened that he guessed the card right, I can't pretend to

explain: but I saw it with my own eyes. Many of the players present

tried to do the same--and not one of them succeeded: one or two did

guess one card but never two in succession. And Tyeglev had

guessed three! This incident strengthened still further his reputation

as a mysterious, fatal character. It has often occurred to me since

that if he had not succeeded in the trick with the cards, there is no

knowing what turn it would have taken and how he would have looked at

himself; but this unexpected success clinched the matter.

IV

It may well be understood that Tyeglev clutched at this reputation. It

gave him a special significance, a special colour ... "Cela le

posait," as the French express it--and with his limited

intelligence, scanty education and immense vanity, such a reputation

just suited him. It was difficult to acquire it but to keep it up cost

nothing: he had only to remain silent and hold himself aloof. But it

was not owing to this reputation that I made friends with Tyeglev and,

I may say, grew fond of him. I liked him in the first place because I

was rather an unsociable creature myself--and saw in him one of my own

sort, and secondly, because he was a very good-natured fellow and in

reality, very simple-hearted. He aroused in me a feeling of something

like compassion; it seemed to me that apart from his affected

"fatality," he really was weighed down by a tragic fate which he did

not himself suspect. I need hardly say I did not express this feeling

to him: could anything be more insulting to a "fatal" hero than to be

an object of pity? And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me;

with me he felt at ease, with me he used to talk--in my presence he

ventured to leave the strange pedestal on which he had been placed

either by his own efforts or by chance. Agonisingly, morbidly vain as

he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there

was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look

down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him;

the dread of saying something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress

his ever-apprehensive heart in my presence. He sometimes even

chattered freely; and well it was for him that no one heard his

chatter except me! His reputation would not have lasted long. He not

only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself

to picking up stories and anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in

presentiments, predictions, omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days,

in the persecution and benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious

significance of life, in fact. He even believed in certain

"climacteric" years which someone had mentioned in his presence and

the meaning of which he did not himself very well understand. "Fatal"

men of the true stamp ought not to betray such beliefs: they ought to

inspire them in others.... But I was the only one who knew Tyeglev on

that side.

V

One day--I remember it was St. Elijah's day, July 20th--I came to stay

with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off

for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I

sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and

spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn

where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had

a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes

and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar

who used to hang about the battery selling "fi-ine oranges and

lemons," a charming and lively person who in addition to other talents

could play the guitar and used to tell us of the unhappy love which he

cherished in his young days for the daughter of a policeman. Now that

he was older, this Don Juan in a gay cotton shirt had no experience of

unsuccessful love affairs. Before the doors of our barn stretched a

wide plain gradually sloping away in the distance; a little river

gleamed here and there in the winding hollows; low growing woods could

be seen further on the horizon. Night was coming on and we were left

alone. As night fell a fine damp mist descended upon the earth, and,

growing thicker and thicker, passed into a dense fog. The moon rose up

into the sky; the fog was soaked through and through and, as it were,

shimmering with golden light. Everything was strangely shifting,

veiled and confused; the faraway looked near, the near looked far

away, what was big looked small and what was small looked big ...

everything became dim and full of light. We seemed to be in fairyland,

in a world of whitish-golden mist, deep stillness, delicate sleep....

And how mysteriously, like sparks of silver, the stars filtered

through the mist! We were both silent. The fantastic beauty of the

night worked upon us: it put us into the mood for the fantastic.

VI

Tyeglev was the first to speak and talked with his usual hesitating

incompleted sentences and repetitions about presentiments ... about

ghosts. On exactly such a night, according to him, one of his friends,

a student who had just taken the place of tutor to two orphans and was

sleeping with them in a lodge in the garden, saw a woman's figure

bending over their beds and next day recognised the figure in a

portrait of the mother of the orphans which he had not previously

noticed. Then Tyeglev told me that his parents had heard for several

days before their death the sound of rushing water; that his

grandfather had been saved from death in the battle of Borodino

through suddenly stooping down to pick up a simple grey pebble at the

very instant when a volley of grape-shot flew over his head and broke

his long black plume. Tyeglev even promised to show me the very pebble

which had saved his grandfather and which he had mounted into a

medallion. Then he talked of the lofty destination of every man and of

his own in particular and added that he still believed in it and that

if he ever had any doubts on that subject he would know how to be rid

of them and of his life, as life would then lose all significance for

him. "You imagine perhaps," he brought out, glancing askance at me,

"that I shouldn't have the spirit to do it? You don't know me ... I

have a will of iron."

"Well said," I thought to myself.

Tyeglev pondered, heaved a deep sigh and dropping his chibouk out of

his hand, informed me that that day was a very important one for him.

"This is the prophet Elijah's day--my name day.... It is ... it is

always for me a difficult time."

I made no answer and only looked at him as he sat facing me, bent,

round-shouldered, and clumsy, with his drowsy, lustreless eyes fixed

on the ground.

"An old beggar woman" (Tyeglev never let a single beggar pass without

giving alms) "told me to-day," he went on, "that she would pray for my

soul.... Isn't that strange?"

"Why does the man want to be always bothering about himself!" I

thought again. I must add, however, that of late I had begun noticing

an unusual expression of anxiety and uneasiness on Tyeglev's face, and

it was not a "fatal" melancholy: something really was fretting and

worrying him. On this occasion, too, I was struck by the dejected

expression of his face. Were not those very doubts of which he had

spoken to me beginning to assail him? Tyeglev's comrades had told me

that not long before he had sent to the authorities a project for some

reforms in the artillery department and that the project had been

returned to him "with a comment," that is, a reprimand. Knowing his

character, I had no doubt that such contemptuous treatment by his

superior officers had deeply mortified him. But the change that I

fancied I saw in Tyeglev was more like sadness and there was a more

personal note about it.

"It's getting damp, though," he brought out at last and he shrugged

his shoulders. "Let us go into the hut--and it's bed-time, too." He

had the habit of shrugging his shoulders and turning his head from

side to side, putting his right hand to his throat as he did so, as

though his cravat were constricting it. Tyeglev's character was

expressed, so at least it seemed to me, in this uneasy and nervous

movement. He, too, felt constricted in the world.

We went back into the hut, and both lay down on benches, he in the

corner facing the door and I on the opposite side.

VII

Tyeglev was for a long time turning from side to side on his bench and

I could not get to sleep, either. Whether his stories had excited my

nerves or the strange night had fevered my blood--anyway, I could not

go to sleep. All inclination for sleep disappeared at last and I lay

with my eyes open and thought, thought intensely, goodness knows of

what; of most senseless trifles--as always happens when one is

sleepless. Turning from side to side I stretched out my hands.... My

finger hit one of the beams of the wall. It emitted a faint but

resounding, and as it were, prolonged note.... I must have struck a

hollow place.

I tapped again ... this time on purpose. The same sound was repeated.

I knocked again.... All at once Tyeglev raised his head.

"Ridel!" he said, "do you hear? Someone is knocking under the window."

I pretended to be asleep. The fancy suddenly took me to play a trick

at the expense of my "fatal" friend. I could not sleep, anyway.

He let his head sink on the pillow. I waited for a little and again

knocked three times in succession.

Tyeglev sat up again and listened. I tapped again. I was lying facing

him but he could not see my hand.... I put it behind me under the

bedclothes.

"Ridel!" cried Tyeglev.

I did not answer.

"Ridel!" he repeated loudly. "Ridel!"

"Eh? What is it?" I said as though just waking up.

"Don't you hear, someone keeps knocking under the window, wants to

come in, I suppose."

"Some passer-by," I muttered.

"Then we must let him in or find out who it is."

But I made no answer, pretending to be asleep.

Several minutes passed.... I tapped again. Tyeglev sat up at once and

listened.

"Knock ... knock ... knock! Knock ... knock ... knock!"

Through my half-closed eyelids in the whitish light of the night I

could distinctly see every movement he made. He turned his face first

to the window then to the door. It certainly was difficult to make out

where the sound came from: it seemed to float round the room, to glide

along the walls. I had accidentally hit upon a kind of sounding board.

"Ridel!" cried Tyeglev at last, "Ridel! Ridel!"

"Why, what is it?" I asked, yawning.

"Do you mean to say you don't hear anything? There is someone

knocking."

"Well, what if there is?" I answered and again pretended to be asleep

and even snored.

Tyeglev subsided.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

"Who is there?" Tyeglev shouted. "Come in!"

No one answered, of course.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

Tyeglev jumped out of bed, opened the window and thrusting out his

head, cried wildly, "Who is there? Who is knocking?" Then he

opened the door and repeated his question. A horse neighed in the

distance--that was all.

He went back towards his bed.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

Tyeglev instantly turned round and sat down.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!"

He rapidly put on his boots, threw his overcoat over his shoulders and

unhooking his sword from the wall, went out of the hut. I heard him

walk round it twice, asking all the time, "Who is there? Who goes

there? Who is knocking?" Then he was suddenly silent, stood still

outside near the corner where I was lying and without uttering another

word, came back into the hut and lay down without taking off his boots

and overcoat.

"Knock ... knock ... knock!" I began again. "Knock ... knock ...

knock!"

But Tyeglev did not stir, did not ask who was knocking, and merely

propped his head on his hand.

Seeing that this no longer acted, after an interval I pretended to

wake up and, looking at Tyeglev, assumed an air of astonishment.

"Have you been out?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered unconcernedly.

"Did you still hear the knocking?"

"Yes."

"And you met no one?"

"No."

"And did the knocking stop?"

"I don't know. I don't care now."

"Now? Why now?"

Tyeglev did not answer.

I felt a little ashamed and a little vexed with him. I could not bring

myself to acknowledge my prank, however.

"Do you know what?" I began, "I am convinced that it was all your

imagination."

Tyeglev frowned. "Ah, you think so!"

"You say you heard a knocking?"

"It was not only knocking I heard."

"Why, what else?"

Tyeglev bent forward and bit his lips. He was evidently hesitating.

"I was called!" he brought out at last in a low voice and turned away

his face.

"You were called? Who called you?"

"Someone...." Tyeglev still looked away. "A woman whom I had hitherto

only believed to be dead ... but now I know it for certain."

"I swear, Ilya Stepanitch," I cried, "this is all your imagination!"

"Imagination?" he repeated. "Would you like to hear it for yourself?"

"Yes."

"Then come outside."

VIII

I hurriedly dressed and went out of the hut with Tyeglev. On the side

opposite to it there were no houses, nothing but a low hurdle fence

broken down in places, beyond which there was a rather sharp slope

down to the plain. Everything was still shrouded in mist and one could

scarcely see anything twenty paces away. Tyeglev and I went up to the

hurdle and stood still.

"Here," he said and bowed his head. "Stand still, keep quiet and

listen!"

Like him I strained my ears, and I heard nothing except the ordinary,

extremely faint but universal murmur, the breathing of the night.

Looking at each other in silence from time to time we stood motionless

for several minutes and were just on the point of going on.

"Ilyusha..." I fancied I heard a whisper from behind the hurdle.

I glanced at Tyeglev but he seemed to have heard nothing--and still

held his head bowed.

"Ilyusha ... ah, Ilyusha," sounded more distinctly than before--so

distinctly that one could tell that the words were uttered by a woman.

We both started and stared at each other.

"Well?" Tyeglev asked me in a whisper. "You won't doubt it now, will

you?"

"Wait a minute," I answered as quietly. "It proves nothing. We must

look whether there isn't anyone. Some practical joker...."

I jumped over the fence--and went in the direction from which, as far

as I could judge, the voice came.

I felt the earth soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges

stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen

garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything

seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps

further.

"Who is there?" I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.

"Prrr-r-r!" a startled corn-crake flew up almost under my feet and

flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started.... What

foolishness!

I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I

went towards him.

"You will call in vain," he said. "That voice has come to us--to

me--from far away."

He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road

towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went

back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times

called "Ilyusha" I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive

and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who

knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in

reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had

agitated Tyeglev so much.

I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and

looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our

hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark

patch, against the whiteness of the mist all round, that dim whiteness

which perplexes and deadens the sight more than darkness itself. All

at once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on

the ground near the willow. Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed

forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching

figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I

tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and

stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the

ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass

comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt.

Further search led to nothing--and I went back to the hut with the

comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling.

IX

I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench. A candle was burning on the

table before him and he was writing something in a little album which

he always had with him. Seeing me, he quickly put the album in his

pocket and began filling his pipe.

"Look here, my friend," I began, "what a trophy I have brought back

from my expedition!" I showed him the comb and told him what had

happened to me near the willow. "I must have startled a thief," I

added. "You heard a horse was stolen from our neighbour yesterday?"

Tyeglev smiled frigidly and lighted his pipe. I sat down beside him.

"And do you still believe, Ilya Stepanitch," I said, "that the voice

we heard came from those unknown realms...."

He stopped me with a peremptory gesture.

"Ridel," he began, "I am in no mood for jesting, and so I beg you not

to jest."

He certainly was in no mood for jesting. His face was changed. It

looked paler, longer and more expressive. His strange, "different"

eyes kept shifting from one object to another.

"I never thought," he began again, "that I should reveal to

another ... another man what you are about to hear and what ought

to have died ... yes, died, hidden in my breast; but it seems it is

to be--and indeed I have no choice. It is destiny! Listen."

And he told me a long story.

I have mentioned already that he was a poor hand at telling stories,

but it was not only his lack of skill in describing events that had

happened to him that impressed me that night; the very sound of his

voice, his glances, the movements which he made with his fingers and

his hands--everything about him, indeed, seemed unnatural,

unnecessary, false, in fact. I was very young and inexperienced in

those days and did not know that the habit of high-flown language and

falsity of intonation and manner may become so ingrained in a man that

he is incapable of shaking it off: it is a sort of curse. Later in

life I came across a lady who described to me the effect on her of her

son's death, of her "boundless" grief, of her fears for her reason, in

such exaggerated language, with such theatrical gestures, such

melodramatic movements of her head and rolling of her eyes, that I

thought to myself, "How false and affected that lady is! She did not

love her son at all!" And a week afterwards I heard that the poor

woman had really gone out of her mind. Since then I have become much

more careful in my judgments and have had far less confidence in my

own impressions.

X

The story which Tyeglev told me was, briefly, as follows. He had

living in Petersburg, besides his influential uncle, an aunt, not

influential but wealthy. As she had no children of her own she had

adopted a little girl, an orphan, of the working class, given her a

liberal education and treated her like a daughter. She was called

Masha. Tyeglev saw her almost every day. It ended in their falling in

love with one another and Masha's giving herself to him. This was

discovered. Tyeglev's aunt was fearfully incensed, she turned the

luckless girl out of her house in disgrace, and moved to Moscow where

she adopted a young lady of noble birth and made her her heiress. On

her return to her own relations, poor and drunken people, Masha's lot

was a bitter one. Tyeglev had promised to marry her and did not keep

his promise. At his last interview with her, he was forced to speak

out: she wanted to know the truth and wrung it out of him. "Well," she

said, "if I am not to be your wife, I know what there is left for me

to do." More than a fortnight had passed since that last interview.

"I never for a moment deceived myself as to the meaning of her last

words," added Tyeglev. "I am certain that she has put an end to her

life and ... and that it was her voice, that it was she

calling me ... to follow her there ... I recognised her

voice.... Well, there is but one end to it."

"But why didn't you marry her, Ilya Stepanitch?" I asked. "You ceased

to love her?"

"No; I still love her passionately."

At this point I stared at Tyeglev. I remembered another friend of

mine, a very intelligent man, who had a very plain wife, neither

intelligent nor rich and was very unhappy in his marriage. When

someone in my presence asked him why he had married and suggested that

it was probably for love, he answered, "Not for love at all. It simply

happened." And in this case Tyeglev loved a girl passionately and did

not marry her. Was it for the same reason, then?

