"Children, children, children," he muttered rapidly. "Aksinya my dear, Varvara darling, let's all live in peace and harmony, my dear little hatchets . . ."
He drank little and was now drunk from only one glass of English bitters. The revolting bitters, made from nobody knows what, intoxicated everyone who drank it. stunning them as it were. Tongues began to falter.
The local clergy were present, and the clerks from the mills with their wives, tradesmen and tavern-keepers from the other villages. The clerk and the elder of the rural district who had served together for fourteen years, and who had during all that time never signed a single document for anybody or let a single person out of the office without deceiving or insulting him, were sitting now side by side, both fat and replete, and it seemed as though they were so steeped in injustice and falsehood that even the skin of their faces had a peculiar, thievish look. The clerk's wife, a thin woman with a squint, brought all her children with her, and like a bird of prey looked aslant at the plates, snatched everything she could get hold of and put it in her own or her children's pockets.
Lipa sat as though turned to stone, still with the same expression as in church. Anisim had not said a single word to her since he had made her acquaintance, so that he did not yet know the sound of her voice; and now, sitting beside her, he remained mute and went on drink- ing bitters, and when he got drunk he began talking t-o Lipa's aunt sitting opposite:
"I have a friend called Samorodov. A peculiar man. He is by rank an honorary citizen, and he can talk. But I know him through and through, auntie, and he knows it. Pray join me in drinking to Samorodov's health, aunti e!"
Varvara, worn out and distracted, walked round the table, pressing the guests to eat, and was evidently pleased that there were so many dishes and that every- thing was so lavish—no one could disparage them now. The sun set, but the dinner went on: the guests were beyond knowing what they were eating or drinking, it was impossible to distinguish what was said, and only from time to time when the band subsided some peasant woman could be heard shouting outside:
"You've sucked the blood out of us, you plunderers; a plague on youl"
In the evening they danced to the band. The Hrymin Juniors came, bringing wine of their own, and one of them, when dancing a quadrille, held a bottle in each hand and a wineglass in his mouth, and that made every- one laugh. In the middle of the quadrille they suddenly crooked their knees and danced in a squatting position; Aksinya in green flew by like a flash, raising a wind with her train. Someone trod on her flounce and Crutch shouted:
"Hey, they have torn off the baseboard! Children!" Aksinya had naive gray eyes which rarely blinked, and a naive smile played continually on her face. And in those unblinking eyes, and in that little head on the long neck, and in her slenderness there was something snakelike; aU in green, with her yellow bosom and the smile on her lips, she looked like a viper that peers out of the young rye in the spring at the passers-by, stretching itself and lifting its head. The Hrymins were free in their behavior to her, and it was very noticeable that she had long been on intimate terms with the eldest of them. But her deaf husband saw nothing, he did not look at her; he sat with his legs crossed and ate nuts, cracking them so loudly that it sounded like pistol shots.
But, behold, old Tzybukin himself walked into the middle of the room and waved his handkerchief as a sign that he, too, wanted to dance the Russian dance, and all over the house and from the crowd in the yard rose a hum of approbation:
"It's himself has stepped out! Himself!"
Varvara danced, but the old man only waved his handkerchief and kicked up his heels, but the people in the yard, propped against one another, peeping in at the windows, were in raptures, and for the moment for- gave him everything—his wealth and the wrongs he had done them.
'Well done, Grigory Petrovichl" was heard in the crowd. "Go it! You can still do itl Ha-hal"
It was kept up till late, till two o'clock in the morning. Anisim, staggering, went to take leave of the singers and musicians, and gave each of them a new half-ruble. His father, who was not staggering but treading more heavily on one leg, saw his guests off, and said to each of them:
"The wedding has cost two thousand."
As the party was breaking up, someone took the Shikalova innkeeper's good coat instead of his old one, and Anisim suddenly flew into a rage and began shouting:
"Stop, 111 find it at once; I know who stole itl Stop!"
He ran out into the street in pursuit of someone, but he was caught, brought back home, shoved, drunken, red with anger and wet, into the room where the aunt was undressing Lipa, and was locked in.
IV
Five days had passed. Anisim, who was ready to leave, went upstairs to say good-by to Varvara. All the lamps were burning before the icons, there was a smell of incense, while she sat at the window knitting a stock- ing of red wool.
"You have not stayed with us long,'' she said. "Youre bored, I suppose. Tut, tut, tut. . . . We live comfort- ably; we have plenty of everything. We celebrated your wedding properly, in good style; your father says it came to two thousand. In fact we live like merchants, only it's dreary here. We treat the people very badly. My heart aches, my dear; how we treat them, my good- ness! Whether we barter a horse or buy something or hire a laborer—it's cheating in everything. Cheating and cheating. The hempseed oil in the shop is bitter, rancid, worse than pitch. But surely, tell me pray, couldn't we sell good oil?"
"Every man to his trade, mamma."
"But you know we all have to die? Oh, oh, really you ought to talk to your father . . . !"
"Why, you should talk to him yourself."
"Well, well, I did put in a word, but he said just what you do: 'Every man to his own trade.' Do you suppose in the next world they'll consider what trade you have been put to? God's judgment is just."
"Of course, they won't consider,'' said Anisim, and he heaved a sigh. "There is no God, anyway, you know, mamma, so what considering can there be?"
Varvara looked at him with surprise, burst out laugh- ing, and struck her hands together. Perhaps because she
was so genuinely surprised at his words and looked at
him as though he were queer, he was embarrassed.
"Perhaps there is a God, only there is no faith. When I was being married I was not myself. Just as you may take an egg from under a hen and there is a chicken -chirping in it, so my conscience suddenly piped up, and while I was being married I thought all the time: 'There is a God!' But when I left the church, it was nothing. And indeed, how can I tell whether there is a God or not? We are not taught right from childhood, and while the babe is still at his mother's breast he is only taught •every man to his trade.' Father does not believe in God, either. You were saying that Guntorev had some sheep stolen. ... I have found them; it was a peasant at Shikalova stole them; he stole them, but father's got the hides . . . so that's all his faith amounts to."
Anisim winked and wagged his head.
"The elder does not believe in God, either," he went on. "Nor the clerk, nor the sexton. And as for their going to church and keeping the fasts, that is simply to prevent people talking ill of them, and in case it really may be true that there will be a Day of Judgment. Nowadays people say that the end of the world has come because people have grownwn weak, do not honor their parents, and so on. All that is a trifle. My idea, mamma, is that all our trouble is because there is so little conscience in people. I see through things, mamma, and I understand. If a man has a stolen shirt I see it. A man sits in a tavern and you fancy he is drinking tea and no more, but to me the tea is neither here nor there; I see farther, he has no conscience. You can go about the whole day and not meet one man with a conscience. And the whole reason is that they don't know whether there is a God or not. . . . Well, good-by, mamma, keep alive and well, don't remember evil against me."