“But they are only little mujiks,” she answered. “They must work hard for their bit of rye bread and their bowl of kasha. It was for that God made them.”
“Boyars work too;—I am a boyar,” said Ivan, raising his fair head proudly; and he went with the rest.
To do him justice, he bore himself bravely in the field, although the unaccustomed toil wearied him quickly, and it was tantalizing to find himself so easily outdone by Michael’s stronger limbs and more practised hands. Yet, after all, it was no great hardship to bind the sheaves along with Anna Popovna all the morning, and at noon to share with her his dinner of okroshka.[9]
But harvest-time does not last for ever. At length all the sheaves were gathered in: the wheat to be sold for the profit of the lord of the soil; the rye to be transformed into the black bread, the kvass, the kasha, which were the staple of the mujik’s diet;—for, as they said themselves in one of their terse though homely proverbs, “Wheat picks and chooses, but Mother Rye feeds all fools alike.” Then the long blank winter settled down over Nicolofsky, which, like the rest of Russia, “lay numb beneath the snow” for many a month in the year.
During this silent, dreary season the industrious fingers of the girls and women found occupation in spinning and weaving. The lads too made lapti, wove rude baskets, and prepared firewood; and these occupations were often pursued in social gatherings, and lightened with jest and song and story. Still there was abundant leisure, in which the young people amused themselves with games of babshky—little pieces of mutton bone, which they used as English children use nine-pins—while their elders sat beside the stoves, and too often enlivened their gossip with much vodka. In this respect, however, Nicolofsky contrasted rather favourably with other villages, since the starost and the pope were both temperate men and set a good example.
They were great friends, and during their long confidential talks one question often came uppermost, What was to be done with Ivan when he grew up? In a country like Russia, where sons almost invariably followed the calling of their fathers, and every man’s position was assigned him by the fact of his birth, it was peculiarly difficult to find a niche for a waif like Ivan. A mujik, of course, he could never be; nor a priest, since he was not a popovitch, or priest’s son; nor a merchant, that would have been a terrible degradation for one who was born a boyar; nor a soldier, for his village friends had not the influence necessary to procure him a commission, while had he been drawn for a recruit they would at once have provided a substitute. But Ivan was not old enough to share these perplexities. The knowledge that he was by birth a boyar, with the desire, sincere though ignorant and wavering, to be worthy of his destiny, sufficed him for the present.
Thus two long winters passed away. A second spring had come, heralded by the eight days of drinking and carousing which the Russians call the Mässlanitza, or “Butter-week.” Then the long fast went slowly by. At last came the crown of the Russian year, with Easter eggs, and joyous greetings, and manifold festivities.
One fine evening, a few weeks after, a kibitka, or rude one-horse vehicle, drove up to the starost’s door. Its occupant, a well-dressed man, whose hair and beard of iron gray showed him past the prime of life, flung the rope that served him for a rein on the horse’s neck, and entered the izba. He first made his reverence to the sacred picture in the corner, then courteously saluted the starost and his wife, who, without speaking, placed some bread and salt on a carved wooden trencher and offered them to him. He tasted both; and this indispensable ceremony performed, he began at once to make known his errand.
“God save you, Alexis Vasilovitch!” he said to the starost. “Do you chance to remember in your early youth one Feodor Petrovitch, who was born here?”
“Feodor Petrovitch?” repeated the starost, stroking his beard meditatively.