Chapter XI
‘DIED of what?’ Nekhlyúdov asked incredulously.
‘From overwork, benefactor, as God is holy, she was used up. We took her from Babúrino the year before last,’ continued Arína, and her angry expression suddenly changed to a sad and tearful one. ‘She was a quiet, fresh-looking young woman, dear sir. She had lived in comfort as a girl at her father’s and had not known want; but when she came to us and knew what our work was – work on the master’s estate and at home and everywhere.… She and I alone to do it. It is nothing to me! I’m used to it. But she was with child, dear sir, and began to suffer pain, and was always working beyond her strength, and she overdid it poor thing. A year ago, during St Peter’s Fast,5 to her misfortune, she bore a son. We had no bread: we had to eat anything, just anything, and there was urgent work to be done – and her milk dried up. It was her first baby, we had no cow, and how can we peasants rear a baby by hand? Well, she was a woman and foolish – that made her grieve still more. And when the baby died she wept and wept for him, lamented and lamented, and there was want and the work had to be done, and things got worse and worse: she was so worn out in the summer that at the Feast of the Intercession6 she herself died. It was he who destroyed her – the beast!’ she repeated, turning with despairing anger to her son. ‘What I wanted to ask of your Excellence …’ she went on after a pause, lowering her voice and bowing.
‘What is it?’ Nekhlyúdov asked absent-mindedly, still agitated by her story.
‘You see he is still a young man. What work can be expected from me? I’m alive to-day but shall be dead to-morrow. How is he to get on without a wife? He won’t be a worker for you.… Think of something for us. You are as a father to us.’
‘You mean you want to get him married? Well, all right.’
‘Be merciful, you who are a father and mother to us!’ and on her making a sign to her son, they both dropped on their knees at their master’s feet.
‘Why do you bow in such a way?’ Nekhlyúdov said irritably, raising her by the shoulder. ‘Can’t you say what you want to say simply? You know I don’t like grovellings. Get your son married if you like. I shall be very glad if you know of a wife for him.’
The old woman rose and began rubbing her dry eyes with her sleeve. David followed her example and having rubbed his eyes with his puffy fist continued to stand in the same patiently meek attitude listening to what Arína said.
‘There are girls – of course there are. There’s Váska Mikháy’s girl, she’s all right, but she won’t consent unless it’s your wish.’
‘Doesn’t she agree?’
‘No, benefactor, not if she’s to marry by consent.’
‘Then what’s to be done? I can’t compel her. Look out for someone else – if not one of ours, one from another village. I’ll buy her out if she comes willingly, but I won’t force her to marry. There is no law that allows that, and it would be a great sin.’
‘Eh, eh, benefactor! Is it likely, seeing what our life is and our poverty, that any girl would come of her own accord? Even the poorest soldier’s wife wouldn’t agree to such poverty. What peasant will give his girl into a house like this? A desperate man wouldn’t do it. Why, we’re paupers, beggars. They’d say that we have starved one to death and that the same would happen to their daughter. Who would give his girl?’ she added, shaking her head dubiously. ‘Just consider, your Excellence.’
‘But what can I do?’
‘Think of something for us, dear sir,’ Arína repeated earnestly. ‘What are we to do?’
‘But what can I contrive? I can’t do anything at all in such a case.’
‘Who is to arrange it for us if not you?’ said Arína, hanging down her head and spreading her arms out in mournful perplexity.
‘As to the grain you asked for, I’ll give orders that you shall have some —’ said the master after a pause, during which Arína kept sighing and David echoed her. ‘I can’t do anything more.’
And Nekhlyúdov went out into the passage. The mother and son followed him, bowing.
Chapter XII
‘OH, what a life mine is!’ Arína said, sighing deeply.
She stopped and looked angrily at her son. David at once turned and clumsily lifting his thick foot in its enormous and dirty bast shoe heavily over the threshold, disappeared through the door.
‘What am I to do with him, master?’ Arína went on. ‘You see yourself what he is like. He is not a bad man, doesn’t drink, is gentle, and wouldn’t harm a child – it would be a sin to say otherwise. There’s nothing bad in him, and God only knows what has happened to make him his own enemy. He himself is sad about it. Would you believe it, sir, my heart bleeds when I look at him and see how he suffers. Whatever he may be, I bore him and pity him – oh, how I pity him! … You see it’s not as if he went against me, or his father, or the authorities. He’s timid – like a little child, so to say. How can he live a widower? Arrange something for us, benefactor!’ she said again, evidently anxious to remove the bad impression her bitter words might have produced on the master. ‘Do you know, sir, your Excellence,’ she went on in a confidential whisper, ‘I have thought one thing and another and can’t imagine why he is like that. It can only be that bad folk have bewitched him.’
She remained silent for a while.
‘If I could find the right man, he might be cured.’
‘What nonsense you talk, Arína. How can a man be bewitched?’
‘Oh, my dear sir, a man can be so bewitched that he’s never again a man! As if there were not many bad people in the world! Out of spite they’ll take a handful of earth from a man’s footprints … or something of that sort … and he is no longer a man. Is evil far from us? I’ve been thinking – shouldn’t I go to old Dundúk, who lives in Vorobëvka? He knows all sorts of charms and herbs, and removes spells and makes water flow from a cross. Perhaps he would help!’ said the old woman. ‘Maybe he would cure him.’
‘Now there is poverty and ignorance!’ thought the young master as he strode with big steps through the village, sorrowfully hanging his head. ‘What am I to do with him? It’s impossible to leave him like that, both for my own sake and on account of the example to others, as well as for himself,’ he said, counting off these different reasons on his fingers. ‘I can’t bear to see him in such a state, but how am I to get him out of it? He ruins all my best plans for the estate.… As long as there are peasants like that my dreams will never be realized,’ he reflected, experiencing vexation and anger against White David for ruining his plans. ‘Shall I have him sent to Siberia, as Jacob suggests, since he doesn’t want to get on; or send him to be a soldier? I should at least be rid of him and should save another and better peasant from being conscripted,’ he argued to himself.
He thought of this with satisfaction; but at the same time a vague consciousness told him that he was thinking with only one side of his mind and that it was not right. He stopped. ‘Wait a bit, what was I thinking about?’ he asked himself. ‘Oh yes, into the army or to exile. But what for? He is a good man, better than many others – and besides what do I know.… Shall I set him free?’ he thought, not now considering the question with only one side of his mind as previously. ‘That would be unfair and impossible.’ But suddenly a thought occurred to him which pleased him very much, and he smiled with the expression of a man who has solved a difficult problem. ‘Take him into my house,’ he reflected, ‘observe him myself and get him used to work and reform him by kindness, persuasion, and a proper choice of occupation.’