"Why don't you marry her, then?" I asked again.

Tyeglev's strange, drowsy eyes strayed over the table.

"There is ... no answering that ... in a few words," he began,

hesitating. "There were reasons.... And besides, she was ... a

working-class girl. And then there is my uncle.... I was obliged to

consider him, too."

"Your uncle?" I cried. "But what the devil do you want with your uncle

whom you never see except at the New Year when you go to congratulate

him? Are you reckoning on his money? But he has got a dozen children

of his own!"

I spoke with heat.... Tyeglev winced and flushed ... flushed unevenly,

in patches.

"Don't lecture me, if you please," he said dully. "I don't justify

myself, however. I have ruined her life and now I must pay the

penalty...."

His head sank and he was silent. I found nothing to say, either.

XI

So we sat for a quarter of an hour. He looked away--I looked at

him--and I noticed that the hair stood up and curled above his

forehead in a peculiar way, which, so I have heard from an army doctor

who had had a great many wounded pass through his hands, is always a

symptom of intense overheating of the brain.... The thought struck me

again that fate really had laid a heavy hand on this man and that his

comrades were right in seeing something "fatal" in him. And yet

inwardly I blamed him. "A working-class girl!" I thought, "a fine sort

of aristocrat you are yourself!"

"Perhaps you blame me, Ridel," Tyeglev began suddenly, as though

guessing what I was thinking. "I am very ... unhappy myself. But what

to do? What to do?"

He leaned his chin on his hand and began biting the broad flat nails

of his short, red fingers, hard as iron.

"What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you ought first to make

certain whether your suppositions are correct.... Perhaps your lady

love is alive and well." ("Shall I tell him the real explanation of

the taps?" flashed through my mind. "No--later.")

"She has not written to me since we have been in camp," observed

Tyeglev.

"That proves nothing, Ilya Stepanitch."

Tyeglev waved me off. "No! she is certainly not in this world. She

called me."

He suddenly turned to the window. "Someone is knocking again!"

I could not help laughing. "No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time

it is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the

sun will be up--it is past three o'clock--and ghosts have no power in

the day."

Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth

"good-bye," lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.

I lay down, too, and before I fell asleep I remember I wondered why

Tyeglev was always hinting at ... suicide. What nonsense! What humbug!

Of his own free will he had refused to marry her, had cast her off ...

and now he wanted to kill himself! There was no sense in it! He could

not resist posing!

With these thoughts I fell into a sound sleep and when I opened my

eyes the sun was already high in the sky--and Tyeglev was not in the

hut.

He had, so his servant said, gone to the town.

XII

I spent a very dull and wearisome day. Tyeglev did not return to

dinner nor to supper; I did not expect my brother. Towards evening a

thick fog came on again, thicker even than the day before. I went to

bed rather early. I was awakened by a knocking under the window.

It was my turn to be startled!

The knock was repeated and so insistently distinct that one could have

no doubt of its reality. I got up, opened the window and saw Tyeglev.

Wrapped in his great-coat, with his cap pulled over his eyes, he stood

motionless.

"Ilya Stepanitch!" I cried, "is that you? I gave up expecting you.

Come in. Is the door locked?"

Tyeglev shook his head. "I do not intend to come in," he pronounced in

a hollow tone. "I only want to ask you to give this letter to the

commanding officer to-morrow."

He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was

astonished--however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at once

walked away into the middle of the road.

"Stop! stop!" I began. "Where are you going? Have you only just come?

And what is the letter?"

"Do you promise to deliver it?" said Tyeglev, and moved away a few

steps further. The fog blurred the outlines of his figure. "Do you

promise?"

"I promise ... but first--"

Tyeglev moved still further away and became a long dark blur.

"Good-bye," I heard his voice. "Farewell, Ridel, don't remember evil

against me.... And don't forget Semyon...."

And the blur itself vanished.

This was too much. "Oh, the damned poseur," I thought. "You

must always be straining after effect!" I felt uneasy, however; an

involuntary fear clutched at my heart. I flung on my great-coat and

ran out into the road.

XIII

Yes; but where was I to go? The fog enveloped me on all sides. For

five or six steps all round it was a little transparent--but further

away it stood up like a wall, thick and white like cotton wool. I

turned to the right along the village street; our house was the last

but one in the village and beyond it came waste land overgrown here

and there with bushes; beyond the waste land, a quarter of a mile from

the village, there was a birch copse through which flowed the same

little stream that lower down encircled our village. The moon stood, a

pale blur in the sky--but its light was not, as on the evening before,

strong enough to penetrate the smoky density of the fog and hung, a

broad opaque canopy, overhead. I made my way out on to the open ground

and listened.... Not a sound from any direction, except the calling of

the marsh birds.

"Tyeglev!" I cried. "Ilya Stepanitch!! Tyeglev!!"

My voice died away near me without an answer; it seemed as though the

fog would not let it go further. "Tyeglev!" I repeated.

No one answered.

I went forward at random. Twice I struck against a fence, once I

nearly fell into a ditch, and almost stumbled against a peasant's

horse lying on the ground. "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!" I cried.

All at once, almost behind me, I heard a low voice, "Well, here I am.

What do you want of me?"

I turned round quickly.

Before me stood Tyeglev with his hands hanging at his sides and with

no cap on his head. His face was pale; but his eyes looked animated

and bigger than usual. His breathing came in deep, prolonged gasps

through his parted lips.

"Thank God!" I cried in an outburst of joy, and I gripped him by both

hands. "Thank God! I was beginning to despair of finding you. Aren't

you ashamed of frightening me like this? Upon my word, Ilya

Stepanitch!"

"What do you want of me?" repeated Tyeglev.

"I want ... I want you, in the first place, to come back home with me.

And secondly, I want, I insist, I insist as a friend, that you explain

to me at once the meaning of your actions--and of this letter to the

colonel. Can something unexpected have happened to you in Petersburg?"

"I found in Petersburg exactly what I expected," answered Tyeglev,

without moving from the spot.

"That is ... you mean to say ... your friend ... this Masha...."

"She has taken her life," Tyeglev answered hurriedly and as it were

angrily. "She was buried the day before yesterday. She did not even

leave a note for me. She poisoned herself."

Tyeglev hurriedly uttered these terrible words and still stood

motionless as a stone.

I clasped my hands. "Is it possible? How dreadful! Your presentiment

has come true.... That is awful!"

I stopped in confusion. Slowly and with a sort of triumph Tyeglev

folded his arms.

"But why are we standing here?" I began. "Let us go home."

"Let us," said Tyeglev. "But how can we find the way in this fog?"

"There is a light in our windows, and we will make for it. Come

along."

"You go ahead," answered Tyeglev. "I will follow you." We set off. We

walked for five minutes and our beacon light still did not appear; at

last it gleamed before us in two red points. Tyeglev stepped evenly

behind me. I was desperately anxious to get home as quickly as

possible and to learn from him all the details of his unhappy

expedition to Petersburg. Before we reached the hut, impressed by what

he had said, I confessed to him in an access of remorse and a sort of

superstitious fear, that the mysterious knocking of the previous

evening had been my doing ... and what a tragic turn my jest had

taken!

Tyeglev confined himself to observing that I had nothing to do with

it--that something else had guided my hand--and this only showed how

little I knew him. His voice, strangely calm and even, sounded close

to my ear. "But you do not know me," he added. "I saw you smile

yesterday when I spoke of the strength of my will. You will come to

know me--and you will remember my words."

The first hut of the village sprang out of the fog before us like some

dark monster ... then the second, our hut, emerged--and my setter dog

began barking, probably scenting me.

I knocked at the window. "Semyon!" I shouted to Tyeglev's servant,

"hey, Semyon! Make haste and open the gate for us."

The gate creaked and opened; Semyon crossed the threshold.

"Ilya Stepanitch, come in," I said, and I looked round. But no Ilya

Stepanitch was with me. Tyeglev had vanished as though he had sunk

into the earth.

I went into the hut feeling dazed.

XIV

Vexation with Tyeglev and with myself succeeded the amazement with

which I was overcome at first.

"Your master is mad!" I blurted out to Semyon, "raving mad! He

galloped off to Petersburg, then came back and is running about all

over the place! I did get hold of him and brought him right up to the

gate--and here he has given me the slip again! To go out of doors on a

night like this! He has chosen a nice time for a walk!"

"And why did I let go of his hand?" I reproached myself. Semyon looked

at me in silence, as though intending to say something--but after the

fashion of servants in those days he simply shifted from one foot to

the other and said nothing.

"What time did he set off for town?" I asked sternly.

"At six o'clock in the morning."

"And how was he--did he seem anxious, depressed?" Semyon looked down.

"Our master is a deep one," he began. "Who can make him out? He told

me to get out his new uniform when he was going out to town--and then

he curled himself."

"Curled himself?"

"Curled his hair. I got the curling tongs ready for him."

That, I confess, I had not expected. "Do you know a young lady," I

asked Semyon, "a friend of Ilya Stepanitch's. Her name is Masha."

"To be sure I know Marya Anempodistovna! A nice young lady."

"Is your master in love with this Marya ... et cetera?"

Semyon heaved a sigh. "That young lady is Ilya Stepanitch's undoing.

For he is desperately in love with her--and can't bring himself to

marry her--and sorry to give her up, too. It's all his honour's

faintheartedness. He is very fond of her."

"What is she like then, pretty?" I inquired.

Semyon assumed a grave air. "She is the sort that the gentry like."

"And you?"

"She is not the right sort for us at all."

"How so?"

"Very thin in the body."

"If she died," I began, "do you think Ilya Stepanitch would not

survive her?"

Semyon heaved a sigh again. "I can't venture to say that--there's no

knowing with gentlemen ... but our master is a deep one."

I took up from the table the big, rather thick letter that Tyeglev had

given me and turned it over in my hands.... The address to "his honour

the Commanding Officer of the Battery, Colonel So and So" (the name,

patronymic, and surname) was clearly and distinctly written. The word

urgent, twice underlined, was written in the top left-hand

corner of the envelope.

"Listen, Semyon," I began. "I feel uneasy about your master. I fancy

he has some mischief in his mind. We must find him."

"Yes, sir," answered Semyon.

"It is true there is such a fog that one cannot see a couple of yards

ahead; but all the same we must do our best. We will each take a

lantern and light a candle in each window--in case of need."

"Yes, sir," repeated Semyon. He lighted the lanterns and the candles

and we set off.

XV

I can't describe how we wandered and lost our way! The lanterns were

of no help to us; they did not in the least dissipate the white,

almost luminous mist which surrounded us. Several times Semyon and I

lost each other, in spite of the fact that we kept calling to each

other and hallooing and at frequent intervals shouted--I: "Tyeglev!

Ilya Stepanitch!" and Semyon: "Mr. Tyeglev! Your honour!" The fog so

bewildered us that we wandered about as though in a dream; soon we

were both hoarse; the fog penetrated right into one's chest. We

succeeded somehow by help of the candles in the windows in reaching

the hut again. Our combined action had been of no use--we merely

handicapped each other--and so we made up our minds not to trouble

ourselves about getting separated but to go each our own way. He went

to the left, I to the right and I soon ceased to hear his voice. The

fog seemed to have found its way into my brain and I wandered like one

dazed, simply shouting from time to time, "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!"

"Here!" I heard suddenly in answer.

Holy saints, how relieved I was! How I rushed in the direction from

which the voice came.... A human figure loomed dark before me.... I

made for it. At last!

But instead of Tyeglev I saw another officer of the same battery,

whose name was Tyelepnev.

"Was it you answered me?" I asked him.

"Was it you calling me?" he asked in his turn.

"No; I was calling Tyeglev."

"Tyeglev? Why, I met him a minute ago. What a fool of a night! One

can't find the way home."

"You saw Tyeglev? Which way did he go?"

"That way, I fancy," said the officer, waving his hand in the air.

"But one can't be sure of anything now. Do you know, for instance,

where the village is? The only hope is the dogs barking. It is a fool

of a night! Let me light a cigarette ... it will seem like a light on

the way."

The officer was, so I fancied, a little exhilarated.

"Did Tyeglev say anything to you?" I asked.

"To be sure he did! I said to him, 'good evening, brother,' and he

said, 'good-bye.' 'How good-bye? Why good-bye.' 'I mean to shoot

myself directly with a pistol.' He is a queer fish!"

My heart stood still. "You say he told you ..."

"He is a queer fish!" repeated the officer, and sauntered off.

I hardly had time to recover from what the officer had told me, when

my own name, shouted several times as it seemed with effort, caught my

ear. I recognised Semyon's voice.

I called back ... he came to me.

XVI

"Well?" I asked him. "Have you found Ilya Stepanitch?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where?"

"Here, not far away."

"How ... have you found him? Is he alive?"

"To be sure. I have been talking to him." (A load was lifted from

my heart.) "His honour was sitting in his great-coat under a birch

tree ... and he was all right. I put it to him, 'Won't you come home,

Ilya Stepanitch; Alexandr Vassilitch is very much worried about you.'

And he said to me, 'What does he want to worry for! I want to be in the

fresh air. My head aches. Go home,' he said, 'and I will come later.'"

"And you left him?" I cried, clasping my hands.

"What else could I do? He told me to go ... how could I stay?"

All my fears came back to me at once.

"Take me to him this minute--do you hear? This minute! O Semyon,

Semyon, I did not expect this of you! You say he is not far off?"

"He is quite close, here, where the copse begins--he is sitting there.

It is not more than five yards from the river bank. I found him as I

came alongside the river."

"Well, take me to him, take me to him."

Semyon set off ahead of me. "This way, sir.... We have only to get

down to the river and it is close there."

But instead of getting down to the river we got into a hollow and

found ourselves before an empty shed.

"Hey, stop!" Semyon cried suddenly. "I must have come too far to the

right.... We must go that way, more to the left...."

We turned to the left--and found ourselves among such high, rank weeds

that we could scarcely get out.... I could not remember such a tangled

growth of weeds anywhere near our village. And then all at once a marsh

was squelching under our feet, and we saw little round moss-covered

hillocks which I had never noticed before either.... We turned

back--a small hill was sharply before us and on the top of it stood a

shanty--and in it someone was snoring. Semyon and I shouted several

times into the shanty; something stirred at the further end of it, the

straw rustled--and a hoarse voice shouted, "I am on guard."

We turned back again ... fields and fields, endless fields.... I felt

ready to cry.... I remembered the words of the fool in King

Lear: "This night will turn us all to fools or madmen."

"Where are we to go?" I said in despair to Semyon.

"The devil must have led us astray, sir," answered the distracted

servant. "It's not natural ... there's mischief at the bottom of it!"

I would have checked him but at that instant my ear caught a sound,

distinct but not loud, that engrossed my whole attention. There was a

faint "pop" as though someone had drawn a stiff cork from a narrow

bottle-neck. The sound came from somewhere not far off. Why the sound

seemed to me strange and peculiar I could not say, but at once I went

towards it.

Semyon followed me. Within a few minutes something tall and broad

loomed in the fog.

"The copse! here is the copse!" Semyon cried, delighted. "Yes,

here ... and there is the master sitting under the birch-tree....

There he is, sitting where I left him. That's he, surely enough!"

I looked intently. A man really was sitting with his back towards us,

awkwardly huddled up under the birch-tree. I hurriedly approached and

recognised Tyeglev's great-coat, recognised his figure, his head bowed

on his breast. "Tyeglev!" I cried ... but he did not answer.

"Tyeglev!" I repeated, and laid my hand on his shoulder. Then he

suddenly lurched forward, quickly and obediently, as though he were

waiting for my touch, and fell onto the grass. Semyon and I raised him

at once and turned him face upwards. It was not pale, but was lifeless

and motionless; his clenched teeth gleamed white--and his eyes,

motionless, too, and wide open, kept their habitual, drowsy and

"different" look.

