How quickly we came down from a large establishment, with servants and retainers, and a place among the best in Polotzk, to a single room hired by the week, and the humblest associations, and the averted heads of former friends! But oftenest it was my mother who turned away her head. She took to using the side streets to avoid the pitiful eyes of the kind, and the scornful eyes of the haughty. Both were turned on her as she trudged from store to store, and from house to house, peddling tea or other ware; and both were hard to bear. Many a winter morning she arose in the dark, to tramp three or four miles in the gripping cold, through the dragging snow, with a pound of tea for a distant customer; and her profit was perhaps twenty kopecks. Many a time she fell on the ice, as she climbed the steep bank on the far side of the Dvina, a heavy basket on each arm. More than once she fainted at the doors of her customers, ashamed to knock as suppliant where she had used to be received as an honored guest. I hope the angels did not have to count the tears that fell on her frost-bitten, aching hands as she counted her bitter earnings at night.
And who took care of us children while my mother tramped the streets with her basket? Why, who but Fetchke? Who but the little housewife of twelve? Sure of our safety was my mother with Fetchke to watch; sure of our comfort with Fetchke to cook the soup and divide the scrap of meat and remember the next meal. Joseph was in heder all day; the baby was a quiet little thing; Mashke was no worse than usual. But still there was plenty to do, with order to keep in a crowded room, and the washing, and the mending. And Fetchke did it all. She went to the river with the women to wash the clothes, and tucked up her dress and stood bare-legged in the water, like the rest of them, and beat and rubbed with all her might, till our miserable rags gleamed white again.
And I? I usually had a cold, or a cough, or something to disable me; and I never had any talent for housework. If I swept and sanded the floor, polished the samovar, and ran errands, I was doing much. I minded the baby, who did not need much minding. I was willing enough, I suppose, but the hard things were done without my help.
Not that I mean to belittle the part that I played in our reduced domestic economy. Indeed, I am very particular to get all the credit due me. I always remind my sister Deborah, who was the baby of those humble days, that it was I who pierced her ears. Earrings were a requisite part of a girl's toilet. Even a beggar girl must have earrings, were they only loops of thread with glass beads. I heard my mother bemoan the baby because she had not time to pierce her ears. Promptly I armed myself with a coarse needle and a spool of thread, and towed Deborah out into the woodshed. The operation was entirely successful, though the baby was entirely ungrateful. And I am proud to this day of the unflinching manner in which I did what I conceived to be my duty. If Deborah chooses to go with ungarnished ears, it is her affair; my conscience is free of all reproach.
WINTER SCENE ON THE DVINA[ToList]
I had a direct way in everything. I rushed right in—I spoke right out. My mother sent me sometimes to deliver a package of tea, and I was proud to help in business. One day I went across the Dvina and far up "the other side." It was a good-sized expedition for me to make alone, and I was not a little pleased with myself when I delivered my package, safe and intact, into the hands of my customer. But the storekeeper was not pleased at all. She sniffed and sniffed, she pinched the tea, she shook it all out on the counter.
"Na, take it back," she said in disgust; "this is not the tea I always buy. It's a poorer quality."
I knew the woman was mistaken. I was acquainted with my mother's several grades of tea. So I spoke up manfully.