"Hold on, Vasilyevnal"
Another steep climb.
She had begun to teach school from necessity, with- out feeling called to it; and she had never thought of a call, of the need for enlightenment; and it always seemed to her that what was most jmportant in her work was not the children, not enlightenment, but the examinations. And when did she have time to think of a call, of enlightenment? Teachers, impecunious physi- cians, doctors' assistants, for all their terribly hard work, do not even have the comfort of thinking that they are serving an ideal or the people, because their heads are always filled with thoughts of their daily bread, of fire- wood, of bad roads, of sickness. It is a hard, humdrum existence, and only stolid cart horses like Marya Va- silyevna can bear it a long time; lively, alert, impres- sionable people who talk about their calling and about serving the ideal are soon weary of it and give up the work.
Semyon kept on picking out the driest and shortest way, traveling now across a meadow, now behind the cottages, but in one place the peasants would not let them pass and in another the land belonged to the priest and so they could not cross it, in yet another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the landowner and had dug a ditch round it. They kept turning back.
They reached Nizhneye Gorodishche. Near the tea- house, on the dung-strewn, snowy ground, there stood wagons loaded with great bottles of oil of vitriol. There were a great many people in the teahouse, all drivers, and it smelled of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. The place was noisy with loud talk and the banging of the door which was provided with a pulley. In the shop next door someone was playing an accordion steadily. Marya Vasilyevna was sitting down, having tea, while at the next table some peasants were drinking vodka and beer, sweaty with the tea they had had and the bad air.
"Hey, Kuzma!" people kept shouting confusedly. 'What's doing?" "The Lord bless us!" "Ivan Dementy- ich, that I can do for you!" "See here, friend!"
A little pockmarked peasant with a black beard, who was quite drunk, was suddenly taken aback by some- thing and began using foul language.
'What are you cursing about, you there?" Semyon, who was sitting some way off, remarked angrily. "Don't you see the young lady?"
"The young lady!" someone jeered in another corner.
"The swine!"
"I didn't mean nothing—" The little peasant was embarrassed. "Excuse me. I pays my money and the young lady pays hers. How-de-do, ma'am?"
"How do you do?" answered the schoolmistress.
"And I thank you kindly."
Marya Vasilyevna drank her tea with pleasure, and she, too, began turning red like the peasants, and again she fell to thinking about firewood, about the janitor. . . .
"Wait, brother," came from the next table. "It's the school-ma'am from Vyazovye. I know; she's a good sort."
"She's all right!"
The door was banging continually, some coming in, others going out. Marya Vasilyevna went on sitting there, thinking of the same things all the time, while the accordion went on playing and playing behind the wall. There had been patches of sunlight on the floor, they shifted to the counter, then to the wall, and finally disappeared altogether; this meant that it was past mid- day. The peasants at the next table were getting ready to leave. The little peasant went up to Marya Vasilyevna somewhat unsteadily and shook hands with her; follow- ing his example, the others shook hands with her at parting, and filed out singly, and the door squeaked and slammed nine times.
"Vasilyevna, get ready," Semyon called to her.
They drove off. And again they went at a walking pace.
"A little while back they were building a school here at this Nizhneye Gorodishche," said Semyon, turning round. "There were wicked doings then!"
"Why, what?"
"They say the chairman pocketed a cool thousand, and the Trustee another thousand, and the teacher five hundred."
"The whole school only cost a thousand. It's wrong to slander people, grandfather. That's all nonsense."
"I don't know. I only repeat what folks say."
But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress. The peasants did not believe her. They always thought she received too large a salary, twenty- one rubles a month (five would have been enough), and that she kept for herself the greater part of the money that she received for firewood and for the jani- tor's wages. The Trustee thought as the peasants did, and he himself made something on the firewood and re- ceived a salary from the peasants for acting as Trustee —without the knowledge of the authorities.
The woods, thank God, were behind them, and now it would be clear, level ground all the way to Vyazovye, and they had not far to go now. All they had to do was to cross the river and then the railway line, and then they would be at Vyazovye.
"Where are you going?" Marya Vasilyevna asked Semyon. "Take the road to the right across the bridge."
"Why, we can go this way just as well, it's not so deep."
"Mind you don't drown the horse."
"What?"
"Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge, too," said Marya Vasilyevna, seeing the four-horse team far away to the right. "I think it's he."
"It's him all right. So he didn't find Bakvist in. What a blockhead he is. Lord have mercy on us! He's driving over there, and what for? It's all of two miles nearer this way."
They reached the river. In summer it was a shallow stream, easily forded and usually dried up by August, but now, after the spring floods, it was a river forty feet wide, rapid, muddy, and cold; on the bank, and right up to the water, there were fresh wheel tracks, so it had been crossed there.
"Giddap!" shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently at the reins and flapping his elbows as a bird does its wings. "Giddap!"
The horse went into the water up to its belly and stopped, but at once went on again, straining its mus- cles, and Marya Vasilyevna felt a sharp chill in her feet.
"Giddapl" she shouted, too, standing up. "Giddap!"
They got to the bank.
"Nice mess, Lord have mercy on us!" muttered Sem- yon, setting the harness straight. "It's an affliction, this Zemstvo."
Her shoes and rubbers were full of water, the lower edge of her dress and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping; the sugar and flour had got wet, and that was the worst of it, and Marya Vasilyevna only struck her hands together in despair and said:
"Oh, Semyon, Semyonl What a fellow you are, really!"
The barrier was down at the railway crossing. An express was coming from the station. Marya Vasilyevna stood at the crossing waiting for the train to pass, and shivering all over with cold. Vyazovye was in sight now, and the school with the green roof, and the church with its blazing crosses that reflected the setting sun; and the station windows were aflame, too, and a pink smoke rose from the engine. . . . And it seemed to her that everything was shivering with cold.
Here was the train; the windows, like the crosses on the church, reflected the blazing light; it hurt her eyes to look at them. On the platform of one of the first-class carriages a lady was standing, and Marya Vasilyevna glanced at her as she flashed by. Her mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had had just such luxuriant hair, just such a forehead and that way of holding her head. And with amazing distinctness, for the first time in those thirteen years, she imagined vividly her mother, her father, her brother, their apartment in Moscow, the aquarium with the little fishes, everything down to the smallest detail; she suddenly heard the piano playing, her father's voice; she felt as then, young, good-looking, well-dressed, in a bright warm room among her own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly over- whelmed her, she pressed her hands to her temples in ecstasy, and called softly, imploringly:
"Mama!"
And she began to cry, she did not know why. Just at that moment Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she imagined such happiness as had never been, and smiled and nodded to him as an equal and an intimate, and it seemed to her that the sky, the windows, the trees, were glowing with her hap- piness, her triumph. No, her father and mother had never died, she had never been a schoolmistress, that had been a long, strange, oppressive dream, and now she had awakened. . . .