Kornéy Vasílyef
I
Kornéy Vasílyef was fifty-four when he had last visited his village. There was no grey to be seen in his thick curly hair, and his black beard was only a little grizzly at the cheekbones. His face was smooth and ruddy, the nape of his neck broad and firm, and his whole strong body padded with fat as a result of town life and good fare.
He had finished army service twenty years ago, and had returned to the village with a little money. He first began shopkeeping, and then took to cattle-dealing. He went to Tcherkásy, in the province of Kiev, for his “goods”—that is, cattle—and drove them to Moscow.
In his iron-roofed brick house in the village of Gáyi lived his old mother, his wife and two children (a girl and a boy), and also his orphan nephew—a dumb lad of fifteen—and a labourer.
Kornéy had married twice. His first wife was a weak, sickly woman who died without having any children; and he, a middle-aged widower, had married a strong, handsome girl, the daughter of a poor widow from a neighbouring village. His children were by this second wife.
Kornéy had sold his last lot of cattle so profitably in Moscow that he had about three thousand roubles;309 and having learnt from a fellow-countryman that near their village a ruined landowner’s forest was for sale at a bargain, he thought he would go in for the timber trade also. He knew the business, for before serving in the army he had been assistant clerk to a timber merchant, and had managed a wood.
At the railway-station nearest to Gáyi, Kornéy met a fellow-villager, “one-eyed Kouzmá.” Kouzmá came from Gáyi with his pair of poor shaggy horses to meet every train, seeking for fares. Kouzmá was poor, and therefore disliked all rich folk, and especially Kornéy, of whom he spoke contemptuously.
Kornéy, in his cloth coat and sheepskin, came out of the station and stood in the porch, portmanteau in hand, a portly figure, puffing and looking about him. It was a calm, grey, slightly frosty morning.
“What, haven’t you got a fare, Daddy Kouzmá?” he asked. “Will you take me?”
“Yes, for a rouble I will.”
“Seventy kopecks is plenty.”
“There, now! He’s stuffed his own paunch, but wants to squeeze thirty kopecks out of a poor man!”
“Well, all right, then … drive up!” said Kornéy.
And, placing his portmanteau and bundle in the small sledge, he sat down, filling the whole of the back seat. Kouzmá remained on the box in front.
“All right, drive on.”
They drove across the ruts near the station and reached the smooth high road.
“Well, and how go things in the village—with you, I mean?” asked Kornéy.
“Why, not up to much.”
“How’s that? … And is my old mother still alive?”
“The old woman’s alive. She was at church t’other day. She’s alive, and so is your missis. … She’s right enough. She’s taken a new labourer.”
And Kouzmá laughed in a queer way, as it seemed to Kornéy.
“A labourer? Why, what’s become of Peter?”
“Peter fell ill. She’s taken Justin from Kámenka—from her own village, you see.”
“Dear me!” said Kornéy.
When Kornéy was courting Martha, there had been some talk among the womenfolk about this Justin.
“Ah, yes, Kornéy Vasílyef!” Kouzmá went on; “the women have got quite out of hand nowadays.”
“No doubt about it,” muttered Kornéy. “But your grey horse has grown old,” he added, wishing to change the subject.
“I am not young myself. He matches his master,” answered Kouzmá, touching up the shaggy, bowlegged gelding with his whip.
Halfway to the village was an inn where Kornéy, having told Kouzmá to stop, went in. Kouzmá led his horses to an empty manger, and stood pulling the harness straight, without looking Kornéy’s way, but expecting to be called in to have a drink.
“Come in, won’t you, Daddy Kouzmá?” said Kornéy, coming out into the porch. “Come in and have a glass.”
“I don’t mind if I do,” answered Kouzmá, pretending not to be in a hurry.
Kornéy ordered a bottle of vodka, and offered some to Kouzmá. Kouzmá, who had eaten nothing since morning, soon got intoxicated; and immediately sidling up to Kornéy, began to repeat in a whisper what was being said in the village—namely, that Kornéy’s wife, Martha, had taken on her former lover as labourer, and was now living with him.
“What’s it to me? … But I’m sorry for you,” said tipsy Kouzmá. “It’s not nice, and people are laughing. One sees she’s not afraid of sinning. ‘But,’ thinks I, ‘just you wait a bit! Presently your man will come back!’ … That’s how it is, brother Kornéy.”
