"Both bow deeply to him, and he looks at them with tears in his eyes. Lipa offers him a piece of oatmeal cake, and the two women go on their way, crossing themselves several times...."
The virtuous Varvara is an extremely characteristic type, with a subtle psychology, carefully worked out; her honesty and goodness form an indispensable contrast to the ambient horrors.
The author himself explains the rôle of Varvara and her action in this system of evil. "Her alms seem to be something strange, joyous and free, like the red flowers and the lights that glow before the saintly images." On holidays, and on jubilees, which last three days, when coarse and rotten meat is sold to the peasants who come to pawn their scythes and hats, or their wives' shawls; when the workingmen lie in the gutter under the influence of bad brandy, then "one feels a bit relieved at the thought that down there, in that house, there is a good and quiet woman, always ready to help unfortunates."
Lipa and her mother are good and timid souls who suffer in silence, and give to the poor the little that they possess:
"It seemed to them that some one up on high, further up than the azure, there among the stars, saw what was going on in their village, and watched. Big as the evil is, in spite of it, the night is beautiful and calm; justice is and will be calm and beautiful on God's earth also; the universe awaits the moment when it can melt into this justice, as the light of the moon melts into the night."
These, then, are Tchekoff's favorite themes, on which he has traced numerous variations, always breathing forth a profound melancholy.
"The life of our industrial classes," he says, "is dark, and drags itself along in sort of a twilight; as to the life of our common people, workingmen and peasants, it is a black night, made up of ignorance, poverty, and all sorts of prejudices."
But from this ocean of ignorance, of barbarity, of misery which makes up the life of a peasant, Tchekoff has taken out the things of most importance, things that always happen in the most solemn moments of their existence.
"All," he says, in describing a religious procession in the country, "the old man, his wife and the others, all stretch forth their hands to the ikon of the holy Virgin, regard her ardently, and say through their tears: 'Protectress! Virgin protectress!' And all seem to have understood that the space between Heaven and Earth is not empty; that the rich and the mighty have not swallowed up everything; that there is protection against all wrongs, slavery, misery, the fatal brandy...."