"Good God!" Semyon said suddenly and showed me his hand stained

crimson with blood.... The blood was coming from under Tyeglev's

great-coat, from the left side of his chest.

He had shot himself from a small, single-barreled pistol which was

lying beside him. The faint pop I had heard was the sound made by the

fatal shot.

XVII

Tyeglev's suicide did not surprise his comrades very much. I have told

you already that, according to their ideas, as a "fatal" man he was

bound to do something extraordinary, though perhaps they had not

expected that from him. In the letter to the colonel he asked him, in

the first place, to have the name of Ilya Tyeglev removed from the

list of officers, as he had died by his own act, adding that in his

cash-box there would be found more than sufficient money to pay his

debts,--and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at that

time commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter which

was in the same envelope. This second letter, of course, we all read;

some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains over

the composition of this letter.

"You know, Your Excellency" (so I remember the letter began), "you are

so stern and severe over the slightest negligence in uniform when a

pale, trembling officer presents himself before you; and here am I now

going to meet our universal, righteous, incorruptible Judge, the

Supreme Being, the Being of infinitely greater consequence even than

Your Excellency, and I am going to meet him in undress, in my

great-coat, and even without a cravat round my neck."

Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me,

with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead

man's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to

invent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently been

pleased with the phrase: he had made use in it of the accumulation of

epithets and amplifications à la Marlinsky, at that time in

fashion. Further on he had alluded to destiny, to persecution, to his

vocation which had remained unfulfilled, to a mystery which he would

bear with him to the grave, to people who had not cared to understand

him; he had even quoted lines from some poet who had said of the crowd

that it wore life "like a dog-collar" and clung to vice "like a

burdock"--and it was not free from mistakes in spelling. To tell the

truth, this last letter of poor Tyeglev was somewhat vulgar; and I can

fancy the contemptuous surprise of the great personage to whom it was

addressed--I can imagine the tone in which he would pronounce "a

worthless officer! ill weeds are cleared out of the field!"

Only at the very end of the letter there was a sincere note from

Tyeglev's heart. "Ah, Your Excellency," he concluded his epistle, "I

am an orphan, I had no one to love me as a child--and all held aloof

from me ... and I myself destroyed the only heart that gave itself to

me!"

Semyon found in the pocket of Tyeglev's great-coat a little album from

which his master was never separated. But almost all the pages had

been torn out; only one was left on which there was the following

calculation:

Napoleon was born Ilya Tyeglev was born

on August 15th, 1769. on January 7th, 1811.

1769 1811

15 7

8* 1+

----- -----

Total 1792 Total 1819

* August--the 8th month + January--the 1st month

of the year. of the year.

1 1

7 8

9 1

2 9

--- ---

Total 19! Total 19!

Napoleon died on May Ilya Tyeglev died on

5th, 1825. April 21st, 1834.

1825 1834

5 21

5* 7+

----- -----

Total 1835 Total 1862

* May--the 5th month + July--the 7th month

of the year. of the year.

1 1

8 8

3 6

5 23

-- --

Total 17! Total 17!

Poor fellow! Was not this perhaps why he became an artillery officer?

As a suicide he was buried outside the cemetery--and he was

immediately forgotten.

XVIII

The day after Tyeglev's burial (I was still in the village waiting for

my brother) Semyon came into the hut and announced that Ilya wanted to

see me.

"What Ilya?" I asked.

"Our pedlar."

I told Semyon to call him.

He made his appearance. He expressed some regret at the death of the

lieutenant; wondered what could have possessed him....

"Was he in debt to you?" I asked.

"No, sir. He always paid punctually for everything he had. But I tell

you what," here the pedlar grinned, "you have got something of mine."

"What is it?"

"Why, that," he pointed to the brass comb lying on the little toilet

table. "A thing of little value," the fellow went on, "but as it was a

present..."

All at once I raised my head. Something dawned upon me.

"Your name is Ilya?"

"Yes, sir."

"Was it you, then, I saw under the willow tree the other night?"

The pedlar winked, and grinned more broadly than ever.

"Yes, sir."

"And it was your name that was called?"

"Yes, sir," the pedlar repeated with playful modesty. "There is a

young girl here," he went on in a high falsetto, "who, owing to the

great strictness of her parents----"

"Very good, very good," I interrupted him, handed him the comb and

dismissed him.

"So that was the 'Ilyusha,'" I thought, and I sank into philosophic

reflections which I will not, however, intrude upon you as I don't

want to prevent anyone from believing in fate, predestination and such

like.

When I was back in Petersburg I made inquiries about Masha. I even

discovered the doctor who had treated her. To my amazement I heard

from him that she had died not through poisoning but of cholera! I

told him what I had heard from Tyeglev.

"Eh! Eh!" cried the doctor all at once. "Is that Tyeglev an artillery

officer, a man of middle height and with a stoop, speaks with a lisp?"

"Yes."

"Well, I thought so. That gentleman came to me--I had never seen him

before--and began insisting that the girl had poisoned herself. 'It

was cholera,' I told him. 'Poison,' he said. 'It was cholera, I tell

you,' I said. 'No, it was poison,' he declared. I saw that the fellow

was a sort of lunatic, with a broad base to his head--a sign of

obstinacy, he would not give over easily.... Well, it doesn't matter,

I thought, the patient is dead.... 'Very well,' I said, 'she poisoned

herself if you prefer it.' He thanked me, even shook hands with

me--and departed."

I told the doctor how the officer had shot himself the same day.

The doctor did not turn a hair--and only observed that there were all

sorts of queer fellows in the world.

"There are indeed," I assented.

Yes, someone has said truly of suicides: until they carry out their

design, no one believes them; and when they do, no one regrets them.

Baden, 1870.

THE INN

On the high road to B., at an equal distance from the two towns

through which it runs, there stood not long ago a roomy inn, very well

known to the drivers of troikas, peasants with trains of waggons,

merchants, clerks, pedlars and the numerous travellers of all sorts

who journey upon our roads at all times of the year. Everyone used to

call at the inn; only perhaps a landowner's coach, drawn by six

home-bred horses, would roll majestically by, which did not prevent

either the coachman or the groom on the footboard from looking with

peculiar feeling and attention at the little porch so familiar to them;

or some poor devil in a wretched little cart and with three five-kopeck

pieces in the bag in his bosom would urge on his weary nag when he

reached the prosperous inn, and would hasten on to some night's lodging

in the hamlets that lie by the high road in a peasant's hut, where he

would find nothing but bread and hay, but, on the other hand, would not

have to pay an extra kopeck. Apart from its favourable situation, the

inn with which our story deals had many attractions: excellent water in

two deep wells with creaking wheels and iron buckets on a chain; a

spacious yard with a tiled roof on posts; abundant stores of oats in

the cellar; a warm outer room with a very huge Russian stove with long

horizontal flues attached that looked like titanic shoulders, and

lastly two fairly clean rooms with the walls covered with reddish

lilac paper somewhat frayed at the lower edge with a painted wooden

sofa, chairs to match and two pots of geraniums in the windows, which

were, however, never cleaned--and were dingy with the dust of years.

The inn had other advantages: the blacksmith's was close by, the mill

was just at hand; and, lastly, one could get a good meal in it, thanks

to the cook, a fat and red-faced peasant woman, who prepared rich and

appetizing dishes and dealt out provisions without stint; the nearest

tavern was reckoned not half a mile away; the host kept snuff which

though mixed with wood-ash, was extremely pungent and pleasantly

irritated the nose; in fact there were many reasons why visitors of

all sorts were never lacking in that inn. It was liked by those who

used it--and that is the chief thing; without which nothing, of course,

would succeed and it was liked principally as it was said in the

district, because the host himself was very fortunate and successful

in all his undertakings, though he did not much deserve his good

fortune; but it seems if a man is lucky, he is lucky.

The innkeeper was a man of the working class called Naum Ivanov. He

was a man of middle height with broad, stooping shoulders; he had a

big round head and curly hair already grey, though he did not look

more than forty; a full and fresh face, a low but white and smooth

forehead and little bright blue eyes, out of which he looked in a very

queer way from under his brows and yet with an insolent expression, a

combination not often met with. He always held his head down and

seemed to turn it with difficulty, perhaps because his neck was very

short. He walked at a trot and did not swing his arms, but slowly

moved them with his fists clenched as he walked. When he smiled, and

he smiled often without laughing, as it were smiling to himself, his

thick lips parted unpleasantly and displayed a row of close-set,

brilliant teeth. He spoke jerkily and with a surly note in his voice.

He shaved his beard, but dressed in Russian style. His costume

consisted of a long, always threadbare, full coat, full breeches and

shoes on his bare feet. He was often away from home on business and he

had a great deal of business--he was a horse-dealer, he rented land,

had a market garden, bought up orchards and traded in various ways--but

his absences never lasted long; like a kite, to which he had

considerable resemblance, especially in the expression of his eyes, he

used to return to his nest. He knew how to keep that nest in order. He

was everywhere, he listened to everything and gave orders, served out

stores, sent things out and made up his accounts himself, and never

knocked off a farthing from anyone's account, but never asked more

than his due.

The visitors did not talk to him, and, indeed, he did not care to

waste words. "I want your money and you want my victuals," he used to

say, as it were, jerking out each word: "We have not met for a

christening; the traveller has eaten, has fed his beasts, no need to

sit on. If he is tired, let him sleep without chattering." The

labourers he kept were healthy grown-up men, but docile and well

broken in; they were very much afraid of him. He never touched

intoxicating liquor and he used to give his men ten kopecks for vodka

on the great holidays; they did not dare to drink on other days.

People like Naum quickly get rich ... but to the magnificent position

in which he found himself--and he was believed to be worth forty or

fifty thousand roubles--Naum Ivanov had not arrived by the strait

path....

The inn had existed on the same spot on the high road twenty years

before the time from which we date the beginning of our story. It is

true that it had not then the dark red shingle roof which made Naum

Ivanov's inn look like a gentleman's house; it was inferior in

construction and had thatched roofs in the courtyard, and a humble

fence instead of a wall of logs; nor had it been distinguished by the

triangular Greek pediment on carved posts; but all the same it had

been a capital inn--roomy, solid and warm--and travellers were glad to

frequent it. The innkeeper at that time was not Naum Ivanov, but a

certain Akim Semyonitch, a serf belonging to a neighbouring lady,

Lizaveta Prohorovna Kuntse, the widow of a staff officer. This Akim

was a shrewd trading peasant who, having left home in his youth with

two wretched nags to work as a carrier, had returned a year later with

three decent horses and had spent almost all the rest of his life on

the high roads; he used to go to Kazan and Odessa, to Orenburg and to

Warsaw and abroad to Leipsic and used in the end to travel with two

teams, each of three stout, sturdy stallions, harnessed to two huge

carts. Whether it was that he was sick of his life of homeless

wandering, whether it was that he wanted to rear a family (his wife

had died in one of his absences and what children she had borne him

were dead also), anyway, he made up his mind at last to abandon his

old calling and to open an inn. With the permission of his mistress,

he settled on the high road, bought in her name about an acre and a

half of land and built an inn upon it. The undertaking prospered. He

had more than enough money to furnish and stock it. The experience he

had gained in the course of his years of travelling from one end of

Russia to another was of great advantage to him; he knew how to please

his visitors, especially his former mates, the drivers of troikas,

many of whom he knew personally and whose good-will is particularly

valued by innkeepers, as they need so much food for themselves and

their powerful beasts. Akim's inn became celebrated for hundreds of

miles round. People were even readier to stay with him than with his

successor, Naum, though Akim could not be compared with Naum as a

manager. Under Akim everything was in the old-fashioned style, snug,

but not over clean; and his oats were apt to be light, or musty; the

cooking, too, was somewhat indifferent: dishes were sometimes put on

the table which would better have been left in the oven and it was not

that he was stingy with the provisions, but just that the cook had not

looked after them. On the other hand, he was ready to knock off

something from the price and did not refuse to trust a man's word for

payment--he was a good man and a genial host. In talking, in

entertaining, he was lavish, too; he would sometimes chatter away over

the samovar till his listeners pricked up their ears, especially when

he began telling them about Petersburg, about the Circassian steppes,

or even about foreign parts; and he liked getting a little drunk with

a good companion, but not disgracefully so, more for the sake of

company, as his guests used to say of him. He was a great favourite

with merchants and with all people of what is called the old school,

who do not set off for a journey without tightening up their belts and

never go into a room without making the sign of the cross, and never

enter into conversation with a man without first wishing him good

health. Even Akim's appearance disposed people in his favour: he was

tall, rather thin, but graceful even at his advanced years; he had a

long face, with fine-looking regular features, a high and open brow, a

straight and delicate nose and a small mouth. His brown and prominent

eyes positively shone with friendly gentleness, his soft, scanty hair

curled in little rings about his neck; he had very little left on the

top of his head. Akim's voice was very pleasant, though weak; in his

youth he had been a good singer, but continual travelling in the open

air in the winter had affected his chest. But he talked very smoothly

and sweetly. When he laughed wrinkles like rays that were very

charming came round his eyes:--such wrinkles are only to be seen in

kind-hearted people. Akim's movements were for the most part

deliberate and not without a certain confidence and dignified courtesy

befitting a man of experience who had seen a great deal in his day.

In fact, Akim--or Akim Semyonitch as he was called even in his

mistress's house, to which he often went and invariably on Sundays

after mass--would have been excellent in all respects--if he had not

had one weakness which has been the ruin of many men on earth, and was

in the end the ruin of him, too--a weakness for the fair sex. Akim's

susceptibility was extreme, his heart could never resist a woman's

glance: he melted before it like the first snow of autumn in the

sun ... and dearly he had to pay for his excessive sensibility.

For the first year after he had set up on the high road Akim was so

busy with building his yard, stocking the place, and all the business

inseparable from moving into a new house that he had absolutely no

time to think of women and if any sinful thought came into his mind he

immediately drove it away by reading various devotional works for

which he cherished a profound respect (he had learned to read when

first he left home), singing the psalms in a low voice or some other

pious occupation. Besides, he was then in his forty-sixth year and at

that time of life every passion grows perceptibly calmer and cooler

and the time for marrying was past. Akim himself began to think that,

as he expressed it, this foolishness was over and done with ... But

evidently there is no escaping one's fate.

Akim's former mistress, Lizaveta Prohorovna Kuntse, the widow of an

officer of German extraction, was herself a native of Mittau, where

she had spent the first years of her childhood and where she had

numerous poor relations, about whom she concerned herself very little,

especially after a casual visit from one of her brothers, an infantry

officer of the line. On the day after his arrival he had made a great

disturbance and almost beaten the lady of the house, calling her "du

lumpenmamselle," though only the evening before he had called her in

broken Russian: "sister and benefactor." Lizaveta Prohorovna lived

almost permanently on her pretty estate which had been won by the

labours of her husband who had been an architect. She managed it

herself and managed it very well. Lizaveta Prohorovna never let slip

the slightest advantage; she turned everything into profit for

herself; and this, as well as her extraordinary capacity for making a

farthing do the work of a halfpenny, betrayed her German origin; in

everything else she had become very Russian. She kept a considerable

number of house serfs, especially many maids, who earned their salt,

however: from morning to night their backs were bent over their work.

She liked driving out in her carriage with grooms in livery on the

footboard. She liked listening to gossip and scandal and was a clever

scandal-monger herself; she liked to lavish favours upon someone, then

suddenly crush him with her displeasure, in fact, Lizaveta Prohorovna

behaved exactly like a lady. Akim was in her good graces; he paid her

punctually every year a very considerable sum in lieu of service; she

talked graciously to him and even, in jest, invited him as a guest...

but it was precisely in his mistress's house that trouble was in store

for Akim.

