“Is Ivan at home? “asked Nekhlyudov.
The older girl was almost petrified at this question, and was opening her eyes wider and wider, but did not answer; the smaller one opened her mouth, and was getting ready to cry. A small old woman, in a torn checkered dress, girded low with an old, reddish belt, looked from behind the door, but did not answer. Nekhlyudov walked up to the vestibule, and repeated his question.
“At home, benefactor,” said the old woman, in a quivering voice, bowing low, and agitated with terror.
When Nekhlyudov greeted her, and passed through the vestibule into the narrow yard, the old woman put her hand to her chin, walked up to the door, and, without turning her eyes away from the master, began slowly to shake her head.
The yard looked wretched. Here and there lay old blackened manure that had not been removed; on the manure-heap lay carelessly a musty block, a fork, and two harrows. The sheds about the yard, under which stood, on one side, a plough and a cart without a wheel, and lay a mass of empty, useless beehives in confusion, were nearly all unthatched, and one side had fallen in, so that the girders no longer rested on the fork posts, but on the manure.
Churis, striking with the edge and head of his axe, was trying to remove a wicker fence which the roof had crushed. Ivan Churis was a man about fifty years of age. He was below the average height. The features of his tanned, oblong face, encased in an auburn beard with streaks of gray, and thick hair of the same colour, were fair and expressive. His dark blue, half-shut eyes shone with intelligence and careless good nature.
A small, regular mouth, sharply defined under a scanty blond moustache, expressed, whenever he smiled, calm self-confidence and a certain derisive indifference to his surroundings. From the coarseness of his skin, deep wrinkles, sharply defined veins on his neck, face, and hands, from his unnatural stoop, and crooked, arch-like legs, it could be seen that all his life had passed in extremely hard labour, which was beyond his strength. His attire consisted of white hempen drawers, with blue patches over his knees, and a similar dirty shirt, which was threadbare on his back and arms. The shirt was girded low by a thin ribbon, from which hung a brass key.
“God aid you! “said the master, entering the yard.
Churis looked around him, and again took up his work. After an energetic effort he straightened out the wicker work from under the shed; then only he struck the axe into a block, pulled his shirt in shape, and walked into the middle of the yard.
“I wish you a pleasant holiday, your Grace! “he said, making a low obeisance, and shaking his hair.
“Thank you, my dear. I just came to look at your farm,” said Nekhlyudov, with childish friendliness and embarrassment, examining the peasant’s garb. “Let me see for what you need the fork posts that you asked of me at the meeting of the Commune.”
“The forks? Why, your Grace, you know what forks are for. I just wanted to give a little support to it, — you may see for yourself. Only a few days ago a corner fell in, and by God’s kindness there were no animals in it at the time. It barely hangs together,” said Churis, contemptuously surveying his unthatched, crooked, and dilapidated sheds. “When it comes to that, there is not a decent girder, rafter, or box case in them. Where am I to get the timber? You know that yourself.”
“Then why do you ask for five forks when one shed is all fallen in, and the others soon will fall? What you need is not forks, but rafters, girders, posts, — all new ones,” said the master, obviously parading his familiarity with the subject.
Churis was silent.
“What you need, therefore, is timber and not forks. You ought to have said so.”
“Of course, I need that, but where am I to get it? It won’t do to go for everything to the manor. What kind of peasants should we be if we were permitted to go to the manor to ask your Grace for everything? But if you will permit me to take the oak posts that are lying uselessly in the threshing-floor of the manor,” he said, bowing, and resting now on one foot, now on the other, “I might manage, by changing some, and cutting down others, to fix something with that old material.”
“With the old material? But you say yourself that everything of yours is old and rotten. To-day one corner is falling in, to-morrow another, and day after to-morrow a third. So, if you are to do anything about it, you had better put in everything new, or else your labour will be lost. Tell me, what is your opinion? Can your buildings last through the winter, or not?”
“Who knows?”
“No, what do you think? Will they fall in, or not?”
Churis meditated for a moment.
“It will all fall in,” he said, suddenly.
“Well, you see, you ought to have said at the meeting that you have to get the whole property mended, and not that you need a few forks. I am only too glad to aid you.”
“We are very well satisfied with your favour,” answered Churis, incredulously, without looking at the master. “If you would only favour me with four logs and the forks, I might manage it myself; and whatever useless timber I shall take out, might be used for supports in the hut.”
“Is your hut in a bad condition, too?”
“My wife and I are expecting every moment to be crushed,” Churis answered, with indifference. “Lately a strut from the ceiling struck down my old woman.”
“What? Struck down?”
“Yes, struck her down, your Grace. It just whacked her on the back so that she was left for dead until the evening.”
“Well, did she get over it?”
“She did get over it, but she is ailng now. Although, of course, she has been sickly since her birth.”
“What, are you sick? “Nekhlyudov asked the old woman, who continued to stand in the door, and began to groan the moment her husband spoke of her.
“Something catches right in here, that’s all,” she answered, pointing to her dirty, emaciated bosom.
“Again! “angrily exclaimed the young master, shrugging his shoulders. “There you are, sick, and you did not come to the hospital. That is what the hospital was made for. Have you not been told of it?”
“They told us, benefactor, but we have had no time : there is the manorial work, and the house, and the children, — I am all alone! There is nobody to help me— “
III
NEKHLYUDOV WALKED INTO the hut. The uneven, grimy walls were in the kitchen corner covered with all kinds of rags and clothes, while the corner of honour was literally red with cockroaches that swarmed about the images and benches. In the middle of this black, ill-smelling, eighteen-foot hut there was a large crack in the ceiling, and although supports were put in two places, the ceiling was so bent that it threatened to fall down any minute.
“Yes, the hut is in a very bad shape,” said the master, gazing at the face of Churis, who, it seemed, did not wish to begin a conversation about this matter.
“It will kill us, and the children, too,” the old woman kept saying, in a tearful voice, leaning against the oven under the hanging beds.
“Don’t talk! “sternly spoke Churis, and, turning to the master, with a light, barely perceptible smile, which had formed itself under his quivering moustache, he said :”I am at a loss, your Grace, what to do with this hut. I have braced it and mended it, but all in vain.”
“How are we to pass a winter in it? Oh, oh, oh! “said the woman.
“Now, if I could put in a few braces and fix a new strut,” her husband interrupted her, with a calm, businesslike expression, “and change one rafter, we might be able to get through another winter. We might be able to live here, only it will be all cut up by the braces; and if anybody should touch it, not a thing would be left alive; but it might do, as long as it stands and holds together,” he concluded, evidently satisfied with his argument.
Nekhlyiidov was annoyed and pained because Churis had come to such a state without having asked his aid before, whereas he had not once since his arrival refused the peasants anything, and had requested that everybody should come to him directly if they needed anything. He was even vexed at the peasant, angrily shrugged his shoulders, and frowned; but the sight of wretchedness about him, and Churis’s calm and self-satisfied countenance amidst this wretchedness, changed his vexation into a melancholy, hopeless feeling.
“Now, Ivan, why did you not tell me before? “he re-marked reproachfully, sitting down on a dirty, crooked bench.
“I did not dare to, your Grace,” answered Churis, with the same scarcely perceptible smile, shuffling his black, bare feet on the uneven dirt floor; but he said it so boldly and quietly that it was hard to believe that he had been afraid to approach the master.
“We are peasants : how dare we— “began the woman, sobbing.
“Stop your prattling,” Churis again turned to her.
“You cannot live
