XV

Her appearance in the farmyard was due to the suspicion that, perhaps, she was out of her mind. Such people, who were regarded as cattle, were sent to the farmyard to be observed, because the cow-herds and dairy-maids, being elderly and sedate people, it was thought, could best watch over mental diseases.

The old woman in the striped linen dress whom Lyubov Onisimovna first saw on her awakening, was very kind, and was called Drosida.

“In the evening, when she had finished her work,” Nurse continued, “she made up a bed for me of fresh oaten straw. She spread it out so well, that it was as soft as a feather-bed, and then she said: ‘My girl, I will explain everything to you. Whatever may have happened you can tell me. I, too, am like you, and have not worn this striped dress all my days, but have also known another life, though, God forbid I should think of it now. All I say is, don’t break your heart because you have been banished to the cattle-yard; it is better in banishment – only avoid this terrible flagon…”

And she took out of the kerchief she wore round her neck, and over her bosom, a small white glass phial and showed it me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This is a terrible flagon,” she answered, “and the poison of forgetfulness is in it.”

“Give me the poison of forgetfulness,” I said, “I want to forget everything.”

“Don’t drink – it is vodka,” she said. “Once I lost command of myself and drank – good people gave it to me… Now I can’t help it – I must have it. Don’t drink as long as you can help it; and don’t judge me that I take a sip – I am in great pain. You have still a comfort in the world. The Lord has released him from tyranny!”

“He is dead!” I shrieked, clutching hold of my hair, and I saw it was not my hair – it was white.

“What does this mean?”

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” she said, your head had become white already there; when they released your neck from the plait. He is alive and saved from all further tyranny. The Count showed him such mercy as nobody had known before. When night comes I shall tell you all; but now I must take a sip – I must take a sip to stop this burning – this heartache.”

And she sipped and sipped and at last went to sleep.

At night, when all were sleeping, Aunt Drosida again got up, went to the window in the dark, and I saw her standing there, sipping at her flagon, and then she hid it once more and asked in a whisper:

“Does grief sleep or not?”

“Grief does not sleep,” I answered.

Then she came to my bed and told me that the Count had sent for Arkadie after his punishment and said:

“You ought to have suffered all that I had threatened, but as you were my favourite, I will now show you mercy. Tomorrow I shall send you to be a soldier, as supernumerary, but as you were not afraid of the noble count, my brother, with his pistols, I shall open the path of honour for you. I do not wish you to be lower than your noble spirit deserves. I will write a letter asking that you should be sent at once to the war. You will not have to serve as a private soldier, but as a regimental sergeant – so show your courage. From this time you are no longer subject to my will, but to the Tzar’s.”

“He is better off now,” said the old woman, “he need not fear anything; he has only one authority over him; he need only fear falling in battle, and not the master’s tyranny.”

I believed her, and for three years dreamed every night of Arkadie fighting.

In this way three years passed. God was merciful to me. I was not recalled to the theatre, but I remained all the time living in the calves’ but as Aunt Drosida’s assistant. I was very happy there, because I was sorry for this woman, and when, at night, she had not had too much to drink, I liked to listen to her. She could remember how the old Count had been slaughtered by our people – and his own valet was the chief instigator – as nobody could endure his hellish cruelty any more. All this time I didn’t drink and did much work for Aunt Drosida, and with pleasure too; the young cattle were like my children. I became so attached to the calves that when they had been fattened up and were taken away to be slaughtered for the table, I would make the sign of the cross over them, and for three days after could not cease crying. I was no longer of any use for the theatre because my legs refused to work properly; I began to be shaky on them. Formerly my gait was of the lightest, but now, ever since Arkadie Il’ich had carried me off senseless in the cold, where I must have frozen them, I had no longer any strength in the toes for dancing. I became the same sort of woman in striped linen that Drosida was. God only knows how long I would have lived on in this melancholy way if something had not happened. One evening, when I was sitting in my hut, just before sunset, looking out of the window at the calves, suddenly a small stone fell into the room through the window. The stone was wrapped up in paper.

XVI

I looked around, to one side and to the other, and out of the window – nobody was to be seen. “Some one has thrown it over the fence,” I thought, “and it did not go where he wanted, but has fallen into our room.” Then I thought: “Shall I undo this paper or not? Perhaps it is better to unwrap it, because something is sure to be written on it. And it is sure to be something that somebody requires. I may be able to find it out and keep the secret, but I will throw the note with the stone in the same way to the person it concerns.”

I unwrapped it and began to read – I could not believe my own eyes.

XVII

The letter ran thus:

“My Faithful Lyubu!

“I have fought for the Tzar. I have shed my blood more than once, and have therefore been made an officer and gained honourable rank. Now I have come on leave to recover from my wounds, and am staying in the inn of the Pushkarsky suburb, with the innkeeper. Tomorrow I shall put on my decorations and crosses and appear before the Count, with all the money I was given to continue my cure: five hundred roubles, and I shall ask to be allowed to ransom you for myself, in the hope of being married at the altar of the Most High Creator.”

“And then,” continued Lyubov Onisimovna, with suppressed emotion, “he wrote: ‘Whatever misery you have gone through, and whatever you may have had to submit to, I will look upon as your affliction, and not as sin, nor do I consider it as weakness, but leave it to God, and I have only feelings of respect for you.’ It was signed Arkadie Il’ich.”