Among Lizaveta Prohorovna's maidservants was an orphan girl of twenty

called Dunyasha. She was good-looking, graceful and neat-handed;

though her features were irregular, they were pleasing; her fresh

complexion, her thick flaxen hair, her lively grey eyes, her

little round nose, her rosy lips and above all her half-mocking,

half-provocative expression--were all rather charming in their way. At

the same time, in spite of her forlorn position, she was strict, almost

haughty in her deportment. She came of a long line of house serfs. Her

father, Arefy, had been a butler for thirty years, while her

grandfather, Stepan had been valet to a prince and officer of the

Guards long since dead. She dressed neatly and was vain over her

hands, which were certainly very beautiful. Dunyasha made a show of

great disdain for all her admirers; she listened to their compliments

with a self-complacent little smile and if she answered them at all it

was usually some exclamation such as: "Yes! Likely! As though I

should! What next!" These exclamations were always on her lips.

Dunyasha had spent about three years being trained in Moscow where she

had picked up the peculiar airs and graces which distinguish

maidservants who have been in Moscow or Petersburg. She was spoken of

as a girl of self-respect (high praise on the lips of house serfs)

who, though she had seen something of life, had not let herself down.

She was rather clever with her needle, too, yet with all this Lizaveta

Prohorovna was not very warmly disposed toward her, thanks to the

headmaid, Kirillovna, a sly and intriguing woman, no longer young.

Kirillovna exercised great influence over her mistress and very

skilfully succeeded in getting rid of all rivals.

With this Dunyasha Akim must needs fall in love! And he fell in love

as he had never fallen in love before. He saw her first at church: she

had only just come back from Moscow.... Afterwards, he met her several

times in his mistress's house; finally he spent a whole evening with

her at the steward's, where he had been invited to tea in company with

other highly respected persons. The house serfs did not disdain him,

though he was not of their class and wore a beard; he was a man of

education, could read and write and, what was more, had money; and he

did not dress like a peasant but wore a long full coat of black cloth,

high boots of calf leather and a kerchief on his neck. It is true that

some of the house serfs did say among themselves that: "One can see

that he is not one of us," but to his face they almost flattered him.

On that evening at the steward's Dunyasha made a complete conquest of

Akim's susceptible heart, though she said not a single word in answer

to his ingratiating speeches and only looked sideways at him from time

to time as though wondering why that peasant was there. All that only

added fuel to the flames. He went home, pondered and pondered and made

up his mind to win her hand.... She had somehow "bewitched" him. But

how can I describe the wrath and indignation of Dunyasha when five

days later Kirillovna with a friendly air invited her into her room

and told her that Akim (and evidently he knew how to set to work) that

bearded peasant Akim, to sit by whose side she considered almost an

indignity, was courting her.

Dunyasha first flushed crimson, then she gave a forced laugh, then she

burst into tears; but Kirillovna made her attack so artfully, made the

girl feel her own position in the house so clearly, so tactfully

hinted at the presentable appearance, the wealth and blind devotion of

Akim and finally mentioned so significantly the wishes of their

mistress that Dunyasha went out of the room with a look of hesitation

on her face and meeting Akim only gazed intently into his face and did

not turn away. The indescribably lavish presents of the love-sick man

dissipated her last doubts. Lizaveta Prohorovna, to whom Akim in his

joy took a hundred peaches on a large silver dish, gave her consent to

the marriage, and the marriage took place. Akim spared no expense--and

the bride, who on the eve of her wedding at her farewell party to her

girl friends sat looking a figure of misery, and who cried all the

next morning while Kirillovna was dressing her for the wedding, was

soon comforted.... Her mistress gave her her own shawl to wear in the

church and Akim presented her the same day with one like it, almost

superior.

And so Akim was married, and took his young bride home.... They began

their life together.... Dunyasha turned out to be a poor housewife, a

poor helpmate to her husband. She took no interest in anything, was

melancholy and depressed unless some officer sitting by the big

samovar noticed her and paid her compliments; she was often absent,

sometimes in the town shopping, sometimes at the mistress's house,

which was only three miles from the inn. There she felt at home, there

she was surrounded by her own people; the girls envied her finery.

Kirillovna regaled her with tea; Lizaveta Prohorovna herself talked to

her. But even these visits did not pass without some bitter

experiences for Dunyasha.... As an innkeeper's wife, for instance, she

could not wear a hat and was obliged to tie up her head in a kerchief,

"like a merchant's lady," said sly Kirillovna, "like a working woman,"

thought Dunyasha to herself.

More than once Akim recalled the words of his only relation, an uncle

who had lived in solitude without a family for years: "Well,

Akimushka, my lad," he had said, meeting him in the street, "I hear

you are getting married."

"Why, yes, what of it?"

"Ech, Akim, Akim. You are above us peasants now, there's no denying

that; but you are not on her level either."

"In what way not on her level?"

"Why, in that way, for instance," his uncle had answered, pointing to

Akim's beard, which he had begun to clip in order to please his

betrothed, though he had refused to shave it completely.... Akim

looked down; while the old man turned away, wrapped his tattered

sheepskin about him and walked away, shaking his head.

Yes, more than once Akim sank into thought, cleared his throat and

sighed.... But his love for his pretty wife was no less; he was proud

of her, especially when he compared her not merely with peasant women,

or with his first wife, to whom he had been married at sixteen, but

with other serf girls; "look what a fine bird we have caught," he

thought to himself.... Her slightest caress gave him immense pleasure.

"Maybe," he thought, "she will get used to it; maybe she will get into

the way of it." Meanwhile her behaviour was irreproachable and no one

could say anything against her.

Several years passed like this. Dunyasha really did end by growing

used to her way of life. Akim's love for her and confidence in her

only increased as he grew older; her girl friends, who had been

married not to peasants, were suffering cruel hardships, either from

poverty or from having fallen into bad hands.... Akim went on getting

richer and richer. Everything succeeded with him--he was always lucky;

only one thing was a grief: God had not given him children. Dunyasha

was by now over five and twenty; everyone addressed her as Avdotya

Arefyevna. She never became a real housewife, however--but she grew

fond of her house, looked after the stores and superintended the woman

who worked in the house. It is true that she did all this only after a

fashion; she did not keep up a high standard of cleanliness and order;

on the other hand, her portrait painted in oils and ordered by herself

from a local artist, the son of the parish deacon, hung on the wall of

the chief room beside that of Akim. She was depicted in a white dress

with a yellow shawl with six strings of big pearls round her neck,

long earrings, and a ring on every finger. The portrait was

recognisable though the artist had painted her excessively stout and

rosy--and had made her eyes not grey but black and even slightly

squinting.... Akim's was a complete failure, the portrait had come out

dark--à la Rembrandt--so that sometimes a visitor would go up

to it, look at it and merely give an inarticulate murmur. Avdotya had

taken to being rather careless in her dress; she would fling a big

shawl over her shoulders, while the dress under it was put on anyhow:

she was overcome by laziness, that sighing apathetic drowsy laziness

to which the Russian is only too liable, especially when his

livelihood is secure....

With all that, the fortunes of Akim and his wife prospered

exceedingly; they lived in harmony and had the reputation of an

exemplary pair. But just as a squirrel will wash its face at the very

instant when the sportsman is aiming at it, man has no presentiment of

his troubles, till all of a sudden the ground gives way under him like

ice.

One autumn evening a merchant in the drapery line put up at Akim's

inn. He was journeying by various cross-country roads from Moscow to

Harkov with two loaded tilt carts; he was one of those travelling

traders whose arrival is sometimes awaited with such impatience by

country gentlemen and still more by their wives and daughters. This

travelling merchant, an elderly man, had with him two companions, or,

speaking more correctly, two workmen, one thin, pale and hunchbacked,

the other a fine, handsome young fellow of twenty. They asked for

supper, then sat down to tea; the merchant invited the innkeeper and

his wife to take a cup with him, they did not refuse. A conversation

quickly sprang up between the two old men (Akim was fifty-six); the

merchant inquired about the gentry of the neighbourhood and no one

could give him more useful information about them than Akim; the

hunchbacked workman spent his time looking after the carts and finally

went off to bed; it fell to Avdotya to talk to the other one.... She

sat by him and said little, rather listening to what he told her, but

it was evident that his talk pleased her; her face grew more animated,

the colour came into her cheeks and she laughed readily and often. The

young workman sat almost motionless with his curly head bent over the

table; he spoke quietly, without haste and without raising his voice;

but his eyes, not large but saucily bright and blue, were rivetted on

Avdotya; at first she turned away from them, then she, too, began

looking him in the face. The young fellow's face was fresh and smooth

as a Crimean apple; he often smiled and tapped with his white fingers

on his chin covered with soft dark down. He spoke like a merchant, but

very freely and with a sort of careless self-confidence and went on

looking at her with the same intent, impudent stare.... All at once he

moved a little closer to her and without the slightest change of

countenance said to her: "Avdotya Arefyevna, there's no one like you

in the world; I am ready to die for you."

Avdotya laughed aloud.

"What is it?" asked Akim.

"Why, he keeps saying such funny things," she said, without any

particular embarrassment.

The old merchant grinned.

"Ha, ha, yes, my Naum is such a funny fellow, don't listen to him."

"Oh! Really! As though I should," she answered, and shook her head.

"Ha, ha, of course not," observed the old man. "But, however," he went

on in a singsong voice, "we will take our leave; we are thoroughly

satisfied, it is time for bed, ..." and he got up.

"We are well satisfied, too," Akim brought out and he got up, "for

your entertainment, that is, but we wish you a good night.

Avdotyushka, come along."

Avdotya got up as it were unwillingly. Naum, too, got up after her ...

the party broke up. The innkeeper and his wife went off to the little

lobby partitioned off, which served them as a bedroom. Akim was

snoring immediately. It was a long time before Avdotya could get to

sleep.... At first she lay still, turning her face to the wall, then

she began tossing from side to side on the hot feather bed, throwing

off and pulling up the quilt alternately ... then she sank into a light

doze. Suddenly she heard from the yard a loud masculine voice: it was

singing a song of which it was impossible to distinguish the words,

prolonging each note, though not with a melancholy effect. Avdotya

opened her eyes, propped herself on her elbows and listened.... The

song went on.... It rang out musically in the autumn air.

Akim raised his head.

"Who's that singing?" he asked.

"I don't know," she answered.

"He sings well," he added, after a brief pause. "Very well. What a

strong voice. I used to sing in my day," he went on. "And I sang well,

too, but my voice has gone. That's a fine voice. It must be that young

fellow singing, Naum is his name, isn't it?" And he turned over on the

other side, gave a sigh and fell asleep again.

It was a long time before the voice was still ... Avdotya listened and

listened; all at once it seemed to break off, rang out boldly once

more and slowly died away.... Avdotya crossed herself and laid her

head on the pillow.... Half an hour passed.... She sat up and softly

got out of bed.

"Where are you going, wife?" Akim asked in his sleep.

She stopped.

"To see to the little lamp," she said, "I can't get to sleep."

"You should say a prayer," Akim mumbled, falling asleep.

Avdotya went up to the lamp before the ikon, began trimming it and

accidentally put it out; she went back and lay down. Everything was

still.

Early next morning the merchant set off again on his journey with his

companions. Avdotya was asleep. Akim went half a mile with them: he

had to call at the mill. When he got home he found his wife dressed

and not alone. Naum, the young man who had been there the night

before, was with her. They were standing by the table in the window

talking. When Avdotya saw Akim, she went out of the room without a

word, and Naum said that he had come for his master's gloves which the

latter, he said, had left behind on the bench; and he, too, went away.

We will now tell the reader what he has probably guessed already:

Avdotya had fallen passionately in love with Naum. It is hard to say

how it could have happened so quickly, especially as she had hitherto

been irreproachable in her behaviour in spite of many opportunities

and temptations to deceive her husband. Later on, when her intrigue

with Naum became known, many people in the neighbourhood declared that

he had on the very first evening put a magic potion that was a love

spell in her tea (the efficacy of such spells is still firmly believed

in among us), and that this could be clearly seen from the appearance

of Avdotya who, so they said, soon after began to pine away and look

depressed.

However that may have been, Naum began to be frequently seen in Akim's

yard. At first he came again with the same merchant and three months

later arrived alone, with wares of his own; then the report spread

that he had settled in one of the neighbouring district towns, and

from that time forward not a week passed without his appearing on the

high road with his strong, painted cart drawn by two sleek horses

which he drove himself. There was no particular friendship between

Akim and him, nor was there any hostility noticed between them; Akim

did not take much notice of him and only thought of him as a sharp

young fellow who was rapidly making his way in the world. He did not

suspect Avdotya's real feelings and went on believing in her as

before.

Two years passed like this.

One summer day it happened that Lizaveta Prohorovna--who had somehow

suddenly grown yellow and wrinkled during those two years in spite of

all sorts of unguents, rouge and powder--about two o'clock in the

afternoon went out with her lap dog and her folding parasol for a

stroll before dinner in her neat little German garden. With a faint

rustle of her starched petticoats, she walked with tiny steps along

the sandy path between two rows of erect, stiffly tied-up dahlias,

when she was suddenly overtaken by our old acquaintance Kirillovna,

who announced respectfully that a merchant desired to speak to her on

important business. Kirillovna was still high in her mistress's favour

(in reality it was she who managed Madame Kuntse's estate) and she had

some time before obtained permission to wear a white cap, which gave

still more acerbity to the sharp features of her swarthy face.

"A merchant?" said her mistress; "what does he want?"

"I don't know what he wants," answered Kirillovna in an insinuating

voice, "only I think he wants to buy something from you."

Lizaveta Prohorovna went back into the drawing-room, sat down in her

usual seat--an armchair with a canopy over it, upon which a climbing

plant twined gracefully--and gave orders that the merchant should be

summoned.

Naum appeared, bowed, and stood still by the door.

"I hear that you want to buy something of me," said Lizaveta

Prohorovna, and thought to herself, "What a handsome man this merchant

is."

"Just so, madam."

"What is it?"

"Would you be willing to sell your inn?"

"What inn?"

"Why, the one on the high road not far from here."

"But that inn is not mine, it is Akim's."

"Not yours? Why, it stands on your land."

"Yes, the land is mine ... bought in my name; but the inn is his."

"To be sure. But wouldn't you be willing to sell it to me?"

"How could I sell it to you?"

"Well, I would give you a good price for it."

Lizaveta Prohorovna was silent for a space.

"It is really very queer what you are saying," she said. "And what

would you give?" she added. "I don't ask that for myself but for

Akim."

"For all the buildings and the appurtenances, together with the land

that goes with it, of course, I would give two thousand roubles."

"Two thousand roubles! That is not enough," replied Lizaveta

Prohorovna.

"It's a good price."

"But have you spoken to Akim?"

"What should I speak to him for? The inn is yours, so here I am

talking to you about it."

"But I have told you.... It really is astonishing that you don't

understand me."

"Not understand, madam? But I do understand."

Lizaveta Prohorovna looked at Naum and Naum looked at Lizaveta

Prohorovna.

"Well, then," he began, "what do you propose?"

"I propose..." Lizaveta Prohorovna moved in her chair. "In the first

place I tell you that two thousand is too little and in the second..."

"I'll add another hundred, then."

Lizaveta Prohorovna got up.

"I see that you are talking quite off the point. I have told you

already that I cannot sell that inn--am not going to sell it. I

cannot ... that is, I will not."

Naum smiled and said nothing for a space.

"Well, as you please, madam," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I beg

to take leave." He bowed and took hold of the door handle.

Lizaveta Prohorovna turned round to him.

"You need not go away yet, however," she said, with hardly perceptible

agitation. She rang the bell and Kirillovna came in from the study.

"Kirillovna, tell them to give this gentleman some tea. I will see you

again," she added, with a slight inclination of her head.

Naum bowed again and went out with Kirillovna. Lizaveta Prohorovna

walked up and down the room once or twice and rang the bell again.

