“That old man there with the bundle is General Zhukoff’s servant. . . . He was with our general, heaven kingdom to him! as cook. He comes up to us in the evening and begins, ‘Let me sleep here tonight.’ . . . We had a drink each, of course. . . . The woman prepared the samovar to get the old man tea, when in an unlucky moment she put it in the hall; and the fire from the chimney, of course, went up to the roof, the straw and all! We were nearly burnt ourselves. And the old man lost his cap; it’s a pity.”
The fire-alarm boomed without cease; and the bells of the church across the river rang again and again. Olga, panting, bathed in the glare, looked with terror at the red sheep and the red pigeons flying about in the smoke; and it seemed to her that the boom of the fire-alarm pierced into her soul, that the fire would last for ever, and that Sasha was lost. . . . And when the roof crashed in she grew so weak with fear lest the whole village burn that she could no longer carry water; and she sat on the brink of the ravine with her pail beside her; beside her sat other women, and spoke as if they were speaking of a corpse.
At last from the manor-house came two cartloads of factors and workmen. They brought with them a fire-engine. A very youthful student in white, unbuttoned tunic rode into the village on horseback. Axes crashed, a ladder was placed against the burning log-walls; and up it promptly climbed five men led by the student, who was very red, and shouted sharply and hoarsely, and in a tone which implied that he was well accustomed to extinguishing fires. They took the hut to pieces, beam by beam; and dragged apart stall, the wattle fence, and the nearest hayrick.
“Don’t let them break it!” came angry voices from the crowd. “Don’t let them!”
Kiriak with a resolute face went into the hut as if to prevent the new-comers breaking, but one of the workmen turned him back with a blow on the neck. Kiriak tumbled, and on all fours crept back to the crowd.
From across the river came two pretty girls in hats; the student’s sisters, no doubt. They stood some way off and watched the conflagration. The scattered logs no longer burned, but smoked fiercely; and the student, handling the hose, sent the water sometimes on the logs, sometimes into the crowd, sometimes at the women who were carrying pails.
“George!” cried the frightened girls reproachfully. “George!”
The fire ended. Before the crowd dispersed the dawn had begun; and all faces were pale and a little dark—or so it always seems in early morning when the last stars fade away. As they went to their homes the muzhiks laughed and joked at the expense of General Zhukoff’s cook and his burnt cap: they reenacted the fire as a joke, and, it seemed, were sorry it had come so quickly to an end.
“You put out the fire beautifully, sir,” said Olga to the student. “Quite in the Moscow way; there we have fires every day.”
“Are you really from Moscow?” asked one of the girls.
“Yes. My husband served in the Slaviansky Bazaar. And this is my little girl.” She pointed to Sasha, who pressed close to her from the cold. “Also from Moscow, miss.”
The girls spoke to the student in French, and handed Sasha a twenty-kopeck piece. When old Osip saw this his face grew bright with hope.
“Thank God, your honour, there was no wind,” he said, turning to the student. “We’d have been all burnt up in an hour. Your honour, good gentleman,” he added shamefacedly. “It’s a cold morning; we want warming badly . . . a half a bottle from your kindness . . .”
Osip’s hint proved vain; and, grunting, he staggered home. Olga stood at the end of the village and watched as the two carts forded the stream, and the pretty girls walked through the meadow towards the carriage waiting on the other side. She turned to the hut in ecstasies—
“And such nice people! So good-looking. The young ladies, just like little cherubs!”
“May they burst asunder!” growled sleepy Fekla angrily.
CHAPTER VI The Hut
MARYA WAS UNHAPPY, and said that she wanted to die. But life as she found it was quite to Fekla’s taste: she liked the poverty, and the dirt, and the never-ceasing bad language. She ate what she was given without picking and choosing, and could sleep comfortably anywhere; she emptied the slops in front of the steps: threw them, in fact, from the threshold, though in her own naked feet she had to walk through the puddle. And from the first day she hated Olga and Nikolai for no reason save that they loathed this life.
“We’ll see what you’re going to eat here, my nobles from Moscow!” she said maliciously. “We’ll see!”
Once on an early September morning, Fekla, rosy from the cold, healthy, and good-looking, carried up the hill two pails of water; when she entered the hut Marya and Olga sat at the table and drank tea.
“Tea . . . and sugar!” began Fekla ironically. “Fine ladies you are!” she added, setting down the pails. “A nice fashion you’ve got of drinking tea everyday! See that you don’t swell up with tea!” she continued, looking with hatred at Olga. “You got a thick snout already in Moscow, fatbeef!”
She swung round the yoke and struck Olga on the shoulder. The two women clapped their hands and exclaimed—
“Akh, batiushki!”
After which Fekla returned to the river to wash clothes, and all the time cursed so loudly that she was heard in the hut.
The day passed, and behind it came the long autumn evening. All sat winding silk, except Fekla, who went down to the river. The silk was given out by a neighbouring factory; and at this work the whole family earned not more than twenty kopecks a week.
“We were better off as serfs,” said the old man, winding away busily. “In those days you’d work, and eat, and sleep . . . each in its turn. For dinner you’d have schtchi11 and porridge, and for supper again schtchi and porridge. Gherkins and cabbage as much as you liked; and you’d eat freely, as much as you liked. And there was more order. Each man knew his place.”
The one lamp in the hut burned dimly and smoked. When any worker rose and passed the lamp a black shadow fell on the window, and the bright moonlight shone in. Old Osip related slowly how the peasants lived before the Emancipation; how in these same villages where all to-day lived penuriously there were great shooting parties, and on such days the muzhiks were treated to vodka without end; how whole trains of carts with game for the young squire were hurried off to Moscow; how the wicked were punished with rods or exiled to the estate in Tver, and the good were rewarded. And grandmother also spoke. She remembered everything. She told of her old mistress, a good, God-fearing woman with a wicked, dissolute husband; and of the queer marriages made by all the daughters; one, it appeared, married a drunkard; another a petty tradesman; and the third was carried off clandestinely (she, grandmother, then unmarried, helped in the adventure): and all soon afterwards died of grief as did, indeed, their mother. And, remembering these events, grandmother began to cry.
When a knock was heard at the door all started.
“Uncle Osip, let me stay the night!”
Into the hut came the little, bald old man, General Zhukoff’s cook, whose cap was burnt in the fire. He sat and listened, and, like his hosts, related many strange happenings. Nikolai, his legs hanging over the stove, listened; and asked what sort of food was eaten at the manor-house. They spoke of bitki,12 cutlets, soups of various kinds, and sauces; and the cook, who, too, had an excellent memory, named certain dishes which no one eats nowadays; there was a dish, for instance, made of ox-eyes, and called “Awake in the morning.”
“And did you cook cutlets maréchal?” asked Nikolai.
“Not.”
Nikolai shook his head reproachfully, and said—