"Hey, wenches!" cried Yelizarov. "Hey, my beauties!"
There was a sound of laughter in response.
"Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish."
And the echo laughed, too. And then the copse was left behind. The tops of the factory chimneys came into view. The cross on the belfry glittered: this was the village: "the one at which the sexton ate all the caviar at the funeral." Now they were almost home; they only had to go do^ into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking barefoot, sat down on the grass to put on their shoes, Yelizarov sat do^ with them. If they looked down from above, Ukleyevo looked beau- tiful and peaceful with its wiUow-trees, its white church, and its little river, and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted for the sake of cheap- ness a dark sullen color. On the slope on the farther side they could see the rye—some in stacks and sheaves here and there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying in swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like mother-of-pearl. It was harvest-time. Today was a holiday, tomorrow they would harvest the rye and cart the hay, and then Sunday a holiday again; every day there were mutter- ings of distant thunder. It was muggy and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought, God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt at once gay and joyful and anxious at heart.
"Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya. "One ruble and forty kopecks a day."
People kept coming from the fair at Kazanskoye: peasant women, mill hands in new caps, beggars, chil- dren. . . . A cart would drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse, and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by the horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken peasants swinging their legs. An old woman led a little boy in a big cap and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy boots which pre- vented from bending his legs at the knees, but yet he blew a tin trumpet unceasingly aU his might. They had gone do^ the slope and t^rced into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.
"Our mill owners don't seem quite themselves • • ." said Yelizarov. "It's bad. Kostukov got angry with me. 'Too manv battens have been used for the cornices.' 'Too many? As many have been used as were needed, Vassily Danilych; I don't eat them with my porridge.' 'How can you speak to me like that?' said he, 'You good-for- nothing, you blockhead! Don't forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.' 'That's nothing so wonderful,' said I. 'Even before I got to be a contractor I used to have tea every day.' 'You are all crooks . . .' he said. I held my peace. 'We are crooks in this world,' thought I, 'and you will be the crooks in the next. . . .' Ha- ha-ha! The next day he was softer. 'Don't you bear malice against me for my words, Makarych,' he said. 'If I said too much,' says he, 'what of it? I ^ a merchant of the first guild, your better—you ought to hold your tongue.' 'You,' said I, 'are a merchant of the first guild and I am a carpenter, that's correct. And Saint Joseph was a carpenter, too. Ours is a righteous and godly calling, and if you are pleased to be my better you are very welcome to it, Vassily Danilych.' And later on, after that conversation I mean, I thought: 'Which was the better man? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter?' The carpenter must be, children!"
Crutch thought a minute and added:
"Yes, that's how it is, children. He who works, he who is patient is the better man."
By now the sun had set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the mills. Now when darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except their frightened, gentle souls, may perhaps have fancied for a minute that in this vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives, they too counted for some- thing, and they too were better than someone; they liked sitting up there, they smiled happily and forgot that they must go down below again all the same.
At last they reached home. The mowers were sitting on the ground at the gates near the shop. As a rule the Ukleyevo peasants refused to work for Tzybukin, and he had to hire strangers, and now in the darkness it seemed as though there were men with long black beards sitting there. The shop was open, and through the doorway they could see the deaf man playing checkers with a boy. The mowers were singing softly, almost inaudibly, or were loudly demanding their wages for the previous day, but they were not paid for fear they should go away before tomorrow. Old Tzybukin, with his coat off, was sitting in his waistcoat with Ak- sinya under the birch-tree, drinking tea; a lighted lamp was on the table.
"I say, grandfather," a mower called from outside the gates, as though taunting him, "pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather."
And at once there was the sound of laughter, and then again they sang almost inaudibly. . . . Crutch, too, sat down to have some tea.
'We have been to the fair, you know," he began tell- ing them. "We had a fine time, a very fine time, my children, praise the Lord. But an unfortunate thing hap- pened: Sashka the blacksmith bought some tobacco and gave the shopman half a ruble, you know. And the half ruble was a false one"—Crutch went on, and he meant to speak in a whisper, but he spoke in a smothered husky voice which was audible to everyone. "The half- ruble turned out to be a bad one. He was asked where he got it. 'Anisim Tzybukin gave it me,' he said, 'when
I was at his wedding,' he said. They called the police, took the man away. . . . Look out, Grigory Petrovich, that nothing comes of it, no talk. . . ."
"Gra-ndfather!" the same voice called tauntingly out- side the gates. "Gra-andfather!"
A silence followed.
"Ah, little children, little children, little children . . ." Crutch muttered rapidly, and he got up. He was over- come with drowsiness. "Well, thank you for the tea, for the sugar, little children. It is time to sleep. I'm broken down, my beams have rotted away. Ho-ho-ho!"
As he walked away he said: "I suppose it's time I was dead," and he gave a sob. Old Tzybukin did not finish his tea but sat on a little, pondering; and his face looked as though he were listening to the footsteps of Crutch, who was far down the street.
"Sashka the blacksmith told a lie, I expect," said Aksinya, guessing his thoughts.
He went into the house and came back a little later with a parcel; he opened it, and there was the gleam of rubles—perfectly new coins. He took one, tried it with his teeth, flung it on the tray; then flung down another.
"The rubles really are false ..." he said, looking at Aksinya and seeming perplexed. "These are those Ani- sim brought, his present. Take them, daughter," he whispered, and thrust the parcel into her hands. "Take them and throw them into the well . . . confound them! And mind there is no talk about it. Harm might come of it. . . . Take away the samovar, put out the light."
Lipa and her mother sitting in the barn saw the lights go out one after another; only up in Varvara's room there were blue and red icon lamps gleaming, and a feeling of peace, contentment, and happy ignorance seemed to float down from there. Praskovya could never get used to her daughter's being married to a rich man, and when she c^e to the house she huddled timidly in the entry with a beseeching smile on her face, and tea and sugar were sent out to her. And Lipa could not get used to it either, and after her husband had gone away she did not sleep in her bed, but lay down any- where to sleep, in the kitchen or the shed, and every day she scrubbed the floor or washed the clothes, and felt as though she were hired by the day. And now, on coming back from the service at Kazanskoye, they had tea in the kitchen with the cook; then they went into the shed and lay down on the ground between the sledge and the waU. It was dark here and smelled of harness. The lights went out about the house, then they could hear the deaf man shutting up the shop, the mowers settling themselves about the yard to sleep. In the distance at the Hrymin Juniors' they were playing the expensive accordion . . . Praskovya and Lipa be- gan to drop off.