"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 gla.s.s!"
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 pa.s.ses 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, G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sing 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 compa.s.sionately.
"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 G.o.d"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 pa.s.sionately 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."