Kornéy listened in silence to Kouzmá’s words, and his thick eyebrows descended lower and lower over his sparkling jet-black eyes.
“Are you going to water your horses?” was all he said, when the bottle was empty. “No? Then let’s get on!”
He paid the landlord, and went out.
It was dusk before he reached home. The first person he met there was this same Justin, about whom he had not been able to help thinking all the way home. Kornéy said, “How do you do?” to this thin, pale-faced, bustling Justin, but then shook his head doubtfully.
“That old hound, Kouzmá, has been lying,” thought he. “But who knows? Anyhow, I’ll find out all about it.”
Kouzmá stood beside the horses, winking towards Justin with his one eye.
“So you are living here?” Kornéy inquired.
“Why not? One must work somewhere,” Justin replied.
“Is our room heated?”
“Why, of course! Martha Matvéyevna is there,” answered Justin.
Kornéy went up the steps of the porch. Hearing his voice, Martha came out into the passage, and, seeing her husband, she flushed, and greeted him hurriedly and with special tenderness.
“Mother and I had almost given up waiting for you,” she said, following him into the room.
“Well, and how have you been getting on without me?”
“We go on in the same old way,” she answered; and snatching up her two-year-old daughter, who was pulling at her skirts and asking for milk, she went with large firm strides back into the passage.
Kornéy’s mother (whose black eyes resembled her son’s) entered the room, dragging her feet in their thick felt boots.
“Glad you’ve come to see us,” said she, nodding her shaking head.
Kornéy told his mother what business had brought him, and remembering Kouzmá, went out to pay him.
Hardly had he opened the door into the passage, when, right in front of him by the door leading into the yard, he saw Martha and Justin. They were standing close together, and she was speaking to him. Seeing Kornéy, Justin scuttled into the yard, and Martha went up to the samovar standing there, and began adjusting the roaring chimney put on to make it draw.
Kornéy passed silently behind her stooping back, and, taking his portmanteau and bundle out of the sledge, asked Kouzmá into the house to drink tea. Before tea, Kornéy gave his family the presents he had brought from Moscow: for his mother, a woollen shawl; for his boy Fédka, a picture-book; for his dumb nephew, a waistcoat; and for his wife, print for a dress.
At the tea-table Kornéy sat sullen and silent, only now and then smiling reluctantly at the dumb lad, who amused everybody by his delight at the new waistcoat. He did not know what to do for joy. He put it away, unfolded it again, put it on, and smilingly kissed his hand, looking gratefully at Kornéy.
After tea and supper, Kornéy went at once to the part of the hut where he slept with Martha and their little daughter. Martha remained in the larger half of the hut to clear away the tea-things. Kornéy sat by himself at the table, leant his head on his hand, and waited. Rising anger towards his wife stirred within him. He took down a counting-frame from a nail in the wall, drew his notebook from his pocket, and to divert his thoughts began making up his accounts. He sat reckoning, looking towards the door, and listening to the voices in the other half of the house.
Several times he heard the door go, and steps in the passage, but not hers. At last he heard her step and a pull at the door, which yielded. She entered, rosy and handsome, with a red kerchief on her head, carrying her little girl in her arms.
“You must be tired out after your journey,” said she, smiling, as if not noticing his sullen looks.
Kornéy glanced at her, and, without replying, again began calculating, though he had nothing more to count.
“It’s getting late,” she said, and, setting down the child, she went behind the partition. He could hear her making the bed and putting her little daughter to sleep.
“People are laughing,” thought Kornéy, recalling Kouzmá’s words. “But just you wait a bit!” And, breathing hard, he rose slowly, put the stump of his pencil into his waistcoat pocket, hung the counting-frame on its nail, and went to the door of the partition. She was standing facing the icons and praying. He stopped and waited. She crossed herself many times, bowed down, and whispered her prayers. It seemed to him that she had already finished all her prayers, and was repeating them over and over again. But at last she bowed down to the ground, got up, whispered a few more words of prayer, and turned towards him.
“Agatha is already asleep,” said she, pointing to the little girl, and smilingly sat down on the creaking bed.
“Has Justin been here long?” said Kornéy, entering.
With a quiet movement she threw one of her heavy plaits over her bosom, and with deft fingers began unplaiting it. She looked straight at him and her eyes laughed.
