‘Well, lads, shall we go to sleep or have some supper?’ asked the Elder.
‘Supper!’ said Elijah, throwing open his coat and setting himself on a bench. ‘Send for some vodka.’
‘Enough of your vodka!’ answered the Elder shortly, and turning to the others he said: ‘You just cut yourselves a bit of bread, lads! Why wake people up?’
‘Give me vodka!’ Elijah repeated, without looking at anybody, and in a voice that showed that he would not soon stop.
The peasants took the Elder’s advice, fetched some bread out of their carts, ate it, asked for a little kvas, and lay down, some on the floor and some on the stove.
Elijah kept repeating at intervals: ‘Let me have some vodka, I say, let me have some.’ Then, noticing Polikéy: ‘Polikéy! Hi, Polikéy! You here, dear friend? Why, I am going for a soldier.… Have said good-bye to my mother and my missus.… How she howled! They’ve bundled me off for a soldier.… Stand me some vodka!’
‘I haven’t got any money,’ answered Polikéy, and to comfort him added: ‘Who knows? By God’s aid you may be rejected!…’
‘No, friend. I’m as sound as a young birch. I’ve never had an illness. There’s no rejecting for me! What better soldier can the Tsar want?’
Polikéy began telling him how a peasant gave a doctor a five-ruble note and got rejected.
Elijah drew nearer the oven, and they talked more freely.
‘No, Polikéy, it’s all up now! I don’t want to stay now myself. Uncle has done for me. As if he couldn’t have bought a substitute! … No, he grudged his son, and grudges the money, so they send me. No! I don’t myself want to stay.’ (He spoke gently, confidingly, under the influence of quiet sorrow.) ‘One thing only – I am sorry for mother, dear heart! … How she grieved! And the wife, too! … They’ve ruined the woman just for nothing; now she’ll perish – in a word, she’ll be a soldier’s wife! Better not to have married. What did they marry me for?… They’re coming here to-morrow.’
‘But why have they brought you so soon?’ asked Polikéy; ‘nothing was heard about it, and then, all of a sudden …’
‘Why, they’re afraid I shall do myself some mischief,’ answered Elijah, smiling. ‘No fear! I’ll do nothing of the kind. I shall not be lost even as a soldier; only I’m sorry for mother.… Why did they get me married?’ he said gently and sadly.
The door opened and shut with a loud slam as old Dútlov came in, shaking the wet off his cap, and as usual in bast shoes so big that they looked like boats.
‘Afanásy,’ he said to the porter, when he had crossed himself, ‘isn’t there a lantern to get some oats by?’
And without looking at Elijah he began slowly lighting a bit of candle. His mittens and whip were stuck into the girdle tied neatly round his coat, and his toil-worn face appeared as usual, simple, quiet, and full of business cares, as if he had just arrived with a train of loaded carts.
Elijah became silent when he saw his uncle, and looked dismally down at the bench again. Then, addressing the Elder, he muttered:
‘Vodka, Ermíl! I want some drink!’ His voice sounded wrathful and dejected.
‘Drink, at this time?’ answered the Elder, who was eating something out of a bowl. ‘Don’t you see the others have had a bite and lain down? Why are you making a row?’
The word ‘row’ evidently suggested to Elijah the idea of violence.
‘Elder, I’ll do some mischief if you don’t give me vodka!’
‘Couldn’t you bring him to reason?’ the Elder said, turning to Dútlov, who had lit the lantern, but had stopped, evidently to see what would happen, and was looking pityingly at his nephew out of the corner of his eyes, as if surprised at his childishness.
Elijah, looking down, again muttered:
‘Vodka! Give … do mischief!’
‘Leave off, Elijah!’ said the Elder mildly. ‘Really, now, leave off! You’d better!’
But before the words were out Elijah had jumped up and hit a window-pane with his fist, and shouting at the top of his voice: ‘You would not listen to me, so there you have it!’ rushed to the other window to break that too.
Polikéy in the twinkling of an eye rolled over twice and hid in the farthest corner of the top of the stove, so quickly that he scared all the cockroaches there. The Elder threw down his spoon and rushed towards Elijah. Dútlov slowly put down his lantern, untied his girdle, and shaking his head and making a clicking noise with his tongue, went up to Elijah, who was already struggling with the Elder and the inn-keeper’s man, who were keeping him away from the window. They had caught his arms and seemed to be holding him fast; but the moment he saw his uncle with the girdle his strength increased tenfold and he tore himself away, and with rolling eyes and clenched fists stepped up to Dútlov.
‘I’ll kill you! Keep away, you brute! … You have ruined me, you and your brigands of sons, you’ve ruined me! … Why did they get me married?… Keep away! I’ll kill you!…’
Elijah was terrible. His face was purple, his eyes rolled, the whole of his healthy young body trembled as in a fever. He seemed to wish and to be able to kill all the three men who were facing him.
‘You’re drinking your brother’s blood, you blood-sucker!’
Something flashed across Dútlov’s ever-serene face. He took a step forward.
‘You won’t take it peaceably!’ said he suddenly. The wonder was where he got the energy; for with a quick motion he caught hold of his nephew, rolled to the ground with him, and with the aid of the Elder began binding his hands with the girdle. They struggled for about five minutes. At last with the help of the peasants Dútlov rose, pulling his coat out of Elijah’s clutch. Then he raised Elijah, whose hands were tied behind his back, and made him sit down on a bench in a corner.
‘I told you it would be the worse for you,’ he said, still out of breath with the struggle, and pulling straight the narrow girdle tied over his shirt. ‘Why sin? We shall all have to die! … Fold a coat for a pillow for him,’ he said, turning to the inn-keeper’s men, ‘or the blood will go to his head.’ And he tied the cord round his waist over his sheepskin and, taking up the lantern, went to see after the horses.
Elijah, pale, dishevelled, his shirt pulled out of place, was gazing round the room as though trying to remember where he was. The inn-keeper’s men picked up the broken bits of glass and stuffed a coat into the hole in the window to keep the draught out. The Elder sat down again to his bowl.
‘Ah, Elijah, Elijah! I’m sorry for you, really! What’s to be done? There’s Khoryúshkin … he, too, is married. Seems it can’t be helped!’
‘It’s all on account of that fiend, my uncle, that I’m being ruined!’ Elijah repeated, dryly and bitterly. ‘He was chary of his own son! … Mother says the steward told him to buy me off. He won’t: he says he can’t afford it. As if what my brother and I have brought into his house were a trifle! … He is a fiend!’
Dútlov returned to the room, said a prayer in front of the icons, took off his outdoor things, and sat down beside the Elder. The cook brought more kvas and another spoon. Elijah grew silent, and closing his eyes lay down on the folded coat. The Elder pointed to him and shook his head silently. Dútlov waved his hand.
‘As if one was not sorry! … My own brother’s son! … And as if things were not bad enough it seems they also made me out a villain to him.… Whether it’s his wife – she’s a cunning little woman for all she’s so young – that has put it into his head that we could afford to buy a substitute! … Anyhow, he’s reproaching me. But one does pity the lad!…’