This time a page appeared. She told him to fetch Kirillovna. A few

moments later Kirillovna came in with a faint creak of her new

goatskin shoes.

"Have you heard," Lizaveta Prohorovna began with a forced laugh, "what

this merchant has been proposing to me? He is a queer fellow, really!"

"No, I haven't heard. What is it, madam?" and Kirillovna faintly

screwed up her black Kalmuck eyes.

"He wants to buy Akim's inn."

"Well, why not?"

"But how could he? What about Akim? I gave it to Akim."

"Upon my word, madam, what are you saying? Isn't the inn yours? Don't

we all belong to you? And isn't all our property yours, our

mistress's?"

"Good gracious, Kirillovna, what are you saying?" Lizaveta Prohorovna

pulled out a batiste handkerchief and nervously blew her nose. "Akim

bought the inn with his own money."

"His own money? But where did he get the money? Wasn't it through your

kindness? He has had the use of the land all this time as it is. It

was all through your gracious permission. And do you suppose, madam,

that he would have no money left? Why, he is richer than you are, upon

my word, he is!"

"That's all true, of course, but still I can't do it.... How could I

sell the inn?"

"And why not sell it," Kirillovna went on, "since a purchaser has

luckily turned up? May I ask, madam, how much he offers you?"

"More than two thousand roubles," said Lizaveta Prohorovna softly.

"He will give more, madam, if he offers two thousand straight off. And

you will arrange things with Akim afterwards; take a little off his

yearly duty or something. He will be thankful, too."

"Of course, I must remit part of his duty. But no, Kirillovna, how can

I sell it?" and Lizaveta Prohorovna walked up and down the room. "No,

that's out of the question, that won't do ... no, please don't speak

of it again ... or I shall be angry."

But in spite of her agitated mistress's warning, Kirillovna did

continue speaking of it and half an hour later she went back to Naum,

whom she had left in the butler's pantry at the samovar.

"What have you to tell me, good madam?" said Naum, jauntily turning

his tea-cup wrong side upwards in the saucer.

"What I have to tell you is that you are to go in to the mistress; she

wants you."

"Certainly," said Naum, and he got up and followed Kirillovna into the

drawing-room.

The door closed behind them.... When the door opened again and Naum

walked out backwards, bowing, the matter was settled: Akim's inn

belonged to him. He had bought it for 2800 paper roubles. It was

arranged that the legal formalities should take place as quickly as

possible and that till then the matter should not be made public.

Lizaveta Prohorovna received a deposit of a hundred roubles and two

hundred went to Kirillovna for her assistance. "It has not cost me

much," thought Naum as he got into his coat, "it was a lucky chance."

While the transaction we have described was going forward in the

mistress's house, Akim was sitting at home alone on the bench by the

window, stroking his beard with a discontented expression. We have

said already that he did not suspect his wife's feeling for Naum,

although kind friends had more than once hinted to him that it was

time he opened his eyes; it is true that he had noticed himself that

of late his wife had become rather difficult, but we all know that the

female sex is capricious and changeable. Even when it really did

strike him that things were not going well in his house, he merely

dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand; he did not like the

idea of a squabble; his good nature had not lessened with years and

indolence was asserting itself, too. But on that day he was very much

out of humour; the day before he had overheard quite by chance in the

street a conversation between their servant and a neighbouring peasant

woman.

The peasant woman asked the servant why she had not come to see her on

the holiday the day before. "I was expecting you," she said.

"I did set off," replied the servant, "but as ill-luck would have it,

I ran into the mistress ... botheration take her."

"Ran into her?" repeated the peasant woman in a sing-song voice and

she leaned her cheek on her hand. "And where did you run into her, my

good girl?"

"Beyond the priest's hemp-patch. She must have gone to the hemp-patch

to meet her Naum, but I could not see them in the dusk, owing to the

moon, maybe, I don't know; I simply dashed into them."

"Dashed into them?" the other woman repeated. "Well, and was she

standing with him, my good girl?"

"Yes, she was. He was standing there and so was she. She saw me and

said, 'Where are you running to? Go home.' So I went home."

"You went home?" The peasant woman was silent. "Well, good-bye,

Fetinyushka," she brought out at last, and trudged off.

This conversation had an unpleasant effect on Akim. His love for

Avdotya had cooled, but still he did not like what the servant had

said. And she had told the truth: Avdotya really had gone out that

evening to meet Naum, who had been waiting for her in the patch of

dense shade thrown on the road by the high motionless hemp. The dew

bathed every stalk of it from top to bottom; the strong, almost

overpowering fragrance hung all about it. A huge crimson moon had just

risen in the dingy, blackish mist. Naum heard the hurried footsteps of

Avdotya a long way off and went to meet her. She came up to him, pale

with running; the moon lighted up her face.

"Well, have you brought it?" he asked.

"Brought it--yes, I have," she answered in an uncertain voice. "But,

Naum Ivanitch----"

"Give it me, since you have brought it," he interrupted her, and held

out his hand.

She took a parcel from under her shawl. Naum took it at once and

thrust it in his bosom.

"Naum Ivanitch," Avdotya said slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on him,

"oh, Naum Ivanitch, you will bring my soul to ruin."

It was at that instant that the servant came up to them.

And so Akim was sitting on the bench discontentedly stroking his

beard. Avdotya kept coming into the room and going out again. He

simply followed her with his eyes. At last she came into the room and

after taking a jerkin from the lobby was just crossing the threshold,

when he could not restrain himself and said, as though speaking to

himself:

"I wonder," he began, "why it is women are always in a fuss? It's no

good expecting them to sit still. That's not in their line. But

running out morning or evening, that's what they like. Yes."

Avdotya listened to her husband's words without changing her position;

only at the word "evening," she moved her head slightly and seemed to

ponder.

"Once you begin talking, Semyonitch," she commented at last with

vexation, "there is no stopping you."

And with a wave of her hand she went away and slammed the door.

Avdotya certainly did not appreciate Akim's eloquence and often in the

evenings when he indulged in conversation with travellers or fell to

telling stories she stealthily yawned or went out of the room. Akim

looked at the closed door. "Once you begin talking," he repeated in an

undertone.... "The fact is, I have not talked enough to you. And who

is it? A peasant like any one of us, and what's more...." And he got

up, thought a little and tapped the back of his head with his fist.

Several days passed in a rather strange way. Akim kept looking at his

wife as though he were preparing to say something to her, and she, for

her part, looked at him suspiciously; meanwhile, they both preserved a

strained silence. This silence, however, was broken from time to time

by some peevish remark from Akim in regard to some oversight in the

housekeeping or in regard to women in general. For the most part

Avdotya did not answer one word. But in spite of Akim's good-natured

weakness, it certainly would have come to a decisive explanation

between him and Avdotya, if it had not been for an event which

rendered any explanation useless.

One morning Akim and wife were just beginning lunch (owing to the

summer work in the fields there were no travellers at the inn) when

suddenly a cart rattled briskly along the road and pulled up sharply

at the front door. Akim peeped out of window, frowned and looked down:

Naum got deliberately out of the cart. Avdotya had not seen him, but

when she heard his voice in the entry the spoon trembled in her hand.

He told the labourers to put up the horse in the yard. At last the

door opened and he walked into the room.

"Good-day," he said, and took off his cap.

"Good-day," Akim repeated through his teeth. "Where has God brought

you from?"

"I was in the neighbourhood," replied Naum, and he sat down on the

bench. "I have come from your lady."

"From the lady," said Akim, not getting up from his seat. "On

business, eh?"

"Yes, on business. My respects to you, Avdotya Arefyevona."

"Good morning, Naum Ivanitch," she answered. All were silent.

"What have you got, broth, is it?" began Naum.

"Yes, broth," replied Akim and all at once he turned pale, "but not

for you."

Naum glanced at Akim with surprise.

"Not for me?"

"Not for you, and that's all about it." Akim's eyes glittered and he

brought his fist on the table. "There is nothing in my house for you,

do you hear?"

"What's this, Semyonitch, what is the matter with you?"

"There's nothing the matter with me, but I am sick of you, Naum

Ivanitch, that's what it is." The old man got up, trembling all over.

"You poke yourself in here too often, I tell you."

Naum, too, got up.

"You've gone clean off your head, old man," he said with a jeer.

"Avdotya Arefyevna, what's wrong with him?"

"I tell you," shouted Akim in a cracked voice, "go away, do you

hear? ... You have nothing to do with Avdotya Arefyevna ... I tell

you, do you hear, get out!"

"What's that you are saying to me?" Naum asked significantly.

"Go out of the house, that's what I am telling to you. Here's God and

here's the door ... do you understand? Or there will be trouble."

Naum took a step forward.

"Good gracious, don't fight, my dears," faltered Avdotya, who till

then had sat motionless at the table.

Naum glanced at her.

"Don't be uneasy, Avdotya Arefyevna, why should we fight? Fie,

brother, what a hullabaloo you are making!" he went on, addressing

Akim. "Yes, really. You are a hasty one! Has anyone ever heard of

turning anyone out of his house, especially the owner of it?" Naum

added with slow deliberateness.

"Out of his house?" muttered Akim. "What owner?"

"Me, if you like."

And Naum screwed up his eyes and showed his white teeth in a grin.

"You? Why, it's my house, isn't it?"

"What a slow-witted fellow you are! I tell you it's mine."

Akim gazed at him open-eyed.

"What crazy stuff is it you are talking? One would think you had gone

silly," he said at last. "How the devil can it be yours?"

"What's the good of talking to you?" cried Naum impatiently. "Do you

see this bit of paper?" he went on, pulling out of his pocket a sheet

of stamped paper, folded in four, "do you see? This is the deed of

sale, do you understand, the deed of sale of your land and your house;

I have bought them from the lady, from Lizaveta Prohorovna; the deed

was drawn up at the town yesterday; so I am master here, not you. Pack

your belongings today," he added, putting the document back in his

pocket, "and don't let me see a sign of you here to-morrow, do you

hear?"

Akim stood as though struck by a thunderbolt.

"Robber," he moaned at last, "robber.... Heigh, Fedka, Mitka, wife,

wife, seize him, seize him--hold him."

He lost his head completely.

"Mind now, old man," said Naum menacingly, "mind what you are about,

don't play the fool...."

"Beat him, wife, beat him!" Akim kept repeating in a tearful voice,

trying helplessly and in vain to get up. "Murderer, robber.... She is

not enough for you, you want to take my house, too, and everything....

But no, stop a bit ... that can't be.... I'll go myself, I'll speak

myself ... how ... why should she sell it? Wait a bit, wait a bit."

And he dashed out bareheaded.

"Where are you off to, Akim Ivanitch?" said the servant Fetinya,

running into him in the doorway.

"To our mistress! Let me pass! To our mistress!" wailed Akim, and

seeing Naum's cart which had not yet been taken into the yard, he

jumped into it, snatched the reins and lashing the horse with all his

might set off at full speed to his mistress's house.

"My lady, Lizaveta Prohorovna," he kept repeating to himself all the

way, "how have I lost your favour? I should have thought I had done my

best!"

And meantime he kept lashing and lashing the horse. Those who met him

moved out of his way and gazed after him.

In a quarter of an hour Akim had reached Lizaveta Prohorovna's house,

had galloped up to the front door, jumped out of the cart and dashed

straight into the entry.

"What do you want?" muttered the frightened footman who was sleeping

sweetly on the hall bench.

"The mistress, I want to see the mistress," said Akim loudly.

The footman was amazed.

"Has anything happened?" he began.

"Nothing has happened, but I want to see the mistress."

"What, what," said the footman, more and more astonished, and he

slowly drew himself up.

Akim pulled himself up.... He felt as though cold water had been

poured on him.

"Announce to the mistress, please, Pyotr Yevgrafitch," he said with a

low bow, "that Akim asks leave to see her."

"Very good ... I'll go ... I'll tell her ... but you must be drunk,

wait a bit," grumbled the footman, and he went off.

Akim looked down and seemed confused.... His determination had

evaporated as soon as he went into the hall.

Lizaveta Prohorovna was confused, too, when she was informed that Akim

had come. She immediately summoned Kirillovna to her boudoir.

"I can't see him," she began hurriedly, as soon as the latter

appeared. "I absolutely cannot. What am I to say to him? I told you he

would be sure to come and complain," she added in annoyance and

agitation. "I told you."

"But why should you see him?" Kirillovna answered calmly, "there is no

need to. Why should you be worried! No, indeed!"

"What is to be done then?"

"If you will permit me, I will speak to him."

Lizaveta Prohorovna raised her head.

"Please do, Kirillovna. Talk to him. You tell him ... that I found it

necessary ... but that I will compensate him ... say what you think

best. Please, Kirillovna."

"Don't you worry yourself, madam," answered Kirillovna, and she went

out, her shoes creaking.

A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when their creaking was heard

again and Kirillovna walked into the boudoir with the same unruffled

expression on her face and the same sly shrewdness in her eyes.

"Well?" asked her mistress, "how is Akim?"

"He is all right, madam. He says that it must all be as you graciously

please; that if only you have good health and prosperity he can get

along very well."

"And he did not complain?"

"No, madam. Why should he complain?"

"What did he come for, then?" Lizaveta Prohorovna asked in some

surprise.

"He came to ask whether you would excuse his yearly payment for next

year, that is, until he has been compensated."

"Of course, of course," Lizaveta Prohorovna caught her up eagerly. "Of

course, with pleasure. And tell him, in fact, that I will make it up

to him. Thank you, Kirillovna. I see he is a good-hearted man. Stay,"

she added, "give him this from me," and she took a three-rouble note

out of her work-table drawer, "Here, take this, give it to him."

"Certainly, madam," answered Kirillovna, and going calmly back to her

room she locked the note in an iron-cased box which stood at the head

of her bed; she kept in it all her spare cash, and there was a

considerable amount of it.

Kirillovna had reassured her mistress by her report but the

conversation between herself and Akim had not been quite what she

represented. She had sent for him to the maid's room. At first he had

not come, declaring that he did not want to see Kirillovna but

Lizaveta Prohorovna herself; he had, however, at last obeyed and gone

by the back door to see Kirillovna. He found her alone. He stopped at

once on getting into the room and leaned against the wall by the door;

he would have spoken but he could not.

Kirillovna looked at him intently.

"You want to see the mistress, Akim Semyonitch?" she began.

He simply nodded.

"It's impossible, Akim Semyonitch. And what's the use? What's done

can't be undone, and you will only worry the mistress. She can't see

you now, Akim Semyonitch."

"She cannot," he repeated and paused. "Well, then," he brought out at

last, "so then my house is lost?"

"Listen, Akim Semyonitch. I know you have always been a sensible man.

Such is the mistress's will and there is no changing it. You can't

alter that. Whatever you and I might say about it would make no

difference, would it?"

Akim put his arm behind his back.

"You'd better think," Kirillovna went on, "shouldn't you ask the

mistress to let you off your yearly payment or something?"

"So my house is lost?" repeated Akim in the same voice.

"Akim Semyonitch, I tell you, it's no use. You know that better than

I do."

"Yes. Anyway, you might tell me what the house went for?"

"I don't know, Akim Semyonitch, I can't tell you.... But why are you

standing?" she added. "Sit down."

"I'd rather stand, I am a peasant. I thank you humbly."

"You a peasant, Akim Semyonitch? You are as good as a merchant, let

alone a house-serf! What do you mean? Don't distress yourself for

nothing. Won't you have some tea?"

"No, thank you, I don't want it. So you have got hold of my house

between you," he added, moving away from the wall. "Thank you for

that. I wish you good-bye, my lady."

And he turned and went out. Kirillovna straightened her apron and went

to her mistress.

"So I am a merchant, it seems," Akim said to himself, standing before

the gate in hesitation. "A nice merchant!" He waved his hand and

laughed bitterly. "Well, I suppose I had better go home."