“Justin? … Oh, I don’t know. Two or three weeks. …”
“You are living with him?” brought out Kornéy.
She let the plait drop from her hands, but immediately caught up her thick hard hair again, and began plaiting it.
“What won’t people invent? I … live with Justin!” She pronounced the name “Justin” with a peculiar ringing intonation. “What an idea! Who said so?”
“Tell me, is it true or not?” said Kornéy, clenching his powerful fists in his pockets.
“What’s the use of talking such rubbish? … Shall I help you off with your boots?”
“I am asking you a question …” he insisted.
“Dear me! … What a treasure! Fancy Justin proving a temptation to me!” she said. “Who’s been telling you lies?”
“What were you saying to him in the passage?”
“What was I saying? Why, that the tub wanted a new hoop. … But what are you bothering me for?”
“I command you: tell me the truth! … or I’ll kill you, you dirty slut!”
And he seized her by the plait. She pulled it out of his hand, and her face contracted with pain.
“Beating’s all I’ve ever had from you! What good have I had of you? … A life like mine’s enough to drive one to anything!”
“… To what?” uttered he, approaching her.
“What have you pulled half my plait out for? There … it’s coming out by handfuls! … What are you bothering for? And it’s true! …”
She did not finish. He seized her by the arm, pulled her off the bed, and began beating her head, her sides, and her breast. The more he beat her, the fiercer grew his anger. She screamed, defended herself, and tried to get away; but he would not let her go. The little girl woke up and rushed to her mother.
“Mammy!” she cried.
Kornéy seized the child’s arm, tore her from her mother, and threw her into a corner as though she were a kitten. The child gave a yell, and for some seconds became silent.
“Murderer! … You’ve killed the child!” shouted Martha, and tried to get to her daughter. But he caught her again, and struck her breast so that she fell back and also became silent. But the little girl was again screaming, desperately and unceasingly.
His old mother, without her kerchief, her grey hair all in disorder and her head shaking, tottered into the room, and, without looking either at Kornéy or at Martha, went to her granddaughter, who was weeping desperately, and lifted her up.
Kornéy stood breathing heavily, looking about as if he had just woke up and did not know where he was or who was with him.
Martha raised her head, and groaning, wiped some blood from her face with her sleeve.
“Hateful brute!” said she. “Yes, I am living with Justin, and have lived with him! … There, now, kill me outright! … And Agatha is not your daughter, but his! …” and she quickly covered her face with her elbow, expecting a blow.
But Kornéy seemed not to understand anything, and only sniffed and looked about him.
“See what you’ve done to the girl! You’ve put her arm out,” said his mother, showing him the dislocated, helpless arm of the girl, who did not cease screaming. Kornéy turned away, and silently went out into the passage and into the porch.
Outside it was still frosty and dull. Hoarfrost fell on his burning cheeks and forehead. He sat on the step and ate handfuls of snow, gathering it from the handrail. From indoors came Martha’s groans and the girl’s piteous cries. Then the door into the passage opened, and he heard his mother leave the bedroom with the child and go through the passage into the other half of the house. He rose and returned to the bedroom. The half-turned-down lamp on the table gave a dim light. From behind the partition came Martha’s groans, which grew louder when he entered.
In silence he put on his outdoor things, drew his portmanteau from under the bench, packed it, and tied it up with a cord.
“Why have you killed me? What for? … What have I done to you?” said Martha in a doleful voice.
Kornéy, without replying, lifted his portmanteau and carried it to the door.
“Felon! … Brigand! … Just you wait! Do you think there’s no law for the likes of you?” said she bitterly, and in quite a different voice.
Kornéy, without answering, pushed the door with his foot, and slammed it so violently that the walls shook.
Going into the other part of the house, Kornéy roused the dumb lad and told him to harness the horse. The lad, half awake, looked at his uncle with astonishment, questioningly, and scratched his head with both hands. At last, understanding what was wanted of him, he jumped up, drew on his high felt boots and torn coat, took a lantern, and went to the door.
It was already quite light when Kornéy, in the small sledge, drove out of the gateway with the dumb lad, and went back along the same road he had driven over in the evening with Kouzmá.
He reached the station five minutes before the train started. The dumb lad saw how he bought his ticket, carried his portmanteau, and took his place in the carriage, and how he nodded to him, and the train moved out of sight.
