‘Don’t sin, Elijah,’ he said, coming up to his nephew. ‘Last night you said a word to me.… Don’t I pity you? I remember how my brother left you to me. If it had been in my power would I have let you go? God has sent me luck, and I am not grudging it you. Here it is, the paper’; and he put the discharge on the table and carefully smoothed it out with his stiff, unbending fingers.
All the Pokróvsk peasants, the inn-keeper’s men, and even some outsiders, came in from the yard. All guessed what was happening, but no one interrupted the old man’s solemn discourse.
‘Here it is, the paper! Four hundred silver rubles I’ve given for it. Don’t reproach your uncle.’
Elijah rose, but remained silent not knowing what to say. His lips quivered with emotion. His old mother came up and would have thrown herself sobbing on his neck; but the old man motioned her away slowly and authoritatively and continued speaking.
‘You said a word to me yesterday,’ the old man again repeated. ‘You stabbed me to the heart with that word as with a knife! Your dying father left you to me and you have been as my own son to me, and if I have wronged you in any way, well, we all live in sin! Is it not so, good Christian folk?’ he said, turning to the peasants who stood round. ‘Here is your own mother and your young wife, and here is the discharge for you. I don’t regret the money, but forgive me for Christ’s sake!’
And, turning up the skirts of his coat, he deliberately sank to his knees and bowed down to the ground before Elijah and his wife. The young people tried in vain to restrain him, but not till his forehead had touched the floor did he get up. Then, after giving his skirts a shake, he sat down on a bench. Elijah’s mother and wife howled with joy, and words of approval were heard among the crowd. ‘That is just, that’s the godly way,’ said one. ‘What’s money? You can’t buy a fellow for money,’ said another. ‘What happiness!’ said a third; ‘no two ways about it, he’s a just man!’ Only the peasants who were to go as recruits said nothing, and went quietly out into the yard.
Two hours later Dútlov’s two carts were driving through the outskirts of the town. In the first, to which was harnessed the roan mare, her sides fallen in and her neck moist with sweat, sat the old man and Ignát. Behind them jerked strings of ring-shaped fancy-bread. In the second cart, in which nobody held the reins, the young wife and her mother-in-law, with shawls over their heads, were sitting, sedate and happy. The former held a bottle of vodka under her apron. Elijah, very red in the face, sat all in a heap with his back to the horse, jolting against the front of the cart, biting into a roll and talking incessantly. The voices, the rumbling of the cart-wheels on the stony road, and the snorting of the horses, blent into one note of merriment. The horses, swishing their tails, increased their speed more and more, feeling themselves on the homeward road. The passers-by, whether driving or on foot, involuntarily turned round to look at the happy family party.
Just as they left the town the Dútlovs overtook a party of recruits. A group of them were standing in a ring outside a tavern. One of the recruits, with that unnatural expression on his face which comes of having the front of the head shaved,9 his grey cap pushed back, was vigorously strumming a balaláyka; another, bareheaded and with a bottle of vodka in his hand, was dancing in the middle of the ring. Ignát stopped his horse and got down to tighten the traces. All the Dútlovs looked with curiosity, approval, and amusement at the dancer. The recruit seemed not to see anyone, but felt that the public admiring him had grown larger, and this added to his strength and agility. He danced briskly. His brows were knitted, his flushed face was set, and his lips were fixed in a grin that had long since lost all meaning. It seemed as if all the strength of his soul was concentrated on placing one foot as quickly as possible after the other, now on the heel and now on the toe. Sometimes he stopped suddenly and winked to the balaláyka-player, who began playing still more briskly, strumming on all the strings and even striking the case with his knuckles. The recruit would stop, but even when he stood still he still seemed to be dancing all over. Then he began slowly jerking his shoulders, and suddenly twirling round, leaped in the air with a wild cry, and descending, crouched down, throwing out first one leg and then the other. The little boys laughed, the women shook their heads, the men smiled approvingly. An old sergeant stood quietly by, with a look that seemed to say: ‘You think it wonderful, but we have long been familiar with it.’ The balaláyka-player seemed tired; he looked lazily round, struck a false chord, and suddenly knocked on the case with his knuckles, and the dance came to an end.
‘Eh, Alëkha,’ he said to the dancer, pointing at Dútlov, ‘there’s your sponsor!’
‘Where? You, my dearest friend!’ shouted Alëkha, the very recruit whom Dútlov had bought; and staggering forward on his weary legs and holding the bottle of vodka above his head he moved towards the cart. ‘Míshka, a glass!’ he cried to the player. ‘Master! My dearest friend! What a pleasure, really!’ he shouted, drooping his tipsy head over the cart, and he began to treat the men and women to vodka. The men drank, but the women refused. ‘My dear friends, what can I offer you?’ exclaimed Alëkha, embracing the old women.
A woman selling eatables was standing among the crowd. Alëkha noticed her, seized her tray, and poured its contents into the cart.
‘I’ll pay, no fear, you devil!’ he howled tearfully, pulling a purse from his pocket and throwing it to Míshka.
He stood leaning with his elbows on the cart and looking with moist eyes at those who sat in it.
‘Which is the mother … you?’ he asked. ‘I must treat you too.’
He stood thinking for a moment, then he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a new folded handkerchief, hurriedly took off a sash which was tied round his waist under his coat, and also a red scarf he was wearing round his neck, and, crumpling them all together, thrust them into the old woman’s lap.
‘There! I’m sacrificing them for you,’ he said in a voice that was growing more and more subdued.
‘What for? Thank you, sonny! Just see what a simple lad it is!’ said the old woman, addressing Dútlov, who had come up to their cart.
Alëkha was now quite quiet, quite stupefied, and looked as if he were falling asleep. He drooped his head lower and lower.
‘It’s for you I am going, for you I am perishing!’ he muttered; ‘that’s why I am giving you gifts.’
‘I dare say he, too, has a mother,’ said someone in the crowd. ‘What a simple fellow! What a pity!’