And entirely forgetting Naum's horse with which he had come, he

trudged along the road to the inn. Before he had gone the first mile

he suddenly heard the rattle of a cart beside him.

"Akim, Akim Semyonitch," someone called to him.

He raised his eyes and saw a friend of his, the parish clerk, Yefrem,

nicknamed the Mole, a little, bent man with a sharp nose and

dim-sighted eyes. He was sitting on a bundle of straw in a wretched

little cart, and leaning forward against the box.

"Are you going home?" he asked Akim.

Akim stopped

"Yes."

"Shall I give you a lift?"

"Please do."

Yefrem moved to one side and Akim climbed into the cart. Yefrem, who

seemed to be somewhat exhilarated, began lashing at his wretched

little horse with the ends of his cord reins; it set off at a weary

trot continually tossing its unbridled head.

They drove for nearly a mile without saying one word to each other.

Akim sat with his head bent while Yefrem muttered to himself,

alternately urging on and holding back his horse.

"Where have you been without your cap, Semyonitch?" he asked Akim

suddenly and, without waiting for an answer, went on, "You've left it

at some tavern, that's what you've done. You are a drinking man; I

know you and I like you for it, that you are a drinker; you are not a

murderer, not a rowdy, not one to make trouble; you are a good

manager, but you are a drinker and such a drinker, you ought to have

been pulled up for it long ago, yes, indeed; for it's, a nasty

habit.... Hurrah!" he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice,

"Hurrah! Hurrah!"

"Stop! Stop!" a woman's voice sounded close by, "Stop!"

Akim looked round. A woman so pale and dishevelled that at first he

did not recognise her, was running across the field towards the cart.

"Stop! Stop!" she moaned again, gasping for breath and waving her

arms.

Akim started: it was his wife.

He snatched up the reins.

"What's the good of stopping?" muttered Yefrem. "Stopping for a woman?

Gee-up!"

But Akim pulled the horse up sharply. At that instant Avdotya ran up

to the road and flung herself down with her face straight in the dust.

"Akim Semyonitch," she wailed, "he has turned me out, too!"

Akim looked at her and did not stir; he only gripped the reins

tighter.

"Hurrah!" Yefrem shouted again.

"So he has turned you out?" said Akim.

"He has turned me out, Akim Semyonitch, dear," Avdotya answered,

sobbing. "He has turned me out. The house is mine, he said, so you can

go."

"Capital! That's a fine thing ... capital," observed Yefrem.

"So I suppose you thought to stay on?" Akim brought out bitterly,

still sitting in the cart.

"How could I! But, Akim Semyonitch," went on Avdotya, who had raised

her head but let it sink to the earth again, "you don't know, I ...

kill me, Akim Semyonitch, kill me here on the spot."

"Why should I kill you, Arefyevna?" said Akim dejectedly, "you've been

your own ruin. What's the use?"

"But do you know what, Akim Semyonitch, the money ... your money ...

your money's gone.... Wretched sinner as I am, I took it from under

the floor, I gave it all to him, to that villain Naum.... Why did you

tell me where you hid your money, wretched sinner as I am? ... It's

with your money he has bought the house, the villain."

Sobs choked her voice.

Akim clutched his head with both hands.

"What!" he cried at last, "all the money, too ... the money and the

house, and you did it.... Ah! You took it from under the floor, you

took it.... I'll kill you, you snake in the grass!" And he leapt out

of the cart.

"Semyonitch, Semyonitch, don't beat her, don't fight," faltered

Yefrem, on whom this unexpected adventure began to have a sobering

effect.

"No, Akim Semyonitch, kill me, wretched sinner as I am; beat me, don't

heed him," cried Avdotya, writhing convulsively at Akim's feet.

He stood a moment, looked at her, moved a few steps away and sat down

on the grass beside the road.

A brief silence followed. Avdotya turned her head in his direction.

"Semyonitch! hey, Semyonitch," began Yefrem, sitting up in the cart,

"give over ... you know ... you won't make things any better. Tfoo,

what a business," he went on as though to himself. "What a damnable

woman.... Go to him," he added, bending down over the side of the cart

to Avdotya, "you see, he's half crazy."

Avdotya got up, went nearer to Akim and again fell at his feet.

"Akim Semyonitch!" she began, in a faint voice.

Akim got up and went back to the cart. She caught at the skirt of his

coat.

"Get away!" he shouted savagely, and pushed her off.

"Where are you going?" Yefrem asked, seeing that he was getting in

beside him again.

"You were going to take me to my home," said Akim, "but take me to

yours ... you see, I have no home now. They have bought mine."

"Very well, come to me. And what about her?"

Akim made no answer.

"And me? Me?" Avdotya repeated with tears, "are you leaving me all

alone? Where am I to go?"

"You can go to him," answered Akim, without turning round, "the man

you have given my money to.... Drive on, Yefrem!"

Yefrem lashed the horse, the cart rolled off, Avdotya set up a

wail....

Yefrem lived three-quarters of a mile from Akim's inn in a little

house close to the priest's, near the solitary church with five

cupolas which had been recently built by the heirs of a rich merchant

in accordance with the latter's will. Yefrem said nothing to Akim all

the way; he merely shook his head from time to time and uttered such

ejaculations as "Dear, dear!" and "Upon my soul!" Akim sat without

moving, turned a little away from Yefrem. At last they arrived. Yefrem

was the first to get out of the cart. A little girl of six in a smock

tied low round the waist ran out to meet him and shouted,

"Daddy! daddy!"

"And where is your mother?" asked Yefrem.

"She is asleep in the shed."

"Well, let her sleep. Akim Semyonitch, won't you get out, sir, and

come indoors?"

(It must be noted that Yefrem addressed him familiarly only when he

was drunk. More important persons than Yefrem spoke to Akim with

formal politeness.)

Akim went into the sacristan's hut.

"Here, sit on the bench," said Yefrem. "Run away, you little rascals,"

he cried to three other children who suddenly came out of different

corners of the room together with two lean cats covered with wood

ashes. "Get along! Sh-sh! Come this way, Akim Semyonitch, this way!"

he went on, making his guest sit down, "and won't you take something?"

"I tell you what, Yefrem," Akim articulated at last, "could I have

some vodka?"

Yefrem pricked up his ears.

"Vodka? You can. I've none in the house, but I will run this minute to

Father Fyodor's. He always has it.... I'll be back in no time."

And he snatched up his cap with earflaps.

"Bring plenty, I'll pay for it," Akim shouted after him. "I've still

money enough for that."

"I'll be back in no time," Yefrem repeated again as he went out of the

door. He certainly did return very quickly with two bottles under his

arm, of which one was already uncorked, put them on the table, brought

two little green glasses, part of a loaf and some salt.

"Now this is what I like," he kept repeating, as he sat down opposite

Akim. "Why grieve?" He poured out a glass for Akim and another for

himself and began talking freely. Avdotya's conduct had perplexed him.

"It's a strange business, really," he said, "how did it happen? He

must have bewitched her, I suppose? It shows how strictly one must

look after a wife! You want to keep a firm hand over her. All the same

it wouldn't be amiss for you to go home; I expect you have got a lot

of belongings there still." Yefrem added much more to the same effect;

he did not like to be silent when he was drinking.

This is what was happening an hour later in Yefrem's house. Akim, who

had not answered a word to the questions and observations of his

talkative host but had merely gone on drinking glass after glass, was

sleeping on the stove, crimson in the face, a heavy, oppressive sleep;

the children were looking at him in wonder, and Yefrem ... Yefrem,

alas, was asleep, too, but in a cold little lumber room in which he

had been locked by his wife, a woman of very masculine and powerful

physique. He had gone to her in the shed and begun threatening her or

telling her some tale, but had expressed himself so unintelligibly and

incoherently that she instantly saw what was the matter, took him by

the collar and deposited him in a suitable place. He slept in the

lumber room, however, very soundly and even serenely. Such is the

effect of habit.

* * * * *

Kirillovna had not quite accurately repeated to Lizaveta Prohorovna

her conversation with Akim ... the same may be said of Avdotya. Naum

had not turned her out, though she had told Akim that he had; he had

no right to turn her out. He was bound to give the former owners time

to pack up. An explanation of quite a different character took place

between him and Avdotya.

When Akim had rushed out crying that he would go to the mistress,

Avdotya had turned to Naum, stared at him open-eyed and clasped her

hands.

"Good heavens!" she cried, "Naum Ivanitch, what does this mean? You've

bought our inn?"

"Well, what of it?" he replied. "I have."

Avdotya was silent for a while; then she suddenly started.

"So that is what you wanted the money for?"

"You are quite right there. Hullo, I believe your husband has gone off

with my horse," he added, hearing the rumble of the wheels. "He is a

smart fellow!"

"But it's robbery!" wailed Avdotya. "Why, it's our money, my husband's

money and the inn is ours...."

"No, Avdotya Arefyevna," Naum interrupted her, "the inn was not yours.

What's the use of saying that? The inn was on your mistress's land, so

it was hers. The money was yours, certainly; but you were, so to say,

so kind as to present it to me; and I am grateful to you and will even

give it back to you on occasion--if occasion arises; but you wouldn't

expect me to remain a beggar, would you?"

Naum said all this very calmly and even with a slight smile.

"Holy saints!" cried Avdotya, "it's beyond everything! Beyond

everything! How can I look my husband in the face after this? You

villain," she added, looking with hatred at Naum's fresh young face.

"I've ruined my soul for you, I've become a thief for your sake, why,

you've turned us into the street, you villain! There's nothing left

for me but to hang myself, villain, deceiver! You've ruined me, you

monster!" And she broke into violent sobbing.

"Don't excite yourself, Avdotya Arefyevna," said Naum. "I'll tell you

one thing: charity begins at home, and that's what the pike is in the

sea for, to keep the carp from going to sleep."

"Where are we to go now. What's to become of us?" Avdotya faltered,

weeping.

"That I can't say."

"But I'll cut your throat, you villain, I'll cut your throat."

"No, you won't do that, Avdotya Arefyevna; what's the use of talking

like that? But I see I had better leave you for a time, for you are

very much upset.... I'll say good-bye, but I shall be back to-morrow

for certain. But you must allow me to send my workmen here today," he

added, while Avdotya went on repeating through her tears that she

would cut his throat and her own.

"Oh, and here they are," he observed, looking out of the window. "Or,

God forbid, some mischief might happen.... It will be safer so. Will

you be so kind as to put your belongings together to-day and they'll

keep guard here and help you, if you like. I'll say goodbye."

He bowed, went out and beckoned the workmen to him.

Avdotya sank on the bench, then bent over the table, wringing her

hands, then suddenly leapt up and ran after her husband.... We have

described their meeting.

When Akim drove away from her with Yefrem, leaving her alone in the

field, for a long time she remained where she was, weeping. When she

had wept away all her tears she went in the direction of her

mistress's house. It was very bitter for her to go into the house,

still more bitter to go into the maids' room. All the maids flew to

meet her with sympathy and consideration. Seeing them, Avdotya could

not restrain her tears; they simply spurted from her red and swollen

eyes. She sank, helpless, on the first chair that offered itself.

Someone ran to fetch Kirillovna. Kirillovna came, was very friendly to

her, but kept her from seeing the mistress just as she had Akim.

Avdotya herself did not insist on seeing Lizaveta Prohorovna; she had

come to her old home simply because she had nowhere else to go.

Kirillovna ordered the samovar to be brought in. For a long while

Avdotya refused to take tea, but yielded at last to the entreaties and

persuasion of all the maids and after the first cup drank another

four. When Kirillovna saw that her guest was a little calmer and only

shuddered and gave a faint sob from time to time, she asked her where

they meant to move to and what they thought of doing with their

things. Avdotya began crying again at this question, and protesting

that she wanted nothing but to die; but Kirillovna as a woman with a

head on her shoulders, checked her at once and advised her without

wasting time to set to work that very day to move their things to the

hut in the village which had been Akim's and in which his uncle (the

old man who had tried to dissuade him from his marriage) was now

living; she told her that with their mistress's permission men and

horses should be sent to help them in packing and moving. "And as for

you, my love," added Kirillovna, twisting her cat-like lips into a wry

smile, "there will always be a place for you with us and we shall be

delighted if you stay with us till you are settled in a house of your

own again. The great thing is not to lose heart. The Lord has given,

the Lord has taken away and will give again. Lizaveta Prohorovna, of

course, had to sell your inn for reasons of her own but she will not

forget you and will make up to you for it; she told me to tell Akim

Semyonitch so. Where is he now?"

Avdotya answered that when he met her he had been very unkind to her

and had driven off to Yefrem's.

"Oh, to that fellow's!" Kirillovna replied significantly. "Of course,

I understand that it's hard for him now. I daresay you won't find him

to-day; what's to be done? I must make arrangements. Malashka," she

added, turning to one of the maids, "ask Nikanop Ilyitch to come here:

we will talk it over with him."

Nikanop Ilyitch, a feeble-looking man who was bailiff or something of

the sort, made his appearance at once, listened with servility to all

that Kirillovna said to him, said, "it shall be done," went out and

gave orders. Avdotya was given three waggons and three peasants; a

fourth who said that he was "more competent than they were,"

volunteered to join them and she went with them to the inn where she

found her own labourers and the servant Fetinya in a state of great

confusion and alarm.

Naum's newly hired labourers, three very stalwart young men, had come

in the morning and had not left the place since. They were keeping

very zealous guard, as Naum had said they would--so zealous that the

iron tyres of a new cart were suddenly found to be missing.

It was a bitter, bitter task for poor Avdotya to pack. In spite of the

help of the "competent" man, who turned out, however, only capable of

walking about with a stick in his hand, looking at the others and

spitting on the ground, she was not able to get it finished that day

and stayed the night at the inn, begging Fetinya to spend the night in

her room. But she only fell into a feverish doze towards morning and

the tears trickled down her cheeks even in her sleep.

Meanwhile Yefrem woke up earlier than usual in his lumber room and

began knocking and asking to be let out. At first his wife was

unwilling to release him and told him through the door that he had not

yet slept long enough; but he aroused her curiosity by promising to

tell her of the extraordinary thing that had happened to Akim; she

unbolted the door. Yefrem told her what he knew and ended by asking

"Is he awake yet, or not?"

"The Lord only knows," answered his wife. "Go and look yourself; he

hasn't got down from the stove yet. How drunk you both were yesterday!

You should look at your face--you don't look like yourself. You are as

black as a sweep and your hair is full of hay!"

"That doesn't matter," answered Yefrem, and, passing his hand over his

head, he went into the room. Akim was no longer asleep; he was sitting

on the stove with his legs hanging down; he, too, looked strange and

unkempt. His face showed the effects the more as he was not used to

drinking much.

"Well, how have you slept, Akim Semyonitch?" Yefrem began.

Akim looked at him with lustreless eyes.

"Well, brother Yefrem," he said huskily, "could we have some again?"

Yefrem took a swift glance at Akim.... He felt a slight tremor at that

moment; it was a tremor such as is felt by a sportsman when he hears

the yap of his dog at the edge of the wood from which he had fancied

all the game had been driven.

"What, more?" he asked at last.

"Yes, more."

"My wife will see," thought Yefrem, "she won't let me out, most

likely.

"All right," he pronounced aloud, "have a little patience."

He went out and, thanks to skilfully taken precautions, succeeded in

bringing in unseen a big bottle under his coat.

Akim took the bottle. But Yefrem did not sit down with him as he had

the day before--he was afraid of his wife--and informing Akim that he

would go and have a look at what was going on at the inn and would see

that his belongings were being packed and not stolen--at once set off,

riding his little horse which he had neglected to feed--but judging

from the bulging front of his coat he had not forgotten his own needs.