Besides the blows on her face, Martha had two smashed ribs and a broken head. But the strong, healthy young woman recovered within six months, so that no trace of her injuries remained.
The girl, however, was maimed for life. Two bones were broken in her arm, and it remained twisted.
Of Kornéy, from the time he went away nothing more had been heard, and no one knew whether he was alive or dead.
II
Seventeen years had passed. It was late in autumn. The sun did not rise high all day, and twilight descended before four in the afternoon.
The communal herd of Andréyevo village was returning from pasture. The herdsman, hired for the summer, had completed his engagement and gone away, so that the village women and children were taking turns to drive the cattle.
The herd had just left the fields of oat-stubble where they had been grazing; and, continually bleating and lowing, moved slowly towards the village, along the black, unmetalled road indented all over with cloven hoof-prints and cut by deep ruts. Ahead of the herd walked a tall, grey-bearded old man, with curly grey hair and black eyebrows. His patched coat was black with moisture, and he had a leather wallet on his bent back. He walked heavily, dragging his feet in their clumsy, downtrodden, foreign-looking boots, and leaned on his oak staff at every other step. When the herd overtook him, he stopped and leant on his staff. The young woman who was driving the herd, her skirt tucked up, a piece of sacking over her head, and a man’s boots on her feet, kept running with quick steps from side to side of the road, urging on the sheep and pigs that lagged behind. When she overtook the old man she stopped, looked at him, and said in her sweet young voice:
“How do you do, daddy?”310
“How d’ye do, my dear?” replied the old man.
“You’ll be wanting a night’s lodging, eh?”
“Yes, it seems so … I’m tired,” said the old man in a hoarse voice.
“Don’t go and ask the Elder, daddy, but come straight to us,” she said kindly. “Ours is the third hut from the end. My mother-in-law lets pilgrims in free.”
“The third hut? That’s Zinóvyef’s?” said the old man, moving his black eyebrows expressively.
“Ah, do you know it?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“Fédya, what are you gaping at there? The lame one has stopped behind!” cried the young woman, pointing to a sheep limping on three legs and lagging behind the herd; and, swinging her switch with her right hand, she pulled the sacking well over her head, catching it from underneath with her left hand in a peculiar way as she ran back to drive the lame black sheep on.
The old man was Kornéy; the young woman was Agatha, whose arm he had broken seventeen years before. She had married into a well-to-do peasant family at Andréyevo, three miles from Gáyi.
From a strong prosperous proud man, Kornéy Vasílyef had become what he now was: an old beggar possessing nothing but the shabby clothes on his back, and two shirts and a soldier’s passport which he carried in his wallet. This change had come about so gradually that he could not tell when it began nor how it happened. The one thing he knew, and was sure of, was that his wicked wife had been the cause of all his misfortunes. It was strange and painful to him to remember what he had once been; and when he did remember it, he also remembered and hated her whom he considered to be the cause of all the evil he had suffered these seventeen years.
After that night when he beat his wife, he had gone to the landowner whose wood was for sale, but he was unsuccessful: the wood had already been sold. So he returned to Moscow, and there took to drink. Before this he used to drink at times, but now he drank for a fortnight on end. When he came to himself he went south to buy cattle. His purchase proved unlucky, and he lost money. He went again, but lost a second time; and in a year his three thousand roubles had dwindled to twenty-five, and he was obliged to work for an employer instead of being his own master. From that time onwards he drank more and more often. For a year he lived as assistant to a cattle-dealer, but had a drinking bout while on the road, and the dealer dismissed him. Then, through a friend, he got a place as shopman at a wine and spirit dealer’s, but did not stay there long, either, for his accounts got wrong, and he was dismissed. Shame and anger prevented his returning home.
“Let them live without me! Maybe the boy is not mine, either,” thought he.
Matters went from bad to worse. He could not live without drink, and could no longer get employment as a clerk, but only as a cattle-drover. At last no one would take him even for that.
The more wretched his own plight became, the more he blamed her, and the fiercer his anger against her burnt within him.
The last time Kornéy found a place as a drover was with a stranger. The cattle fell ill. It was not Kornéy’s fault, but his master got angry, and dismissed both him and the clerk over him. As he could get no employment, Kornéy resolved to go on pilgrimage.
