"Is that you, you slick one?" Cranny grumbled an- grily, guessing who it was. "Curse you, you nightwalkerl Why don't the devil take youl"
"It's all right, it's all right," whispered Olga, wrapping Fyokla up; "it's all right, dearie."
All was quiet again. They always slept badly; each one was kept awake by something nagging and per- sistent: the old man by the pain in his back, Granny by anxiety and malice, Marya by fear, the children by itch and hunger. Now, too, their sleep was restless; they kept turning from one side to the other, they talked in their sleep, they got up for a drink.
Fyokla suddenly burst out into a loud, coarse howl, but checked herself at once, and only sobbed from time to time, her sobs growing softer and more muffled until she was still. Occasionally from the other side of the river came the sound of the striking of the hours; but the clock struck oddly—first five and then three.
"Oh, Lordl" sighed the cook.
Looking at the windows, it was hard to tell whether the moon was still shining or whether it was already da^. Marya got up and went out, and could be heard milking the cows and saying, "Stea-dy!" Granny went out, too. It was still dark in the cabin, but already one could distinguish all the objects in it.
Nikolay, who had not slept all night, got do^ from the stove. He took his dress-coat out of a green chest, put it on, and going to the window, stroked the sleeves, fingered the coat-tails—and smiled. Then he carefully removed the coat, put it away in the chest, and lay do^ again.
Marya came in again and started to light the stove. She was evidently half asleep and was waking up on her feet. She must have had some dream, or perhaps the
stories of the previous night came into her mind, for
she stretched luxuriously before the stove and said:
"No, freedom is better!"
VII
"The master" arrived—that was what they caUed the district police inspector. When he would come and what he was coming for had been known for a week. There were only forty households in Zhukovo, but they had accumulated more than two thousand rubles of arrears in Zemstvo and other taxes.
The police inspector stopped at the tavern. There he drank two glasses of tea, and then went on foot to the headman's house, near which a crowd of tax defaulters stood waiting. The headman, Antip Sedelnikov, in spite of his youth—he was only a little over thirty—was strict and always sided with the authorities, though he him- self was poor and remiss in paying his taxes. Apparently he enjoyed being headman, and liked the sense of power, which he could only display by harshness. At the village meetings he was feared and obeyed. Occasion- ally he would pounce on a drunken man in the street or ncar the tavern, tie his hands behind him, and put him in jail. Once he even put Granny under arrest and kept her in the lock-up for a whole day and a night be- cause, coming to the village meeting instead of Osip, she started to curse. He had never lived in a city or read a book, but somewhere or other he had picked up various bookish expressions, and loved to employ them in conversation, and people respected him for this al- though they did not always understand him.
When Osip came into the headman's cabin with his tax book, the inspector, a lean old man with long gray side-whiskers, who wore a gray tunic, was sitting at a table in a corner writing something do^wn. The cabin was clean; all the walls were bright with pictures clipped from magazines, and in the most conspicuous place near the icons there was a portrait of Prince Battenberg of Bulgaria. Beside the table stood Antip Sedelnikov with his arms folded.
"He owes one hundred and nineteen rubles, Your Honor," he said, when Osip's turn came. "Before Easter he paid a ruble, and he's not paid a kopeck since."
The inspector looked up at Osip and asked:
"Why is this, brother?"
"Show heavenly mercy, Your Honor," began Osip, growing agitated. "Allow me to say, last year the master from Lutoretzk said to me, 'Osip,' says he, 'sell me your hay . . . you sell it,' says he. Well, why not? I had a hundred poods[5] for sale; the women mowed it on the water-meadow. Well, we struck a bargain. It was all right and proper."
He complained of the headman, and kept turning round to the peasants as though inviting them to bear witness; his face got red and sweaty and his eyes grew sharp and angry.
"I don't know why you're saying all this,'' said the inspector. "I am asking you—I am asking you why you don't pay your arrears. You don't pay, any of you, and am I to answer for you?"
"I just can't."
''These words are of no consequence, Your Honor," said the headman. "The Chikildeyevs certainly are of the needy class, but please just inquire of the others, the root of it all is vodka, and they are a disorderly lot. With no understanding at all."
The inspector wrote something downwn, and then said to Osip quietly, in an even tone, as though he were ask- ing him for a drink of water: "Get out."
Soon he drove off; and as he was climbing into his cheap buggy, coughing as he did so, it could be seen from the very look of his long lean back that he no longer remembered Osip or the village headman or the Zhukovo arrears, but was thinking of his affairs. Be- fore he had gone two thirds of a mile Antip was already carrying off the samovar from the Chikildeyevs' cabin, while Granny followed him, screaming shrilly, straining her Iungs:
"I won't let you have itl I won't let you have it, god- damn you!"
He walked rapidly with long strides, and she ran after ^m, panting, almost falling down, a hunched infuriated creature; her kerchief slipped onto her shoulders, her gray hair with a greenish tint to it blew in the wind. She suddenly stood still, and like a real insurgent, fell to thumping her breast with her fists and shouting louder than ever in a singsong voice, seeming to sob:
"Christians, all you who believe in God! Dear friends, they have wronged mel Darlings, they're trampling on me! Oh, oh, darlings, come and help mel"
"Granny, Granny!" said the village headman sternly, "get some sense into your head!"
With no samovar it was hopelessly dismal in the Chikildeyevs' cabin. There was something humiliating in this deprivation, something insulting, as though the honor of the house were lost. It would have been better, had the headman carried off the tabIe, alI the benches, all the pots—the place would not have seemed so bare. Granny screamed, Marya cried, and the little girls, see- ing her tears, cried too. The old man, feeling guilty, sal in the corner, silent, with hanging head. Nikolay too was silent. Granny loved him and was sorry for him, but now, forgetting her pity, she fell upon him with abuse, with reproaches, shaking her fist right in his face. She screamed that it was all his fault; indeed, why had he sent them so little when he bragged in his letters that he was earning fifty rubles a month at the Slavyansky Bazar? Why had he come, and with his family, too? If he died, where would the money come from for his funeral? And it was pitiful to look at Nikolay, Olga, and Sasha.
The old man sighed hoarsely, took his cap, and went off to the headman. It was getting dark. Antip was sol- dering something by the stove, puffing out his cheeks; the air was full of fumes. His children, thin and un- washed, no better than the Chikildeyev brood, were scrambling about on the floor; his wife, an ugly, freckled, big-bellied woman, was winding silk. They were a wretched, unlucky family, and Antip was the only one who looked sturdy and handsome. On a bench stood five samovars in a row. The old man muttered a prayer to Battenberg and then said:
"Antip, show heavenly mercy, give me back the sam- ovar! For Christ's sake!"
"Bring three rubles, then you can have it."
"I just can't."
Antip puffed out his cheeks, the fire hummed and hissed, and was reflected in the s^ovars. The old man lmeaded his cap and said after a moment's thought:
"You give it back to me."