Soon after he had gone, Akim was on the stove again, sleeping like the

dead.... He did not wake up, or at least gave no sign of waking when

Yefrem returned four hours later and began shaking him and trying to

rouse him and muttering over him some very muddled phrases such as

that "everything was moved and gone, and the ikons have been taken out

and driven away and that everything was over, and that everyone was

looking for him but that he, Yefrem, had given orders and not allowed

them, ..." and so on. But his mutterings did not last long. His wife

carried him off to the lumber room again and, very indignant both with

her husband and with the visitor, owing to whom her husband had been

drinking, lay down herself in the room on the shelf under the

ceiling.... But when she woke up early, as her habit was, and glanced

at the stove, Akim was not there. The second cock had not crowed and

the night was still so dark that the sky hardly showed grey overhead

and at the horizon melted into the darkness when Akim walked out of

the gate of the sacristan's house. His face was pale but he looked

keenly around him and his step was not that of a drunken man.... He

walked in the direction of his former dwelling, the inn, which had now

completely passed into the possession of its new owner--Naum.

Naum, too, was awake when Akim stole out of Yefrem's house. He was not

asleep; he was lying on a bench with his sheepskin coat under him. It

was not that his conscience was troubling him--no! he had with amazing

coolness been present all day at the packing and moving of all Akim's

possessions and had more than once addressed Avdotya, who was so

downcast that she did not even reproach him ... his conscience was at

rest but he was disturbed by various conjectures and calculations. He

did not know whether he would be lucky in his new career; he had never

before kept an inn, nor had a home of his own at all; he could not

sleep. "The thing has begun well," he thought, "how will it go

on?" ... Towards evening, after seeing off the last cart with Akim's

belongings (Avdotya walked behind it, weeping), he looked all over the

yard, the cellars, sheds, and barns, clambered up into the loft, more

than once instructed his labourers to keep a very, very sharp look-out

and when he was left alone after supper could not go to sleep. It so

happened that day that no visitor stayed at the inn for the night;

this was a great relief to him. "I must certainly buy a dog from the

miller to-morrow, as fierce a one as I can get; they've taken theirs

away," he said to himself, as he tossed from side to side, and all at

once he raised his head quickly ... he fancied that someone had passed

by the window ... he listened ... there was nothing. Only a cricket

from time to time gave a cautious churr, and a mouse was scratching

somewhere; he could hear his own breathing. Everything was still in

the empty room dimly lighted by the little glass lamp which he had

managed to hang up and light before the ikon in the corner.... He let

his head sink; again he thought he heard the gate creak ... then a

faint snapping sound from the fence.... He could not refrain from

jumping up; he opened the door of the room and in a low voice called,

"Fyodor! Fyodor!" No one answered.... He went out into the passage and

almost fell over Fyodor, who was lying on the floor. The man stirred

in his sleep with a faint grunt; Naum roused him.

"What's there? What do you want?" Fyodor began.

"What are you bawling for, hold your tongue!" Naum articulated in a

whisper. "How you sleep, you damned fellows! Have you heard nothing?"

"Nothing," answered the man.... "What is it?"

"Where are the others sleeping?"

"Where they were told to sleep.... Why, is there anything ..."

"Hold your tongue--come with me."

Naum stealthily opened the door and went out into the yard. It was

very dark outside.... The roofed-in parts and the posts could only be

distinguished because they were a still deeper black in the midst of

the black darkness.

"Shouldn't we light a lantern?" said Fyodor in a low voice.

But Naum waved his hand and held his breath.... At first he could hear

nothing but those nocturnal sounds which can almost always be heard in

an inhabited place: a horse was munching oats, a pig grunted faintly

in its sleep, a man was snoring somewhere; but all at once his ear

detected a suspicious sound coming from the very end of the yard, near

the fence.

Someone seemed to be stirring there, and breathing or blowing. Naum

looked over his shoulder towards Fyodor and cautiously descending the

steps went towards the sound.... Once or twice he stopped, listened

and stole on further.... Suddenly he started.... Ten paces from him,

in the thick darkness there came the flash of a bright light: it was a

glowing ember and close to it there was visible for an instant the

front part of a face with lips thrust out.... Quickly and silently,

like a cat at a mouse, Naum darted to the fire.... Hurriedly rising up

from the ground a long body rushed to meet him and, nearly knocking

him off his feet, almost eluded his grasp; but Naum hung on to it with

all his strength.

"Fyodor! Andrey! Petrushka!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Make

haste! here! here! I've caught a thief trying to set fire to the

place...."

The man whom he had caught fought and struggled violently ... but Naum

did not let him go. Fyodor at once ran to his assistance.

"A lantern! Make haste, a lantern! Run for a lantern, wake the

others!" Naum shouted to him. "I can manage him alone for a time--I am

sitting on him.... Make haste! And bring a belt to tie his hands."

Fyodor ran into the house.... The man whom Naum was holding suddenly

left off struggling.

"So it seems wife and money and home are not enough for you, you want

to ruin me, too," he said in a choking voice.

Naum recognised Akim's voice.

"So that's you, my friend," he brought out; "very good, you wait a

bit."

"Let me go," said Akim, "aren't you satisfied?"

"I'll show you before the judge to-morrow whether I am satisfied," and

Naum tightened his grip of Akim.

The labourers ran up with two lanterns and cords. "Tie his arms," Naum

ordered sharply. The men caught hold of Akim, stood him up and twisted

his arms behind his back.... One of them began abusing him, but

recognising the former owner of the inn lapsed into silence and only

exchanged glances with the others.

"Do you see, do you see!" Naum kept repeating, meanwhile throwing the

light of the lantern on the ground, "there are hot embers in the pot;

look, there's a regular log alight here! We must find out where he got

this pot ... here, he has broken up twigs, too," and Naum carefully

stamped out the fire with his foot. "Search him, Fyodor," he added,

"see if he hasn't got something else on him."

Fyodor rummaged Akim's pockets and felt him all over while the old man

stood motionless, with his head drooping on his breast as though he

were dead.

"Here's a knife," said Fyodor, taking an old kitchen knife out of the

front of Akim's coat.

"Aha, my fine gentleman, so that's what you were after," cried Naum.

"Lads, you are witnesses ... here he wanted to murder me and set fire

to the house.... Lock him up for the night in the cellar, he can't get

out of that.... I'll keep watch all night myself and to-morrow as soon

as it is light we will take him to the police captain ... and you are

witnesses, do you hear!"

Akim was thrust into the cellar and the door was slammed.... Naum set

two men to watch it and did not go to bed himself.

Meanwhile, Yefrem's wife having convinced herself that her uninvited

guest had gone, set about her cooking though it was hardly

daylight.... It was a holiday. She squatted down before the stove to

get a hot ember and saw that someone had scraped out the hot ashes

before her; then she wanted her knife and searched for it in vain;

then of her four cooking pots one was missing. Yefrem's wife had the

reputation of being a woman with brains, and justly so. She stood and

pondered, then went to the lumber room, to her husband. It was not

easy to wake him--and still more difficult to explain to him why he

was being awakened.... To all that she said to him Yefrem made the

same answer.

"He's gone away--well, God bless him.... What business is it of mine?

He's taken our knife and our pot--well, God bless him, what has it to

do with me?"

At last, however, he got up and after listening attentively to his

wife came to the conclusion that it was a bad business, that something

must be done.

"Yes," his wife repeated, "it is a bad business; maybe he will be

doing mischief in his despair.... I saw last night that he was not

asleep but was just lying on the stove; it would be as well for you to

go and see, Yefrem Alexandritch."

"I tell you what, Ulyana Fyodorovna," Yefrem began, "I'll go myself to

the inn now, and you be so kind, mother, as to give me just a drop to

sober me."

Ulyana hesitated.

"Well," she decided at last, "I'll give you the vodka, Yefrem

Alexandritch; but mind now, none of your pranks."

"Don't you worry, Ulyana Fyodorovna."

And fortifying himself with a glass, Yefrem made his way to the inn.

It was only just getting light when he rode up to the inn but, already

a cart and a horse were standing at the gate and one of Naum's

labourers was sitting on the box holding the reins.

"Where are you off to?" asked Yefrem.

"To the town," the man answered reluctantly.

"What for?"

The man simply shrugged his shoulders and did not answer. Yefrem

jumped off his horse and went into the house. In the entry he came

upon Naum, fully dressed and with his cap on.

"I congratulate the new owner on his new abode," said Yefrem, who knew

him. "Where are you off to so early?"

"Yes, you have something to congratulate me on," Naum answered grimly.

"On the very first day the house has almost been burnt down."

Yefrem started. "How so?"

"Oh, a kind soul turned up who tried to set fire to it. Luckily I

caught him in the act; now I am taking him to the town."

"Was it Akim, I wonder?" Yefrem asked slowly.

"How did you know? Akim. He came at night with a burning log in a pot

and got into the yard and was setting fire to it ... all my men are

witnesses. Would you like to see him? It's time for us to take him, by

the way."

"My good Naum Ivanitch," Yefrem began, "let him go, don't ruin the old

man altogether. Don't take that sin upon your soul, Naum Ivanitch.

Only think--the man was in despair--he didn't know what he was doing."

"Give over that nonsense," Naum cut him short. "What! Am I likely to

let him go! Why, he'd set fire to the house to-morrow if I did."

"He wouldn't, Naum Ivanitch, believe me. Believe me you will be easier

yourself for it--you know there will be questions asked, a trial--you

can see that for yourself."

"Well, what if there is a trial? I have no reason to be afraid of it."

"My good Naum Ivanitch, one must be afraid of a trial."

"Oh, that's enough. I see you are drunk already, and to-day a saint's

day, too!"

Yefrem all at once, quite unexpectedly, burst into tears.

"I am drunk but I am speaking the truth," he muttered. "And for the

sake of the holiday you ought to forgive him."

"Well, come along, you sniveller."

And Naum went out on to the steps.

"Forgive him, for Avdotya Arefyevna's sake," said Yefrem following him

on to the steps.

Naum went to the cellar and flung the door wide open. With timid

curiosity Yefrem craned his neck from behind Naum and with difficulty

made out the figure of Akim in the corner of the cellar. The once

well-to-do innkeeper, respected all over the neighbourhood, was

sitting on straw with his hands tied behind him like a criminal.

Hearing a noise he raised his head.... It seemed as though he had

grown fearfully thin in those last few days, especially during the

previous night--his sunken eyes could hardly be seen under his high,

waxen-yellow forehead, his parched lips looked dark ... his whole face

was changed and wore a strange expression--savage and frightened.

"Get up and come along," said Naum.

Akim got up and stepped over the threshold.

"Akim Semyonitch!" Yefrem wailed, "you've brought ruin on yourself, my

dear!"

Akim glanced at him without speaking.

"If I had known why you asked for vodka I would not have given it to

you, I really would not. I believe I would have drunk it all myself!

Eh, Naum Ivanitch," he added clutching at Naum's arm, "have mercy upon

him, let him go!"

"What next!" Naum replied with a grin. "Well, come along," he added

addressing Akim again. "What are you waiting for?"

"Naum Ivanitch," Akim began.

"What is it?"

"Naum Ivanitch," Akim repeated, "listen: I am to blame; I wanted to

settle my accounts with you myself; but God must be the judge between

us. You have taken everything from me, you know yourself, everything I

had. Now you can ruin me, only I tell you this: if you let me go now,

then--so be it--take possession of everything! I agree and wish you

all success. I promise you as before God, if you let me go you will

not regret it. God be with you."

Akim shut his eyes and ceased speaking.

"A likely story!" retorted Naum, "as though one could believe you!"

"But, by God, you can," said Yefrem, "you really can. I'd stake my

life on Akim Semyonitch's good faith--I really would."

"Nonsense," cried Naum. "Come along."

Akim looked at him.

"As you think best, Naum Ivanitch. It's for you to decide. But you are

laying a great burden on your soul. Well, if you are in such a hurry,

let us start."

Naum in his turn looked keenly at Akim.

"After all," he thought to himself, "hadn't I better let him go? Or

people will never have done pestering me about him. Avdotya will give

me no peace." While Naum was reflecting, no one uttered a word. The

labourer in the cart who could see it all through the gate did nothing

but toss his head and flick the horse's sides with the reins. The two

other labourers stood on the steps and they too were silent.

"Well, listen, old man," Naum began, "when I let you go and tell these

fellows" (he motioned with his head towards the labourers) "not to

talk, shall we be quits--do you understand me--quits ... eh?"

"I tell you, you can have it all."

"You won't consider me in your debt?"

"You won't be in my debt, I shall not be in yours."

Naum was silent again.

"And will you swear it?"

"Yes, as God is holy," answered Akim.

"Well, I know I shall regret it," said Naum, "but there, come what

may! Give me your hands."

Akim turned his back to him; Naum began untying him.

"Now, mind, old man," he added as he pulled the cord off his wrists,

"remember, I have spared you, mind that!"

"Naum Ivanitch, my dear," faltered Yefrem, "the Lord will have mercy

upon you!"

Akim freed his chilled and swollen hands and was moving towards the

gate.

Naum suddenly "showed the Jew" as the saying is--he must have

regretted that he had let Akim off.

"You've sworn now, mind!" he shouted after him. Akim turned, and

looking round the yard, said mournfully, "Possess it all, so be it

forever! ... Good-bye."

And he went slowly out into the road accompanied by Yefrem. Naum

ordered the horse to be unharnessed and with a wave of his hand went

back into the house.

"Where are you off to, Akim Semyonitch? Aren't you coming back to me?"

cried Yefrem, seeing that Akim was hurrying to the right out of the

high road.

"No, Yefremushka, thank you," answered Akim. "I am going to see what

my wife is doing."

"You can see afterwards.... But now we ought to celebrate the

occasion."

"No, thank you, Yefrem.... I've had enough. Good-bye."

And Akim walked off without looking round.

"Well! 'I've had enough'!" the puzzled sacristan pronounced. "And I

pledged my word for him! Well, I never expected this," he added, with

vexation, "after I had pledged my word for him, too!"

He remembered that he had not thought to take his knife and his pot

and went back to the inn.... Naum ordered his things to be given to

him but never even thought of offering him a drink. He returned home

thoroughly annoyed and thoroughly sober.

"Well?" his wife inquired, "found?"

"Found what?" answered Yefrem, "to be sure I've found it: here is your

pot."

"Akim?" asked his wife with especial emphasis.

Yefrem nodded his head.

"Yes. But he is a nice one! I pledged my word for him; if it had not

been for me he'd be lying in prison, and he never offered me a drop!

Ulyana Fyodorovna, you at least might show me consideration and give

me a glass!"

But Ulyana Fyodorovna did not show him consideration and drove him out

of her sight.

Meanwhile, Akim was walking with slow steps along the road to Lizaveta

Prohorovna's house. He could not yet fully grasp his position; he was

trembling all over like a man who had just escaped from a certain

death. He seemed unable to believe in his freedom. In dull

bewilderment he gazed at the fields, at the sky, at the larks

quivering in the warm air. From the time he had woken up on the

previous morning at Yefrem's he had not slept, though he had lain on

the stove without moving; at first he had wanted to drown in vodka the

insufferable pain of humiliation, the misery of frenzied and impotent

anger ... but the vodka had not been able to stupefy him completely;

his anger became overpowering and he began to think how to punish the

man who had wronged him.... He thought of no one but Naum; the idea of

Lizaveta Prohorovna never entered his head and on Avdotya he mentally

turned his back. By the evening his thirst for revenge had grown to a

frenzy, and the good-natured and weak man waited with feverish

impatience for the approach of night and ran, like a wolf to its prey,

to destroy his old home.... But then he had been caught ... locked

up.... The night had followed. What had he not thought over during

that cruel night! It is difficult to put into words all that a man

passes through at such moments, all the tortures that he endures; more

difficult because those tortures are dumb and inarticulate in the man

himself.... Towards morning, before Naum and Yefrem had come to the

door, Akim had begun to feel as it were more at ease. Everything is

lost, he thought, everything is scattered and gone ... and he

dismissed it all. If he had been naturally bad-hearted he might at

that moment have become a criminal; but evil was not natural to Akim.