He provided himself with a pair of boots and a good wallet, took some tea and sugar, and, with eight roubles in his pocket, started for Kiev. Kiev did not satisfy him, and he went on to New Athos, in the Caucasus; but, before reaching it, he fell ill with ague, and suddenly lost all his strength. He had only one rouble and seventy kopecks left, and he knew no one, so he decided to return home to his son.
“That wicked wife of mine may be dead by now,” thought he as he journeyed homewards; “or if she’s still alive, I’ll tell her everything before I die, that the wretch may know what she has done to me.”
The fever-attacks came on every other day. He grew weaker and weaker, so that he could not walk more than eight or ten miles. When still a hundred and fifty miles from home, he had no money at all left, and had to beg his way in Christ’s name, and to sleep where the village officials lodged him.
“Rejoice at what you have brought me to,” said he, mentally addressing his wife, and from habit he clenched his feeble old fists. But there was no one to strike, and his fists had no strength left in them.
It took him a fortnight to walk those last hundred and fifty miles. Quite ill and worn out, he reached the place three miles from home, where he met Agatha, who was wrongly considered to be his daughter, and whose arm he had broken.
III
He did as Agatha suggested. On reaching the Zinóvyefs’ house he asked leave to spend the night there. They let him in.
On entering the hut he, as usual, crossed himself before the icon, and greeted his hosts.
“You’re frozen, daddy! Get up onto the oven!” said the wrinkled cheerful old housewife, clearing away the things on the table.
Agatha’s husband, a young-looking peasant, sat on a bench by the table, trimming the lamp.
“How wet you are, daddy!” said he. “Well, it can’t be helped. Make haste and dry yourself!”
Kornéy took off his coat, bared his feet, hung his leg-bands up to dry near the oven, and himself climbed onto the top of it.
Agatha entered the hut, carrying a jug. She had already driven the herd home, and had attended to the cattle.
“Has an old pilgrim been here?” asked she. “I met one, and told him to call.”
“There he is,” said her husband, pointing to the oven, on which sat Kornéy, rubbing his lean and hairy legs.
When tea was ready, they asked Kornéy to join them. He climbed down, and seated himself at the end of a bench. They handed him a cup of tea and a piece of sugar.
The talk was about the weather and the harvest. There was no getting the corn in. The landowner’s sheaves were sprouting in the fields. As soon as one started carting them, down came the rain again. The peasants had pretty well got theirs in, but the landowner’s corn was rotting like mad. And the mice in the sheaves were just dreadful!
Kornéy told of a field he had seen as he came along which was still full of sheaves.
The young housewife poured him out a fifth cup of the weak, pale yellow tea, and handed it to him.
“Never mind if it is your fifth, daddy, it will do you good,” said she, when he made as if to refuse it.
“How is it your arm is not all right?” he asked her, twitching his eyebrows, and carefully taking the full cup she handed him.
“It was broken when she was still a baby—her father wanted to kill our Agatha,” said the talkative old mother-in-law.
“What was that for?” asked Kornéy. And, looking at the young housewife’s face, he suddenly remembered Justin with his light blue eyes, and the hand in which he held his cup shook so that he spilt half the tea before he could set it on the table.
“Why, her father—who lived at Gáyi—was a man named Kornéy Vasílyef. He was well-to-do; and high and mighty with his wife. He beat her and injured the child.”
Kornéy was silent, glancing, from under his continually twitching black eyebrows, first at the husband and then at Agatha.
“What did he do that for?” asked he, biting a morsel off his piece of sugar.
“Who knows? Tales of all sorts get told about us women, and we have to answer for them all,” said the old woman. “They had some row about their labourer. … The man was a good fellow from our village. He died afterwards at their house.”
“He died?” asked Kornéy, and cleared his throat.
“Died long ago. From them we took my daughter-in-law. They were well off. When the husband was alive they were the richest folk in the village.”
“And what became of him?” asked Kornéy.
“He died, too, I suppose. He disappeared at the time—some fifteen years ago now.”
“It must be more. Mother used to tell me she had not long weaned me when it happened.”
“And don’t you bear a grudge against him, because of your arm?” began Kornéy—with a sob.
“No! Wasn’t he my father? It’s not as if some stranger had done it. … Have another cup, after being so cold. Shall I pour it out for you?”
Kornéy did not reply, but burst into tears and sobs.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing—nothing. May Christ reward you!”
