"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. . . .
Soon after, my mother and I went to live in Moscow, and many years passed before it was my lot to behold Martin Petrovitch's daughters again. XXX
BUT I did see them again. Anna Martinovna I came across in the most ordinary way.
After my mother's death I paid a visit to our village, where I had not been for over fifteen years, and there I received an invitation from the mediator (at that time the process of settling the boundaries between the peasants and their former owners was taking place over the whole of Russia with a slowness not yet forgotten) to a meeting of the other landowners of our neighbourhood, to be held on the estate of the widow Anna Sletkin. The news that my mother's "nasty little Jew," with the prune-coloured eyes, no longer existed in this world, caused me, I confess, no regret whatever. But it was interesting to get a glimpse of his widow. She had the reputation in the neighbourhood of a first-rate manager. And so it proved; her estate and homestead and the house itself (I could not help glancing at the roof; it was an iron one) all turned out to be in excellent order; everything was neat, clean, tidied-up, where needful--painted, as though its mistress were a German. Anna Martinovna herself, of course, looked older. But the peculiar, cold, and, as it were, wicked charm which had once so fascinated me had not altogether left her. She was dressed in rustic fashion, but elegantly. She received us, not cordially--that word was not applicable to her--but courteously, and on seeing me, a witness of that fearful scene, not an eyelash quivered. She made not the slightest reference to my mother, nor her father, nor her sister, nor her husband.
She had two daughters, both very pretty, slim young things, with charming little faces, and a bright and friendly expression in their black eyes. There was a son, too, a little like his father, but still a boy to he proud of! During the discussions between the landowners, Anna Martinovna's attitude was composed and dignified, she showed no sign of being specially obstinate, nor specially grasping. But none had a truer perception of their own interests than she of hers; none could more convincingly expound and defend their rights. All the laws "pertinent to the case," even the Minister's circulars, she had thoroughly mastered. She spoke little, and in a quiet voice, but every word she uttered was to the point. It ended in our all signifying our agreement to all her demands, and making concessions, which we could only marvel at ourselves. On our way home, some of the worthy landowners even used harsh words of themselves; they all hummed and hawed, and shook their heads.
"Ah, she's got brains that woman!" said one. "A tricky baggage!" put in another less delicate proprietor. "Smooth in word, but cruel in deed!"
"And a screw into the bargain!" added a third; "not a glass of vodka nor a morsel of caviare for us--what do you think of that?"
"What can one expect of her?" suddenly croaked a gentleman who had been silent till then, "every one knows she poisoned her husband!"
To my astonishment, nobody thought fit to controvert this awful and certainly unfounded charge! I was the more surprised at this, as, in spite of the slighting expressions I have reported, all of them felt respect for Anna Martinovna, not excluding the indelicate landowner. As for the mediator, he waxed positively eloquent.
"Put her on a throne," he exclaimed, "she'd be another Semiramis or Catherine the Second! The discipline among her peasants is a perfect model. . . . The education of her children is model! What a head! What brains!"
Without going into the question of Semiramis and Catherine, there was no doubt Anna Martinovna was living a very happy life. Ease, inward and external, the pleasant serenity of spiritual health, seemed the very atmosphere about herself, her family, all her surroundings. How far she had deserved such happiness. . . that is another question. Such questions, though, are only propounded in youth. Everything in the world, good and bad, comes to man, not through his deserts, but in consequence of some as yet unknown but logical laws which I will not take upon myself to indicate, though I sometimes fancy I have a dim perception of them. XXXI
I QUESTIONED the mediator about Evlampia Martinovna, and learnt that she had been lost sight of completely ever since she left home, and probably "had departed this life long ago."
So our worthy mediator expressed himself but I am convinced that I have seen Evlampia, that I have come across her. This was how it was.
Four years after my interview with Anna Martinovna, I was spending the summer at Murino, a little hamlet near Petersburg, a well-known resort of summer visitors of the middle class. The shooting was pretty decent about Murino at that time, and I used to go out with my gun almost every day. I had a companion on my expeditions, a man of the tradesman class, called Vikulov, a very sensible and good-natured fellow; but, as he said of himself, of no position whatever. This man had been simply everywhere, and everything! Nothing could astonish him, he knew everything--but he cared for nothing but shooting and wine. Well, one day we were on our way home to Murino, and we chanced to pass a solitary house, standing at the cross-roads, and enclosed by a high, close paling. It was not the first time I had seen the house, and every time it excited my curiosity. There was something about it mysterious, locked-up, grimly-dumb, something suggestive of a prison or a hospital. Nothing of it could be seen from the road but its steep, dark, red-painted roof. There was only one pair of gates in the whole fence; and these seemed fastened and never opened. No sound came from the other side of them. For all that, we felt that some one was certainly living in the house; it had not at all the air of a deserted dwelling. On the I contrary, everything about it was stout, and tight, and strong, as if it would stand a siege!
"What is that fortress?" I asked my companion. "Don't you know?"
Vikulov gave a sly wink. "A fine building, eh? The police-captain of these parts gets a nice little income out of it!"
"How's that?"
"I'll tell you. You've heard, I daresay, of the Flagellant dissenters--that do without priests, you know?"