Under the shock of undeserved and unexpected misfortune, in the

delirium of despair he had brought himself to crime; it had shaken him

to the depths of his being and, failing, had left in him nothing but

intense weariness.... Feeling his guilt in his mind he mentally tore

himself from all things earthly and began praying, bitterly but

fervently. At first he prayed in a whisper, then perhaps by accident

he uttered a loud "Oh, God!" and tears gushed from his eyes.... For a

long time he wept and at last grew quieter.... His thoughts would

probably have changed if he had had to pay the penalty of his

attempted crime ... but now he had suddenly been set free ... and he

was walking to see his wife, feeling only half alive, utterly crushed

but calm.

Lizaveta Prohorovna's house stood about a mile from her village to the

left of the cross road along which Akim was walking. He was about to

stop at the turning that led to his mistress's house ... but he walked

on instead. He decided first to go to what had been his hut, where his

uncle lived.

Akim's small and somewhat dilapidated hut was almost at the end of the

village; Akin walked through the whole street without meeting a soul.

All the people were at church. Only one sick old woman raised a little

window to look after him and a little girl who had run out with an

empty pail to the well gaped at him, and she too looked after him. The

first person he met was the uncle he was looking for. The old man had

been sitting all the morning on the ledge under his window taking

pinches of snuff and warming himself in the sun; he was not very well,

so he had not gone to church; he was just setting off to visit another

old man, a neighbour who was also ailing, when he suddenly saw

Akim.... He stopped, let him come up to him and glancing into his

face, said:

"Good-day, Akimushka!"

"Good-day," answered Akim, and passing the old man went in at the

gate. In the yard were standing his horses, his cow, his cart; his

poultry, too, were there.... He went into the hut without a word. The

old man followed him. Akim sat down on the bench and leaned his fists

on it. The old man standing at the door looked at him compassionately.

"And where is my wife?" asked Akim.

"At the mistress's house," the old man answered quickly. "She is

there. They put your cattle here and what boxes there were, and she

has gone there. Shall I go for her?"

Akim was silent for a time.

"Yes, do," he said at last.

"Oh, uncle, uncle," he brought out with a sigh while the old man was

taking his hat from a nail, "do you remember what you said to me the

day before my wedding?"

"It's all God's will, Akimushka."

"Do you remember you said to me that I was above you peasants, and now

you see what times have come.... I'm stripped bare myself."

"There's no guarding oneself from evil folk," answered the old man,

"if only someone such as a master, for instance, or someone in

authority, could give him a good lesson, the shameless fellow--but as

it is, he has nothing to be afraid of. He is a wolf and he behaves

like one." And the old man put on his cap and went off.

Avdotya had just come back from church when she was told that her

husband's uncle was asking for her. Till then she had rarely seen him;

he did not come to see them at the inn and had the reputation of being

queer altogether: he was passionately fond of snuff and was usually

silent.

She went out to him.

"What do you want, Petrovitch? Has anything happened?"

"Nothing has happened, Avdotya Arefyevna; your husband is asking for

you."

"Has he come back?"

"Yes."

"Where is he, then?"

"He is in the village, sitting in his hut."

Avdotya was frightened.

"Well, Petrovitch," she inquired, looking straight into his face, "is

he angry?"

"He does not seem so."

Avdotya looked down.

"Well, let us go," she said. She put on a shawl and they set off

together. They walked in silence to the village. When they began to

get close to the hut, Avdotya was so overcome with terror that her

knees began to tremble.

"Good Petrovitch," she said, "go in first.... Tell him that I have

come."

The old man went into the hut and found Akim lost in thought, sitting

just as he had left him.

"Well?" said Akim raising his head, "hasn't she come?"

"Yes," answered the old man, "she is at the gate...."

"Well, send her in here."

The old man went out, beckoned to Avdotya, said to her, "go in," and

sat down again on the ledge. Avdotya in trepidation opened the door,

crossed the threshold and stood still.

Akim looked at her.

"Well, Arefyevna," he began, "what are we going to do now?"

"I am guilty," she faltered.

"Ech Arefyevna, we are all sinners. What's the good of talking about

it!"

"It's he, the villain, has ruined us both," said Avdotya in a cringing

voice, and tears flowed down her face. "You must not leave it like

that, Akim Semyonitch, you must get the money back. Don't think of me.

I am ready to take my oath that I only lent him the money. Lizaveta

Prohorovna could sell our inn if she liked, but why should he rob

us.... Get your money back."

"There's no claiming the money back from him," Akim replied grimly,

"we have settled our accounts."

Avdotya was amazed. "How is that?"

"Why, like this. Do you know," Akim went on and his eyes gleamed, "do

you know where I spent the night? You don't know? In Naum's cellar,

with my arms and legs tied like a sheep--that's where I spent the

night. I tried to set fire to the place, but he caught me--Naum did;

he is too sharp! And to-day he meant to take me to the town but he let

me off; so I can't claim the money from him.... 'When did I borrow

money from you?' he would say. Am I to say to him, 'My wife took it

from under the floor and brought it to you'? 'Your wife is telling

lies,' he will say. Hasn't there been scandal enough for you,

Arefyevna? You'd better say nothing, I tell you, say nothing."

"I am guilty, Semyonitch, I am guilty," Avdotya, terrified, whispered

again.

"That's not what matters," said Akim, after a pause. "What are we

going to do? We have no home or no money."

"We shall manage somehow, Akim Semyonitch. We'll ask Lizaveta

Prohorovna, she will help us, Kiriliovna has promised me."

"No, Arefyenva, you and your Kirillovna had better ask her together;

you are berries off the same bush. I tell you what: you stay here and

good luck to you; I shall not stay here. It's a good thing we have no

children, and I shall be all right, I dare say, alone. There's always

enough for one."

"What will you do, Semyonitch? Take up driving again?"

Akim laughed bitterly.

"I should be a fine driver, no mistake! You have pitched on the right

man for it! No, Arefyenva, that's a job not like getting married, for

instance; an old man is no good for the job. I don't want to stay

here, just because I don't want them to point the finger at me--do you

understand? I am going to pray for my sins, Arefyevna, that's what I

am going to do."

"What sins have you, Semyonitch?" Avdotya pronounced timidly.

"Of them I know best myself, wife."

"But are you leaving me all alone, Semyonitch? How can I live without

a husband?"

"Leaving you alone? Oh, Arefyevna, how you do talk, really! Much you

need a husband like me, and old, too, and ruined as well! Why, you got

on without me in the past, you can get on in the future. What property

is left us, you can take; I don't want it."

"As you like, Semyonitch," Avdotya replied mournfully. "You know

best."

"That's better. Only don't you suppose that I am angry with you,

Arefyevna. No, what's the good of being angry when ... I ought to have

been wiser before. I've been to blame. I am punished." (Akim sighed.)

"As you make your bed so you must lie on it. I am old, it's time to

think of my soul. The Lord himself has brought me to understanding.

Like an old fool I wanted to live for my own pleasure with a young

wife.... No, the old man had better pray and beat his head against the

earth and endure in patience and fast.... And now go along, my dear. I

am very weary, I'll sleep a little."

And Akim with a groan stretched himself on the bench.

Avdotya wanted to say something, stood a moment, looked at him, turned

away and went out.

"Well, he didn't beat you then?" asked Petrovitch sitting bent up on

the ledge when she was level with him. Avdotya passed by him without

speaking. "So he didn't beat her," the old man said to himself; he

smiled, ruffled up his beard and took a pinch of snuff.

* * * * *

Akim carried out his intention. He hurriedly arranged his affairs and

a few days after the conversation we have described went, dressed

ready for his journey, to say goodbye to his wife who had settled for

a time in a little lodge in the mistress's garden. His farewell did

not take long. Kirillovna, who happened to be present, advised Akim to

see his mistress; he did so, Lizaveta Prohorovna received him with

some confusion but graciously let him kiss her hand and asked him

where he meant to go. He answered he was going first to Kiev and after

that where it would please the Lord. She commended his decision and

dismissed him. From that time he rarely appeared at home, though he

never forgot to bring his mistress some holy bread.... But wherever

Russian pilgrims gather his thin and aged but always dignified and

handsome face could be seen: at the relics of St. Sergey; on the

shores of the White Sea, at the Optin hermitage, and at the far-away

Valaam; he went everywhere.

This year he has passed by you in the ranks of the innumerable

people who go in procession behind the ikon of the Mother of God to

the Korennaya; last year you found him sitting with a wallet on

his shoulders with other pilgrims on the steps of Nikolay, the

wonder-worker, at Mtsensk ... he comes to Moscow almost every spring.

From land to land he has wandered with his quiet, unhurried, but

never-resting step--they say he has been even to Jerusalem. He seems

perfectly calm and happy and those who have chanced to converse with

him have said much of his piety and humility. Meanwhile, Naum's

fortunes prospered exceedingly. He set to work with energy and good

sense and got on, as the saying is, by leaps and bounds. Everyone in

the neighbourhood knew by what means he had acquired the inn, they

knew too that Avdotya had given him her husband's money; nobody liked

Naum because of his cold, harsh disposition.... With censure they told

the story of him that once when Akim himself had asked alms under his

window he answered that God would give, and had given him nothing; but

everyone agreed that there never had been a luckier man; his corn came

better than other people's, his bees swarmed more frequently; even his

hens laid more eggs; his cattle were never ill, his horses did not go

lame.... It was a long time before Avdotya could bear to hear his name

(she had accepted Lizaveta Prohorovna's invitation and had reentered

her service as head sewing-maid), but in the end her aversion was

somewhat softened; it was said that she had been driven by poverty to

appeal to him and he had given her a hundred roubles.... She must not

be too severely judged: poverty breaks any will and the sudden and

violent change in her life had greatly aged and humbled her: it was

hard to believe how quickly she lost her looks, how completely she let

herself go and lost heart....

How did it all end? the reader will ask. Why, like this: Naum, after

having kept the inn successfully for about fifteen years, sold it

advantageously to another townsman. He would never have parted from

the inn if it had not been for the following, apparently

insignificant, circumstance: for two mornings in succession his dog,

sitting before the windows, had kept up a prolonged and doleful howl.

He went out into the road the second time, looked attentively at the

howling dog, shook his head, went up to town and the same day agreed

on the price with a man who had been for a long time anxious to

purchase it. A week later he had moved to a distance--out of the

province; the new owner settled in and that very evening the inn was

burnt to ashes; not a single outbuilding was left and Naum's successor

was left a beggar. The reader can easily imagine the rumours that this

fire gave rise to in the neighbourhood.... Evidently he carried his

"luck" away with him, everyone repeated. Of Naum it is said that he

has gone into the corn trade and has made a great fortune. But will it

last long? Stronger pillars have fallen and evil deeds end badly

sooner or later. There is not much to say about Lizaveta Prohorovna.

She is still living and, as is often the case with people of her sort,

is not much changed, she has not even grown much older--she only seems

to have dried up a little; on the other hand, her stinginess has

greatly increased though it is difficult to say for whose benefit she

is saving as she has no children and no attachments. In conversation

she often speaks of Akim and declares that since she has understood

his good qualities she has begun to feel great respect for the Russian

peasant. Kirillovna bought her freedom for a considerable sum and

married for love a fair-haired young waiter who leads her a dreadful

life; Avdotya lives as before among the maids in Lizaveta Prohorovna's

house, but has sunk to a rather lower position; she is very poorly,

almost dirtily dressed, and there is no trace left in her of the

townbred airs and graces of a fashionable maid or of the habits of a

prosperous innkeeper's wife.... No one takes any notice of her and she

herself is glad to be unnoticed; old Petrovitch is dead and Akim is

still wandering, a pilgrim, and God only knows how much longer his

pilgrimage will last!

1852.

LIEUTENANT YERGUNOV'S STORY

I

That evening Kuzma Vassilyevitch Yergunov told us his story again. He

used to repeat it punctually once a month and we heard it every time

with fresh satisfaction though we knew it almost by heart, in all its

details. Those details overgrew, if one may so express it, the

original trunk of the story itself as fungi grow over the stump of a

tree. Knowing only too well the character of our companion, we did not

trouble to fill in his gaps and incomplete statements. But now Kuzma

Vassilyevitch is dead and there will be no one to tell his story and

so we venture to bring it before the notice of the public.

II

It happened forty years ago when Kuzma Vassilyevitch was young. He

said of himself that he was at that time a handsome fellow and a dandy

with a complexion of milk and roses, red lips, curly hair, and eyes

like a falcon's. We took his word for it, though we saw nothing of

that sort in him; in our eyes Kuzma Vassilyevitch was a man of very

ordinary exterior, with a simple and sleepy-looking face and a heavy,

clumsy figure. But what of that? There is no beauty the years will not

mar! The traces of dandyism were more clearly preserved in Kuzma

Vassilyevitch. He still in his old age wore narrow trousers with

straps, laced in his corpulent figure, cropped the back of his head,

curled his hair over his forehead and dyed his moustache with Persian

dye, which had, however, a tint rather of purple, and even of green,

than of black. With all that Kuzma Vassilyevitch was a very worthy

gentleman, though at preference he did like to "steal a peep," that

is, look over his neighbour's cards; but this he did not so much from

greed as carefulness, for he did not like wasting his money. Enough of

these parentheses, however; let us come to the story itself.

III

It happened in the spring at Nikolaev, at that time a new town, to

which Kuzma Vassilyevitch had been sent on a government commission.

(He was a lieutenant in the navy.) He had, as a trustworthy and

prudent officer, been charged by the authorities with the task of

looking after the construction of ship-yards and from time to time

received considerable sums of money, which for security he invariably

carried in a leather belt on his person. Kuzma Vassilyevitch certainly

was distinguished by his prudence and, in spite of his youth, his

behaviour was exemplary; he studiously avoided every impropriety of

conduct, did not touch cards, did not drink and, even fought shy of

society so that of his comrades, the quiet ones called him "a regular

girl" and the rowdy ones called him a muff and a noodle. Kuzma

Vassilyevitch had only one failing, he had a tender heart for the fair

sex; but even in that direction he succeeded in restraining his

impulses and did not allow himself to indulge in any "foolishness." He

got up and went to bed early, was conscientious in performing his

duties and his only recreation consisted in rather long evening walks

about the outskirts of Nikolaev. He did not read as he thought it

would send the blood to his head; every spring he used to drink a

special decoction because he was afraid of being too full-blooded.

Putting on his uniform and carefully brushing himself Kuzma

Vassilyevitch strolled with a sedate step alongside the fences of

orchards, often stopped, admired the beauties of nature, gathered

flowers as souvenirs and found a certain pleasure in doing so; but he

felt acute pleasure only when he happened to meet "a charmer," that

is, some pretty little workgirl with a shawl flung over her shoulders,

with a parcel in her ungloved hand and a gay kerchief on her head.

Being as he himself expressed it of a susceptible but modest

temperament Kuzma Vassilyevitch did not address the "charmer," but

smiled ingratiatingly at her and looked long and attentively after

her.... Then he would heave a deep sigh, go home with the same sedate

step, sit down at the window and dream for half an hour, carefully

smoking strong tobacco out of a meerschaum pipe with an amber

mouthpiece given him by his godfather, a police superintendent of

German origin. So the days passed neither gaily nor drearily.

IV

Well, one day, as he was returning home along an empty side-street at

dusk Kuzma Vassilyevitch heard behind him hurried footsteps and

incoherent words mingled with sobs. He looked round and saw a girl

about twenty with an extremely pleasing but distressed and tear-stained

face. She seemed to have been overtaken by some great and unexpected

grief. She was running and stumbling as she ran, talking to herself,