And with trembling hands Kornéy took hold of the bunk and the post supporting it, and with his long thin legs climbed onto the oven.
“There, now!” said the old housewife to her son, making a sign in the direction of their visitor.
IV
Next day Kornéy was the first to rise. He climbed down from the top of the oven, rubbed his dried and stiffened leg-bands, painfully drew on his mud-clogged boots, and slung the wallet onto his back.
“Why, daddy, you’d better have some breakfast,” said the old housewife.
“The Lord bless you! … I’ll be going.”
“Well, then, at least take some of yesterday’s cakes with you. I’ll put them into your wallet.”
Kornéy thanked her, and took his leave.
“Call in when you return. If we are still alive …”
Outside everything was wrapped in dense autumn fog, but Kornéy knew the way well; he knew every descent and ascent, every bush, and all the willows along the road, right and left—though during the last seventeen years some had been cut down and from old had become young again, while others that had been young had grown old.
The village of Gáyi was still the same, though some new houses had been built at the end, where none stood before; and some of the wooden houses had been replaced by brick ones. His own brick house had not changed except to grow older. The iron roof had long needed repainting, some bricks had been knocked away at one corner, and the porch leaned to one side.
As he approached the house that had been his, the gates creaked, and out came a mare with its foal, a roan gelding, and a two-year-old colt. The old roan was just like the mare Kornéy had bought at the fair the year before he left home.
“It must be the very one she was in foal with at the time. It’s got just her slanting haunches, broad chest, and shaggy legs,” thought he.
A black-eyed boy, wearing new bark shoes, was taking the horses to water.
“It must be Fédka’s boy—my grandson—he’s got just his black eyes,” thought Kornéy.
The boy glanced at the old stranger and ran after the colt that was frisking in the mud. A dog as black as old Wolfey followed the boy.
“Can it be Wolfey?” thought he, and remembered that Wolfey would have been twenty by now. He came to the porch, ascended with difficulty the steps on which he had sat that night swallowing snow from the handrail, and opened the door leading into the passage.
“Where are you shoving to, without leave?” came a woman’s voice from inside. He recognized her voice. And then she herself, a withered, sinewy, wrinkled woman, looked out of the room. Kornéy had expected to see the young and handsome Martha, who had offended him so deeply. He hated her, and wished to reproach her, but now this old woman appeared in her stead.
“If it’s alms you want, ask at the window,” she said, in a shrill, harsh voice.
“No, it’s not alms,” said Kornéy.
“Well, what is it you do want? Eh?”
She stopped suddenly; and by her face he saw that she recognized him.
“There are plenty of the likes of you loafing about! Go away, go away … in Heaven’s name!”
Kornéy fell back against the wall, supporting himself with his staff, and looked intently at her. He was surprised to find that he no longer felt the anger he had nursed against her all these years, but that a mixed feeling of tenderness and languor had suddenly overcome him.
“Martha! … We shall have to die soon …”
“Go … go, in Heaven’s name!” said she, rapidly and angrily.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I have nothing to say,” she answered. “Go … for Heaven’s sake! Go, go! … There are plenty of you ne’er-do-well devils loafing about!”
She hurriedly re-entered the room, and slammed the door.
“Why scold?” he heard a man say; and a dark peasant—such as Kornéy had been forty years before, only shorter and thinner, but with the same sparkling black eyes—came out, with an axe stuck in his belt.
This was that same Fédka to whom, seventeen years before, he had given a picture-book. It was he who was now reproaching his mother for showing no pity to the beggar. With him came the dumb nephew, also with an axe at his belt. He was now a grown man, wrinkled and sinewy, with a thin beard, long neck, and a determined, penetrating glance. Both men had just finished their breakfast, and were going to the woods.
“Wait a bit, daddy,” said Fédka, and, turning to his dumb companion, he pointed first to the old man and then to the room, and made a movement as if cutting bread.
Fédka went into the street, and the dumb man returned to the room. Kornéy, his head hanging down, still stood in the passage, leaning against the wall and supporting himself on his staff. He felt quite weak, and could hardly check his sobs. The dumb man returned from the room with a large chunk of fresh, sweet-smelling black bread, which he gave to Kornéy. When Kornéy, having crossed himself, took the bread, the dumb man turned towards the room door, passed his hands before his face, and made as though he spat—thereby expressing his disapproval of his aunt’s conduct. Suddenly he stopped dead, opened his mouth, and fixed his eyes on Kornéy as though he recognized him. Kornéy could no longer restrain his tears; and, wiping his eyes, nose, and grey beard on the skirt of his coat, turned away and went out into the porch.
