No, it could not be the same. Men of his acquaintance had been abroad—there was merchant Rukavishnikoff, for instance—and they had told him things. And even aside from Rukavishnikoff, one could put things together. Take the Germans of the towns, or the Jews: all conduct themselves reasonably, are punctual, all know one another, all are friends—and that not alone in a state of intoxication—and all are mutually helpful: if they are separated, they write letters to one another all their lives long and exchange portraits of fathers, mothers, acquaintances from family to family; they teach their children, love them, walk with them, talk with them as with equals so that the child has something to remember. But with us, all are enemies of one another, every one envies and slanders every one else, goes to see acquaintances once a year, sits apart, each in his kennel; all bustle about like madmen when any one drops in for a visit, and dash around to put the rooms in order. But what’s the truth of the matter? They begrudge the guest a spoonful of preserves! The guest will not drink a second cup of tea without being specially invited. Ugh, you slant-eyed Kirghizi! You yellow-haired Mordvinians! You savages!
Some one’s troika-team drove past the windows. Tikhon Ilitch scrutinized it attentively. The horses were emaciated but obviously mettlesome. The tarantas was in good condition. Whose could it be? No one in the immediate neighbourhood owned such a troika. The neighbouring landed proprietors were so indignant that they sat for three days at a stretch without bread, had sold the last scrap of vestments from their holy pictures, had not a farthing wherewith to replace broken glass or mend the roof; instead they stuffed cushions into the window-frames and set bread-troughs and buckets all over the floor when rain came on—and it poured through the ceilings as through a sieve. Then Deniska the cobbler passed. Where was he going? And what was that he had with him? That couldn’t be a valise he was carrying? Okh, there’s a fool for you, forgive my sin, O Lord!
XX
MECHANICALLY Tikhon Ilitch threw his great-coat on over his jacket, thrust his feet into overshoes, and went out on the porch. On emerging he inhaled a deep breath of fresh air in the bluish early winter twilight, then halted once more and sat down on the bench. Yes, there was another nice family—the Grey Man, Syery, and his son! Tikhon Ilitch traversed in thought the road which Deniska had traversed in the mud, with that valise in his hand. He descried Durnovka, his manor, the ravine, the peasant cottages, the descending twilight, the light in his brother’s room, the lights among the peasant dwellings. Kuzma was probably sitting and reading. The Bride was standing in the dark, cold ante-room near the faintly-heated stove, warming her hands, her back, waiting until she should be told “Bring the supper!” and, with her dry lips, already grown old and pursed up, was thinking—of what? Perchance of Rodka? ’Twas a lie, all that about her having poisoned Rodka—a lie! But if she did poison him—
Oh, Lord God! If she did poison him, what must she be feeling? What a heavy tombstone lay upon her strange, reticent soul! And how had that come about upon which she had decided, crazed by hatred of Rodka and of his brutal beatings—possibly, also, by her outraged feelings toward him, Tikhon Ilitch, and her disgrace, and the fear that Rodka would eventually hear of that disgrace? Okh, and he had been in the habit of beating her! And Tikhon Ilitch had played a fine part, too. And God would surely punish him, too.
With his mind’s eye he cast a glance from the porch of his Durnovka manor house, at Durnovka—a rebel, also!—at the black cottages scattered over the declivity beyond the ravine, at the threshing floors and bushes in their back yards. Beyond the houses to the left, on the horizon, stood a railway watch-tower. Past it, in the twilight, a train was running, and with it ran a chain of fiery eyes. Then eyes began to shine out from the cottages. It grew darker; one began to feel more comfortable—yet a disagreeable sensation stirred every time one cast a glance at the cottages of the Bride and the Grey Man, which stood almost in the centre of Durnovka, separated only by three houses. There was no light in either of them. And it was that way nearly all winter long! The Grey Man’s small children frolicked with joy and wonder when he managed, on some lucky evening, to burn a light in the cottage.
“Yes, ’tis sinful!” said Tikhon Ilitch firmly, and rose from his seat. “Yes, ’tis wicked! I must give them at least a little help,” he said, as he wended his way towards the station.
The air was frosty, and the odour of the samovar which was wafted from the station was more fragrant than it had been on the preceding day. The lights at the gate were burning more brightly beyond the trees, which had been smartly frost-bitten and were almost bare, tinted by a little scanty foliage.
The sleighbells on the troika pealed more sonorously. A capital team of horses, those three! On the contrary, it was painful to look at the wretched nags of the peasant cabmen, their tiny vehicles mounted on half-crumbling, misshapen wheels, plastered with mud. The door to the railway station was squeaking and dully banging beyond the palisade. Making his way around it, Tikhon Ilitch ascended the lofty stone platform, on which a copper samovar of a couple of buckets’ capacity was hissing, its grating glowing red like fiery teeth; and immediately came upon the person of whom he was in search—that is, Deniska.