In church, and during the procession, Sletkin struck me as having recovered his self-possession. He gave directions and bustled about in his old way, and kept a greedy look-out that not a superfluous farthing should be spent, though his own pocket was not in question. Maximka, in a new Cossack dress, also a present from my mother, gave vent to such tenor notes in the choir, that certainly no one could have any doubts as to the sincerity of his devotion to the deceased. Both the sisters were duly attired in mourning, but they seemed more stupefied than grieved, especially Evlampia. Anna wore a meek, Lenten air, but made no attempt to weep, and was continually passing her handsome, thin hand over her hair and cheek. Evlampia seemed deep in thought all the time. The universal, unbending alienation, condemnation, which I had noticed on the day of Harlov’s death, I detected now too on the faces of all the people in the church, in their actions and their glances, but still more grave and, as it were, impersonal. It seemed as though all those people felt that the sin into which the Harlov family had fallen—this great sin—had gone now before the presence of the one righteous Judge, and that for that reason, there was no need now for them to trouble themselves and be indignant. They prayed devoutly for the soul of the dead man, whom in life they had not specially liked, whom they had feared indeed. Very abruptly had death overtaken him.
‘And it’s not as though he had been drinking heavily, brother,’ said one peasant to another, in the porch.
‘Nay, without drink he was drunken indeed,’ responded the other.
‘He was cruelly wronged,’ the first peasant repeated the phrase that summed it up.
‘Cruelly wronged,’ the others murmured after him.
‘The deceased was a hard master to you, wasn’t he?’ I asked a peasant, whom I recognised as one of Harlov’s serfs.
‘He was a master, certainly,’ answered the peasant, ‘but still … he was cruelly wronged!’
‘Cruelly wronged.…’ I heard again in the crowd.
At the grave, too, Evlampia stood, as it were, lost. Thoughts were torturing her … bitter thoughts. I noticed that Sletkin, who several times addressed some remark to her, she treated as she had once treated Zhitkov, and worse still.
Some days later, there was a rumour all over our neighbourhood, that Evlampia Martinovna had left the home of her fathers for ever, leaving all the property that came to her to her sister and brother-in-law, and only taking some hundreds of roubles.… ‘So Anna’s bought her out, it seems!’ remarked my mother; ‘but you and I, certainly,’ she added, addressing Zhitkov, with whom she was playing picquet—he took Souvenir’s place, ‘are not skilful hands!’ Zhitkov looked dejectedly at his mighty palms.… ‘Hands like that! Not skilful!’ he seemed to be saying to himself.…