They all looked down at their plates, but it seemed to Mashenka that, after the mistress’s words, they all glanced at her. She suddenly felt a lump in her throat, burst into tears, and pressed a handkerchief to her face.
“Pardon,” she murmured. “I can’t. I have a headache. I’ll leave.”
And she got up from the table, awkwardly scraping the chair, which embarrassed her still more, and quickly went out.
“God knows what’s going on!” said Nikolai Sergeich, wincing. “As if there was any need to search her room! It’s really so…inappropriate.”
“I’m not saying she took the brooch,” Fedosya Vassilyevna said, “but can you vouch for her? I confess, I have little faith in these educated poor folk.”
“Really, Fenya, it’s inappropriate…Forgive me, Fenya, but by law you have no right to carry out searches.”
“I don’t know your laws. I only know that my brooch has disappeared, that’s all. And I will find that brooch!” She banged her fork on her plate, and her eyes flashed wrathfully. “Eat now and don’t interfere in my affairs.”
Nikolai Sergeich meekly lowered his eyes and sighed. Meanwhile Mashenka came to her room and collapsed on the bed. She was no longer afraid or ashamed, but she was tormented by a strong desire to go and give this callous, this arrogant, stupid, lucky woman a slap in the face.
She lay there, breathing into the pillow and dreaming of how good it would be to go now, buy the most expensive brooch, and throw it in this female tyrant’s face. Or if God should grant that Fedosya Vassilyevna be ruined, go out into the world and learn all the horror of poverty and the servile condition, and the insulted Mashenka should give her alms. Oh, if only she could receive a rich inheritance, buy a carriage, and drive noisily past her windows, making her envious!
But these were all dreams; in reality only one thing remained for her—to leave quickly, not to stay there even an hour longer. True, it was frightening to lose her job, to go back to her parents, who had nothing, but what was she to do? Mashenka could no longer bear the sight of her mistress, nor her little room; it felt stifling there, and spooky. Fedosya Vassilyevna, obsessed with her ailments and her imaginary aristocracy, disgusted her so much that it seemed everything in the world became coarse and unsightly because this woman lived in it. Mashenka jumped up from the bed and started to pack.
“May I come in?” Nikolai Sergeich asked outside the door. He had approached the door inaudibly and spoke in a quiet, gentle voice. “May I?”
“Come in.”
He came in and stopped by the door. His gaze was dull, and his red little nose glistened. He had drunk beer after dinner, and it could be noticed by his gait and his weak, limp hands.
“What’s this?” he said, pointing to the basket.
“I’m packing. Forgive me, Nikolai Sergeich, but I can no longer remain in your house. I have been deeply insulted by this search!”
“I understand…Only you needn’t do this…Why? So you’ve been searched…What is it to you? There’s no harm done.”
Mashenka said nothing and went on packing. Nikolai Sergeich plucked at his moustache, as if thinking up what else to say, and went on in an ingratiating voice:
“I understand, of course, but you must be charitable. You know my wife is nervous, hysterical; you mustn’t judge her severely…”
Mashenka said nothing.
“If you’re so insulted,” Nikolai Sergeich went on, “very well then, I’m ready to apologize to you. I apologize.”
Mashenka made no reply, and only bent lower over her suitcase. This haggard, irresolute man meant precisely nothing in the house. He played the pathetic role of a sponger and a hanger-on even for the servants; and his apology also meant nothing.
“Hm…So you’re silent? It’s not enough for you? In that case I apologize for my wife. In my wife’s name…She behaved tactlessly, I acknowledge it as a gentleman…”
Nikolai Sergeich paced up and down, sighed, and went on.
“So you also want me to have pangs here, in my heart…You want me to suffer remorse…”
“I know you’re not to blame, Nikolai Sergeich,” said Mashenka, looking him straight in the face with her big, tearful eyes. “Why should you suffer?”
“Of course…But anyhow…don’t leave…I beg you.”