Lyubov Onisimovna burnt the letter to ashes at once, and told nobody about it, not even the old woman, but prayed to God the whole night, not saying many words about herself, but always about him, because she said, “although he had written, that he was now an officer with decorations and wounds, I was still unable to imagine that the Count would behave to him any differently from before. I might even say, I feared he would beat him again.”

XVIII

Early next morning Lyubov Onisimovna took the calves out into the sun and began feeding them out of a trough with crusts and milk, when suddenly sounds reached her from outside, that people “in freedom” were hurrying somewhere; they were running and talking quickly to each other.

“I could not distinguish a word of what they were saying,” she continued, “but their words seemed to pierce my heart like a knife. When our labourer, Filip, who was carting dung, came into the yard, I said to him:

“Filipushka batushka (little father), have you heard where all the people are going and what they are about, talking so curiously to each other?”

“They are going,” he said, “to see the officer whose throat was cut while he slept by the innkeeper of the Pushkarsky Inn. They say that his throat was cut quite through,” he said, “and five hundred roubles were stolen from him. The innkeeper was caught all bloody,” they say, “and the money was on him.”

And as he told me this I felt my legs give way.

It was quite true: that innkeeper had cut Arkadie Il’ich’s throat… and he was buried here… in this very grave on which we are sitting… And there he is now beneath us… he is lying under this mound… You may have wondered why I always come here in our walks… I don’t want to look there (she pointed to the dark grey ruins), but to sit here near him and… and drink a drop for the good of his soul…

XIX

Here Lyubov Onisimovna paused and considering her story finished, took the little flagon out of her pocket and either “drank to his memory” or “took a sip,” but I asked her:

“Who buried the famous artist here?”

“The Governor, my little dove, the Governor himself came to the funeral. Yes, indeed. He was an officer! At the funeral the deacon and the reverend father called him the ‘boyard Arkadie,’ and when the coffin was lowered into the grave the soldiers fired blank shots into the air. A year later in the market-place of Il’inka the innkeeper was punished with the knout by the executioner. He received fortythree strokes of the knout for Arkadie Il’ich and bore it – he remained alive, was branded, and sent to penal servitude. All our people who were able went to see it, but the old men, who could remember how the man was punished for the cruel Count, said that these forty-three lashes were so little because Arkadie was of the common people, and that for the Count the other man received a hundred and one lashes. By law, you know, an even number of blows cannot be given, but it must always be an uneven number. The executioner from Tula was fetched on purpose then, and before the work he was given three tumblers of rum. Then he beat him so that the hundred strokes were only for torture, and the man remained alive, but the hundredth and first lash shattered his back-bone. When he was lifted up from the boards he was already dying… They covered him with a mat, and took him to the prison, but he died on the way. And the Tula executioner, they say, still continued to shout: ‘Give me another… Let me kill all you Orel fellows!’”

“Well, and you yourself?” I asked; “did you go to the funeral?”

“Yes, I went. I went with all the others. The Count ordered that all from the theatre should be taken there, to see how one of our people could be worthy of so much honour.”

“Did you take leave of him?”

“Yes, certainly. All approached and took leave of him, and I… he was changed… so much changed… I would not have known him… thin and very pale… they said that all the blood had run out, because his throat had been cut at about midnight… Ah, the blood that he shed!”

She sat silent and pensive.

“And you yourself,” I asked, “what happened to you?”

She seemed to recover her senses and passed her hand over her brow.

“I can’t remember what happened at first,” she answered, “or how I went home. With all the others, of course… somebody must have led me… and in the evening Drosida Petrovna said:

“’Now this mustn’t be – you don’t sleep, and at the same time you lie there as if made of stone. That’s not right – cry – there must be relief – your heart must have relief.’

“’I can’t, Auntie,’ I said, ‘my heart burns like a live coal, and there is no relief.’

“’Well,’ she said, ‘then the flagon can’t be avoided.’

“She filled a glass out of her bottle for me.”

“’Till now I did not allow you to have it, and dissuaded you, but now it can’t be avoided. Pour it on the coal – take a sip.’”

“’I don’t want to,’ I said.

“’Little fool! Who wants it at first. It is bitter – bitter. But the poison of sorrow is more bitter. The coal must be drenched with this poison – it will be slaked for a moment – sip, sip quickly.’”

“I emptied the whole flagon. It was disgusting, but I could not sleep without it, and the next night again… I drank… and now I can’t go to sleep without it… I got my own flagon and buy vodka… You are a good boy, you will never tell mother about it, you must never betray poor people, because one must take care of poor people; poor people are all sufferers. On the way home I shall go round the corner to the dram-shop, and knock at the window. We shall not go into it, but I shall give my empty flagon, and they will shove me out a new one.”

I was touched and promised that I would tell no one, on any account, of her flagon.

“Thank you, little dove, never tell anyone; it is necessary for me.”

I can see her, and hear her, as if she were before me even now. Every night, when all were asleep, she would rise from her bed, so quietly that not even a bone cracked; she would listen, then creep on her long frozen legs to the window. There she would stand for a minute looking round, listening to see if mother were not coming from her bedroom, then she tapped the neck of the flagon gently on her teeth, put it to her mouth and sipped… one drop, another and another. Was it coal that was being drenched? or Arkadie’s memory commemorated? Then she returned to her bed, slipped under the bed-clothes, and soon she began to wheeze – gently, very gently – fu-fu, fu-fu, fu-fu – and fell asleep.

A more terrible and soul-harrowing commemoration of the dead, I have never seen in all my life.