‘The money’s mine!’ muttered Polikéy.
‘Let me go! I won’t do it!’ Semën tried to say, but could not.
Polikéy was pressing down on him with the weight of a mountain of stone. Dútlov knew that if he said a prayer he would let him go, and he knew which prayer he ought to recite, but could not utter it. His grandson sleeping beside him uttered a shrill scream and began to cry. His grandfather had pressed him against the wall. The child’s cry loosened the old man’s lips. ‘Let God arise!…’ he said. He pressed less hard. ‘And let his enemies be scattered …’ spluttered Dútlov. He got off the stove. Dútlov heard his two feet strike the floor. Dútlov went on repeating in turn all the prayers he knew. He went towards the door, passed the table, and slammed the door so that the whole hut shook. Everybody but the grandfather and grandson continued to sleep however. The grandfather, trembling all over, muttered prayers, while the grandson was crying himself to sleep and pressing close to his grandfather. All became quiet once more. The old man lay still. A cock crowed behind the wall close to Dútlov’s ear. He heard the hens stirring, and a cockerel unsuccessfully trying to crow in answer to the old cock. Something moved over the old man’s legs. It was the cat; she jumped on her soft pads from the stove to the floor, and stood mewing by the door. The old man got up and opened the window. It was dark and muddy in the street. The front of the cart was standing there close to the window. Crossing himself he went out barefoot into the yard to the horses. One could see that he had been there too. The mare, standing under the lean- to beside a tub of chaff, had got her foot into the cord of her halter and had spilt the chaff, and now, lifting her foot, turned her head and waited for her master. Her foal had tumbled over a heap of manure. The old man raised him to his feet, disentangled the mare’s foot and fed her, and went back to the hut. The old woman got up and lit the splint. ‘Wake the lads, I’m going to the town!’ And taking a wax taper from before the icon Dútlov lit it and went down with it into the opening under the floor. When he came up again lights were burning not only in his hut but in all the neighbouring houses. The young fellows were up and preparing to start. The women were coming in and out with pails of milk. Ignát was harnessing the horse to one cart and the second son was greasing the wheels of another. The young wife was no longer wailing. She had made herself neat and had bound a shawl over her head, and now sat waiting till it would be time to go to town to say good-bye to her husband.
The old man seemed particularly stern. He did not say a word to anyone, put on his best coat, tied his belt round him, and with all Polikéy’s money in the bosom of his coat, went to Egór Mikháylovich.
‘Don’t dawdle,’ he called to his son, who was turning the wheels round on the raised and newly greased axle. ‘I’ll be back in a minute; see that everything is ready.’
The steward had only just got up and was drinking tea. He himself was preparing to go to town to deliver up the recruits.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Egór Mikháylovich, I want to buy the lad off. Do be so good! You said t’other day that you knew one in the town that was willing.… Explain to me how to do it; we are ignorant people.’
‘Why, have you reconsidered it?’
‘I have, Egór Mikháylovich. I’m sorry for him. My brother’s child after all, whatever he may be. I’m sorry for him! It’s the cause of much sin, money is. Do be good enough to explain it to me!’ he said, bowing to his waist.
Egór Mikháylovich, as was his wont on such occasions, stood for a long time thoughtfully smacking his lips. Then, having considered the matter, he wrote two notes and told him what to do in town and how to do it.
When Dútlov got home, the young wife had already set off with Ignát. The fat roan mare stood ready harnessed at the gate. Dútlov broke a stick out of the hedge and, lapping his coat over, got into the cart and whipped up the horse. He made the mare run so fast that her fat sides quickly shrank, and Dútlov did not look at her so as not to feel sorry for her. He was tormented by the thought that he might come too late for the recruiting, that Elijah would go as a soldier and the devil’s money would be left on his hands.
I will not describe all Dútlov’s proceedings that morning. I will only say that he was specially lucky. The man to whom Egór Mikháylovich had given him a note had a volunteer quite ready who was already twenty-three silver rubles in debt and had been passed by the recruiting-board. His master wanted four hundred silver rubles for him and a buyer in the town had for the last three weeks been offering him three hundred. Dútlov settled the matter in a couple of words. ‘Will you take three twenty-five?’ he said, holding out his hand, but with a look that showed that he was prepared to give more. The master held back his hand and went on asking four hundred. ‘You won’t take three and a quarter?’ Dútlov said, catching hold with his left hand of the man’s right and preparing to slap his own right hand down on it. ‘You won’t take it? Well, God be with you!’ he said suddenly, smacking the master’s hand with the full swing of his other hand and turning away with his whole body. ‘It seems it has to be so … take three and a half hundred! Get out the discharge and bring the fellow along. And now here are two ten-ruble notes on account. Is it enough?’
And Dútlov unfastened his girdle and got out the money.
The man, though he did not withdraw his hand, yet did not seem quite to agree and, not accepting the deposit money, went on stipulating that Dútlov should wet the bargain and stand treat to the volunteer.
‘Don’t commit a sin,’ Dútlov kept repeating as he held out the money. ‘We shall all have to die some day,’ he went on, in such a mild, persuasive and assured tone that the master said:
‘So be it, then!’ and again clapped Dútlov’s hand and began praying for God’s blessing. ‘God grant you luck,’ he said.
They woke the volunteer, who was still sleeping after yesterday’s carouse, examined him for some reason, and went with him to the offices of the Administration. The recruit was merry. He demanded rum as a refresher, for which Dútlov gave him some money, and only when they came into the vestibule of the recruiting-board did his courage fail him. For a long time they stood in the entrance-hall, the old master in his full blue cloak and the recruit in a short sheepskin, his eyebrows raised and his eyes staring. For a long time they whispered, tried to get somewhere, looked for somebody, and for some reason took off their caps and bowed to every copying-clerk they met, and meditatively listened to the decision which a scribe whom the master knew brought out to them. All hope of getting the business done that day began to vanish, and the recruit was growing more cheerful and unconstrained again, when Dútlov saw Egór Mikháylovich, seized on him at once, and began to beg and bow to him. Egór Mikháylovich helped him so efficiently that by about three o’clock the recruit, to his great dissatisfaction and surprise, was taken into the hall and placed for examination, and amid general merriment (in which for some reason everybody joined, from the watchmen to the President), he was undressed, dressed again, shaved, and led out at the door; and five minutes later Dútlov counted out the money, received the discharge and, having taken leave of the volunteer and his master, went to the lodging-house where the Pokróvsk recruits were staying. Elijah and his young wife were sitting in a corner of the kitchen, and as soon as the old man came in they stopped talking and looked at him with a resigned expression, but not with goodwill. As was his wont the old man said a prayer, and he then unfastened his belt, got out a paper, and called into the room his eldest son Ignát and Elijah’s mother, who were in the yard.