Mashenka shook her head negatively. Nikolai Sergeich stopped by the window and started drumming on the glass.
“For me such misunderstandings are sheer torture,” he said. “Should I go on my knees before you, or what? Your pride has been insulted, and here you are weeping, preparing to leave, but I also have my pride, and you don’t spare it. Or do you want me to tell you something I wouldn’t say even at confession? Do you want me to? Listen, do you want me to confess something I wouldn’t confess to even on my deathbed?”
Mashenka said nothing.
“I took my wife’s brooch!” Nikolai Sergeich said quickly. “Are you pleased now? Satisfied? Yes, I…took it…Only, of course, I’m counting on your discretion…For God’s sake, not a word to anyone, not half a hint!”
Mashenka, astonished and frightened, went on packing; she grabbed her things, crumpled them, and stuffed them haphazardly into the suitcase and basket. Now, after Nikolai Sergeich’s candid confession, she could not stay even another minute, and she no longer understood how she could have lived in this house before.
“Nothing surprising…,” Nikolai Sergeich went on after a brief silence. “An ordinary story. I need money, and she…doesn’t give me any. This house and everything in it was acquired by my father, Marya Andreevna! It’s all mine, and the brooch belonged to my mother, and…it’s all mine! And she took it, she made it all hers…I can’t take her to court, you must agree…I ask you earnestly, forgive and…and stay. Tout comprendre, tout pardonner.3 Will you stay?”
“No!” Mashenka said resolutely, starting to tremble. “Leave me, I beg you.”
“Well, God help you.” Nikolai Sergeich sighed, sitting down on a little stool by the suitcase. “I confess I like people who are still capable of being insulted, disdainful, and all that. I could spend an eternity gazing at your indignant face…Well, so you won’t stay? I understand…That’s how it ought to be…Yes, of course…Good for you, but for me it’s—who-o-a! Not a step outside this cellar. I could go to one of our country estates, but there are all my wife’s crooks sitting everywhere…managers, agronomists, devil take them. They mortgage, remortgage…No fishing, no stepping on the grass, no breaking branches.”
“Nikolai Sergeich!” Fedosya Vassilyevna’s voice came from the drawing room. “Agnia, call the master!”
“So you won’t stay?” asked Nikolai Sergeich, quickly getting up and going to the door. “Why not stay, by God. I’d come and see you some evenings…We’d talk. Eh? Stay! You’ll leave and there won’t be a single human face left in the whole house. It’s terrible!”
Nikolai Sergeich’s pale, haggard face pleaded, but Mashenka shook her head negatively, and he waved his hand and left.
Half an hour later she was already on the road.
1886
THE WITCH
NIGHT WAS FALLING. The sexton Savely Gykin lay at home in the chuch warden’s hut on an enormous bed and did not sleep, though he had the habit of falling asleep at the same time as the chickens. From under one end of a greasy quilt sewn together from motley cotton scraps peeked his stiff red hair, from the other stuck his big, long-unwashed feet. He was listening…His little hut was built into the fence, and its only window looked onto the field. And in the field a veritable war was going on. It was hard to figure out who was hounding who to death and for whose sake this calamity had brewed up in nature, but, judging by the ceaseless, sinister din, someone was having a very hard time of it. Some invincible force was chasing someone around the field, rampaging through the forest and over the church roof, angrily beating its fists on the window, ripping and tearing, and something vanquished wept and howled…Pitiful weeping was heard now outside the window, now over the roof, now on the stove. No call for help could be heard in it, but anguish, the awareness that it was too late, there was no salvation. Snowdrifts were covered by a thin crust of ice; teardrops trembled on them and on the trees, and along the roads and paths flowed a dark swill of mud and melting snow. In short, on earth there was a thaw, but the sky, through the dark night, did not see that and with all its might poured flakes of new snow onto the thawing ground. And the wind caroused like a drunk man…It would not let the snow settle on the ground and whirled it through the darkness as it pleased.