Part 22 (1/2)

In front of him lay the village of Makhmytka; he had often ridden there in his youth on secret visits to a soldier's wife; but now he would not go to her; no, not for anything in the world! The village lay pressed to the earth and was ornamented with numerous stacks which smelt of straw and dung. On its outskirts the Prince was met by a pack of baying dogs, who flitted over the ground like dark, ghostly shadows as they leapt round him.

At the first cabin he tapped at the little window, dimly lighted within by some smouldering splinters.

”Who is there?” came the tardy response.

”Let me in for the night, good people,” called the Prince.

”Who is it?”

”A traveller.”

”Well, just a minute,” came the grudging answer.

A bare-footed peasant in red drawers came out holding a lighted splinter over his head and looking round.

”Ah!” he exclaimed, ”it is you, Prince! So you were too wise to stay, were you? Well, come in.”

An immense quant.i.ty of straw was spread over the floor. A cricket was chirruping, and there was a smell of soot and dung.

”Lay yourself down, Barin, and G.o.d bless you!”

The peasant climbed on to the stove and sighed. His old wife began to mutter something, the man grumbled, then said to the Prince:

”Barin, you can have your sleep, only get up in the morning and leave before daylight, so that none will see you. You know yourself these are troubled times, there is no gainsaying it. You are a gentleman, Barin, and gentlemen have got to be done away with. The old woman will wake you.... Sleep now.”

Prozorovsky lay down without undressing, put his cape under his head-- and at once caught a c.o.c.kroach on his neck! Some young pigs grunted in a corner. The hut was swarming with vermin, blackened by smoke and filled with stenches. Here, where men, calves and pigs herded all together, the Prince lay on his straw, tossing about and scratching.

He thought of how, some centuries hence, people would be writing of this age with love, compa.s.sion, and tenderness. It would be thought of as an epoch of the most sublime and beautiful manifestation of the human spirit.

A little pig came up, sniffed all round him, then trotted away again.

A low, bright star peeped in through the window. How infinite the world seemed!

He did not notice when he fell asleep. The old woman woke him at daybreak and led him through the backyard. The dawn was bright and cold, and the gra.s.s was covered with a light frost. He walked along briskly, swinging his stick, the collar of his overcoat turned up.

The sky was marvellously deep and blue.

At the station the Prince squeezed himself into a warm place on the train, amongst other pa.s.sengers carrying little sacks and bags of flour. Thus, pressed against the sides of a truck, his clothes bedaubed with white flour, he journeyed off to--Moscow.

Prince Prozorovsky had left at evening. Immediately after, furniture was pulled about and re-arranged, the veneer was chipped off the desk. The clock was about to be transferred to the office, but some one noticed that it had only one hand. None of the men realised that Kuvaldin's old clocks were necessarily one-handed, and moved every five minutes simply because the minutes were not counted singly in those days. Somebody suggested that the clock could be removed from its case.

”Take the clock out of the box,” Ivan Koloturov ordered. ”Tell the joiners to put some shelves in it, it will do as a cupboard for the office.... Now then, don't stamp, don't stamp!”

That night an old woman came running in. There was a great turmoil in the village: a girl had been abused--no one knew by whom, whether by the villagers themselves or the people who had come from Moscow for flour; the old woman began to accuse the Committee men. She stood by the window and reviled them at the top of her voice. Ivan Koloturov drove her away with a blow on the neck, and she went off wailing bitterly.

It was pitch-dark. The house was quiet. Milkmaids outside were singing boisterously. Ivan went into the study, sat down on the sofa, felt its softness, found a forgotten electric lamp and played with it, flas.h.i.+ng its light on the walls as he pa.s.sed through. He noticed the clock on the floor of the drawing-room and began to think what he would do with it, then he picked it up and threw it into the water- closet. A band of his men had broken their way into the other end of the house, and some one was thumping on the piano; Ivan Koloturov would have liked to have driven them away, to prevent them from doing damage, but he dared not. He suddenly felt sorry for himself and his old wife and he wanted to go home to his stove.

A bell clanged--supper! Ivan quietly stole to the wine-cellar, filled up his jug, and drank, then hurriedly locked the cellar door.

On the way home he fell down in the park; he lay there a long time, trying to lift himself, wanting all the while to say something and to explain--but he fell asleep.