He was overcome by a strange feeling of tenderness, elation, humility and meekness towards all men: to her, to his son, to everybody; and this feeling rent his soul with pain and joy.
Martha looked out of the window, and breathed freely only when she saw the old man disappear behind the corner of the house.
When she was sure he had gone, she sat down at her loom and began weaving. Some ten times she struck with the batten, but her hands would not obey her. She stopped, and began thinking, and recalling Kornéy as she had just seen him. She knew it was he who had nearly killed her, and who, before that, had loved her; and she was frightened at what she had just done. She had not done right. But how should she have treated him? He had not even said that he was Kornéy, and that he had come home. And she again took the shuttle, and went on weaving till evening.
V
Kornéy with difficulty dragged himself back to Andréyevo by the evening, and again asked permission to stay the night at the Zinóvyefs’. They let him in.
“So you’ve not gone on, daddy?”
“No, I felt too weak. It seems I shall have to go back. Will you let me stay the night?”
“Oh yes! You’ll not wear out the spot you lie on. Come in and get dry.”
All night Kornéy shivered with fever. Towards morning he dozed off, and when he awoke the family had all gone out to work. Only Agatha remained in the hut.
He was lying on the shelf-bed, on a dry coat the old woman had spread for him.
Agatha was taking bread out of the oven.
“My dear,” he said, in a feeble voice, “come here!”
“Coming, daddy,” she answered, getting out the loaves. “Want a drink? A drop of kvass?”
He did not answer.
When she had taken out all the loaves, she brought him a bowl of kvass. He did not turn towards her, and did not drink, but lay, face upwards, and began speaking without looking at her.
“Agatha,” he said, “my time has come. I am going to die. So forgive me, for Christ’s sake!”
“God will forgive you. You have done me no harm.”
He was silent awhile.
“One thing more. Go to your mother, my dear. Tell her, ‘The pilgrim’ … say, ‘yesterday’s pilgrim’ … say …”
He broke into sobs.
“Then have you been to my home?”
“Yes. Say, ‘Yesterday’s pilgrim … the pilgrim’ … say …”
Again he broke off, sobbing; but at last, gathering strength, he finished:
“Say I wished to make peace,” he said, and began feeling on his chest for something.
“I’ll tell her … I’ll go and tell her! But what are you searching for?” said Agatha.
Without answering, the old man, frowning with the effort, drew a paper from his breast with his thin, hairy hand, and gave it to her.
“Give this to him who asks for it. It’s my soldier’s passport. … God be thanked, my sins are over now!” And his face took on a triumphant expression. His brows rose, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and he was quiet.
“A candle …” he uttered, without moving his lips. Agatha understood, took a half-burnt wax taper from before the icon, lit it, and put it in his hand. He held it up with his thumb.
Agatha went to put the passport in her box, and when she returned to him the candle was falling from his hand, his fixed eyes no longer saw anything, and his chest was motionless.
Agatha crossed herself, put out the candle, took a clean towel, and covered his face with it.
All that night Martha had not slept, but kept thinking about Kornéy. In the morning she put on her coat, threw a shawl over her head, and went to find out where the old man had gone to. She soon learnt that he was at Andréyevo. Martha took a stick from the fence and went towards Andréyevo. The farther she went, the more frightened she grew.
“I’ll make it up with him, and we’ll take him home. Let the sin be ended. Let him at least die at home, with his son near him,” thought she.
When Martha approached her daughter’s house, she saw a large crowd collected there. Some had entered the passage, others stood outside the windows. It had already got about that the well-known, rich Kornéy Vasílyef, who had been so much talked of in the district twenty years before, had died, a poor wanderer, in his daughter’s house. The house was full of people. The women whispered to one another, sighed and moaned.
When Martha entered, they made room for her to pass, and under the icons she saw the body—already washed, laid out, and covered with a piece of linen. At its side Philip Kanónitch (who had had some education) was chanting the words of a psalm in Slavonic, in a voice like a deacon’s.
Neither to forgive nor to ask forgiveness was any longer possible; and from the stern, beautiful old face of Kornéy she could not tell whether he had forgiven her or not.