There was a sound of a fretful childish waiclass="underline"
“Take me away, Mamma darling!”
“Quiet there!” cried the priest.
When they returned from the church people ran after them; there were crowds, too, round the shop, round the gates, and in the yard under the windows. The peasant women came in to sing songs of congratulation to them. The young couple had scarcely crossed the threshold when the singers, who were already standing in the outer room with their music books, broke into a loud chant at the top of their voices; a band ordered expressly from the town began playing. Foaming Don wine was brought in tall wineglasses, and Elizarov, a carpenter who did jobs by contract, a tall, gaunt old man with eyebrows so bushy that his eyes could scarcely be seen, said, addressing the happy pair:
“Anisim and you, my child, love one another, live in God’s way, little children, and the Heavenly Mother will not abandon you.”
He leaned his face on the old father’s shoulder and gave a sob.
“Grigory Petrovich, let us weep, let us weep with joy!” he said in a thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing in a loud bass guffaw. “Ho-ho-ho! This is a fine daughter-in-law for you too! Everything is in its place in her; all runs smoothly, no creaking, the mechanism works well, lots of screws in it.”
He was a native of the Yegoryevsky district but had worked in the factories in Ukleyevo and the neighborhood from his youth up and had made it his home. He had been a familiar figure for years as old and gaunt and lanky as now, and for years he had been nicknamed “Crutch.” Perhaps because he had been for forty years occupied in repairing the factory machinery, he judged everybody and everything by its soundness or its need of repair. And before sitting down to the table, he tried several chairs to see whether they were solid, and he touched the smoked fish also.
After the Don wine, they all sat down to the table. The visitors talked, moving their chairs. The singers were singing in the outer room. The band was playing, and at the same time the peasant women in the yard were singing their songs all in chorus—and there was an awful, wild medley of sounds which made one giddy.
Crutch turned round in his chair and prodded his neighbors with his elbows, prevented people from talking, and laughed and cried alternately.
“Little children, little children, little children,” he muttered rapidly. “Aksinya, my dear, Varvara darling, we will live all in peace and harmony, my dear little axes. . . .”
He drank little and was now drunk from only one glass of English bitters. The revolting bitters, made from nobody knows what, intoxicated everyone who drank it as though it had stunned them. Their tongues began to falter.
The local clergy, the clerks from the factories with their wives, the tradesmen and tavern-keepers from the other villages were present. The clerk and the elder of the rural district who had served together for fourteen years, and who had during all that time never signed a single document for anybody nor let a single person out of the local court without deceiving or insulting him, were sitting now side by side, both fat and well fed, and it seemed as though they were so saturated in injustice and falsehood that even the skin of their faces was somehow peculiar, fraudulent. The clerk’s wife, a thin woman with a squint, had brought all her children with her, and like a bird of prey looked aslant at the plates and snatched anything she could get hold of to put in her own or her children’s pockets.
Lipa sat as though turned to stone, still with the same expression as in church. Anisim had not said a single word to her since he had made her acquaintance, so that he did not yet know the sound of her voice; and now, sitting beside her, he remained mute and went on drinking bitters, and when he got drunk he began talking to the aunt who was sitting opposite:
“I have a friend called Samorodov. A peculiar man. He is by rank an honorary citizen, and he can talk. But I know him through and through, Auntie, and he feels it. Pray join me in drinking to the health of Samorodov, Auntie!”
Varvara, worn out and distracted, walked round the table pressing the guests to eat, and was evidently pleased that here were so many dishes and that everything was so lavish—no one could disparage them now. The sun set, but the dinner went on: the guests were beyond knowing what they were eating or drinking, it was impossible to distinguish what was said, and only from time to time when the band subsided some peasant woman could be heard shouting:
“They have sucked the blood out of us, the Herods; a pest on them!”
In the evening they danced to the band. The Khrymin Juniors came, bringing their wine, and one of them, when dancing a quadrille, held a bottle in each hand and a wineglass in his mouth, and that made everyone laugh. In the middle of the quadrille they suddenly crooked their knees and danced in a squatting position; Aksinya, in green, flew by like a flash, stirring up a wind with her train. Someone trod on her flounce and Crutch shouted:
“Aie, they have torn off the panel! Children!”
Aksinya had naive gray eyes, which rarely blinked, and a naive smile played continually on her face. And in those unblinking eyes, and in that little head on the long neck, and in her slenderness there was something snakelike; all in green but for the yellow on her bosom, she looked, with a smile on her face, as a viper looks out of the young rye in the spring at the passers-by, stretching itself and lifting its head. The Khrymins were free in their behavior to her, and it was very noticeable that she was on intimate terms with the eldest of them. But her deaf husband saw nothing, he did not look at her; he sat with his legs crossed and ate nuts, cracking them so loudly that it sounded like pistol shots.
But, behold, old Tsybukin himself walked into the middle of the room and waved his handkerchief as a sign that he, too, wanted to dance the Russian dance, and all over the house and from the crowd in the yard rose a roar of approbation:
“He’s going to dance! He himself!”
Varvara danced, but the old man only waved his handkerchief and kicked up his heels, but the people in the yard, propped against one another, peeping in at the windows, were in raptures, and for the moment forgave him everything—his wealth and the wrongs he had done them.
“Well done, Grigory Petrovich!” was heard in the crowd. “That’s right, do your best! You can still play your part! Ha-ha!”
It was kept up till late, till two o’clock in the morning. Anisim, staggering, went to take leave of the singers and bandsmen and gave each of them a new half ruble. His father, who was not staggering but still seemed to be standing on one leg, saw his guests off, and said to each of them:
“The wedding has cost two thousand.”