Egór Mikháylovich reporting to his mistress, in answer to her questions, ‘Hasn’t Polikéy come back yet?’ and ‘Where can he be?’ answered: ‘I can’t say,’ and seemed pleased that his expectations were being fulfilled. ‘He ought to have been back by noon,’ he added significantly.
All that day no one heard anything of Polikéy; only later on it was known that some neighbouring peasants had seen him running about on the road bareheaded, and asking everyone whether they hadn’t found a letter. Another man had seen him asleep by the roadside beside a tied-up horse and cart. ‘I thought he was tipsy,’ the man said, ‘and the horse looked as if it had not been watered or fed for two days, its sides were so fallen in.’ Akulína did not sleep all night and kept listening, but Polikéy did not return. Had she been alone, or had she kept a cook or a maid, she would have felt still more unhappy; but as soon as the cocks crowed and the carpenter’s wife got up, Akulína was obliged to rise and light the fire. It was a holiday. The bread had to come out of the oven before daybreak, kvas had to be made, cakes baked, the cow milked, frocks and shirts ironed, the children washed, water fetched, and her neighbour prevented from taking up the whole oven. So Akulína, still listening, set to work. It had grown light and the church bells were ringing, the children were up, but still Polikéy had not returned. There had been a first frost the day before, a little snow had fallen and lay in patches on the fields, on the road, and on the roofs; and now, as if in honour of the holiday, the day was fine, sunny, and frosty, so that one could see and hear a long way. But Akulína, standing by the brick oven, her head thrust into the opening, was so busy with her cakes that she did not hear Polikéy drive up, and only knew from the children’s cries that her husband had returned.
Annie, as the eldest, had greased her hair and dressed herself without help. She wore a new but crumpled print dress – a present from the mistress. It stuck out as stiff as if it were made of bast, and was an object of envy to the neighbours; her hair glistened; she had smeared half an inch of tallow candle onto it. Her shoes, though not new, were thin ones. Mary was still wrapped in the old jacket and was covered with mud, and Annie would not let her come near her for fear of getting soiled. Mary was outside. She saw her father drive up with a sack. ‘Daddy has come!’ she shrieked, and rushed headlong through the door past Annie, dirtying her. Annie, no longer fearing to be soiled, went for her at once and hit her. Akulína could not leave her work, and only shouted at the children: ‘Now, then … I’ll whip you all!’ and looked round at the door. Polikéy came in with a sack, and at once made his way to his own corner. It seemed to Akulína that he was pale, and his face looked as if he were either smiling or crying, but she had no time to find out which it was.
‘Well, Polikéy, is it all right?’ she called to him from the oven.
Polikéy muttered something that she did not understand.
‘Eh?’ she cried. ‘Have you been to the mistress?’
Polikéy sat down on the bed in his corner looking wildly round him and smiling his guilty, intensely miserable smile. He did not answer for a long time.
‘Eh, Polikéy? Why have you been so long?’ came Akulína’s voice.
‘Yes, Akulína, I have handed the lady her money. How she thanked me!’ he said suddenly, and began looking round and smiling still more uneasily. Two things attracted his feverishly staring eyes: the baby, and the cords attached to the hanging cradle. He went up to where the cradle hung, and began hastily undoing the knot of the rope with his thin fingers. Then his eyes fixed themselves on the baby; but just then Akulína entered, carrying a board of cakes, and Polikéy quickly hid the rope in his bosom and sat down on the bed.
‘What is it, Polikéy? You are not like yourself,’ said Akulína.
‘Haven’t slept,’ he answered.
Suddenly something flitted past the window, and in a moment Aksyútka, the maid from ‘up there’, darted in like an arrow.
‘The mistress orders Polikéy to come this minute,’ she said – ‘this minute, Avdótya Nikoláevna’s orders are … this minute!’
Polikéy looked at Akulína, then at the girl.
‘I’m coming. What can she want?’ he said, so simply that Akulína grew quieter. ‘Perhaps she wants to reward me. Tell her I’m coming.’
He rose and went out. Akulína took the washing-trough, put it on a bench, filled it with water from the pails which stood by the door and from the cauldron in the oven, rolled up her sleeves, and tried the water.
‘Come, Mary, I’ll wash you.’
The cross, lisping little girl began howling.
‘Come, you brat! I’ll give you a clean smock. Now then, don’t make a fuss. Come along.… I’ve still got your brother to wash.’
Meanwhile Polikéy had not followed the maid from ‘up there’, but had gone to quite a different place. In the passage by the wall was a ladder leading to the loft. Polikéy, when he came out, looked round, and seeing no one, bent down and climbed that ladder almost at a run, nimbly and hurriedly.
‘Why ever doesn’t Polikéy come?’ asked the mistress impatiently of Dunyásha, who was dressing her hair. ‘Where is Polikéy? Why hasn’t he come?’
Aksyútka again flew to the serfs’ quarters, and again rushed into the entry, calling Polikéy to her mistress.
‘Why, he went long ago,’ answered Akulína, who, having washed Mary, had just put her suckling baby-boy into the wash-trough and was moistening his thin short hair, regardless of his cries. The boy screamed, puckered his face, and tried to clutch something with his helpless little hands. Akulína supported his soft, plump, dimpled little back with one large hand, while she washed him with the other.
‘See if he has not fallen asleep somewhere,’ said she, looking round anxiously.
Just then the carpenter’s wife, unkempt and with her dress unfastened and holding up her skirts, went up into the loft to get some things she had hung there to dry. Suddenly a shriek of horror filled the loft, and the carpenter’s wife, like one demented, with her eyes closed, came down the steps on all fours, backwards, sliding rather than running.
‘Polikéy!’ she screamed.
Akulina let go the baby.
‘Has hung himself!’ roared the carpenter’s wife.
Akulína rushed out into the passage, paying no heed to the baby, who rolled over like a ball and fell backwards with his little legs in the air and his head under water.
‘On a rafter … hanging!’ the carpenter’s wife ejaculated, but stopped when she saw Akulína.
Akulína darted up the ladder, and before anyone could stop her she was at the top, but from there with a terrible scream she fell back like a corpse, and would have been killed if the people who had come running from every corner had not been in time to catch her.
XI
FOR several minutes nothing could be made out amidst the general uproar. A crowd of people had collected, everyone was shouting and talking, and the children and old women were crying. Akulína lay unconscious. At last the men, the carpenter and the steward who had run to the place, went up the ladder, and the carpenter’s wife began telling for the twentieth time how she, ‘suspecting nothing, went to fetch a dress, and just looked round like this – and saw … a man; and I looked again, and a cap is lying inside out, close by. I look … his legs are dangling. I went cold all over! Is it pleasant?… To think of a man hanging himself, and that I should be the one to see him! … How I came clattering down I myself don’t remember … it’s a miracle how God preserved me! Truly, the Lord has had mercy on me! … Is it a trifle?… so steep and from such a height. Why, I might have been killed!’