Virgin Soil (Garnett)/Volume 2/Chapter 12
XXXII
This was how it had happened.
On taking his seat in the cart with Pavel, Nezhdanov suddenly fell into a state of intense excitement; and directly they drove out of the factory yard and began rolling along the highroad towards T——— district, he began shouting, stopping the peasants that passed, and addressing them in brief, disconnected sentences. 'Eh, are you asleep?' he would say. 'Rise! the time has come! Down with the taxes! Down with the landowners!' Some peasants stared at him in amazement; others went on paying no attention to his shouts; they took him for a drunken man; one even said when he had got home that he had met a Frenchman shouting some stammering, incomprehensible stuff. Nezhdanov had enough sense to know how unutterably stupid and even meaningless what he was doing was; but he gradually worked himself up to such a point that he did not realise what was sense and what was nonsense. Pavel tried to quiet him, told him he couldn't really go on like that; that soon they would reach a large village, the first on the borders of T——— district, 'Lasses' Springs,'—that there they could reconnoitre.. . . But Nezhdanov did not listen . . . and at the same time his face was strangely sad, almost despairing. Their horse was a very plucky round little beast with a clipped mane on his scraggy neck; he plied his sturdy little legs very actively, and kept pulling at the reins, as though he were hastening to the scene of action and taking persons of importance there. Before they reached 'Lasses' Springs,' Nezhdanov noticed, just off the road, before an open corn barn, eight peasants; he sprang at once out of the cart, ran up to them with sudden shouts and backhanded gestures. The words, 'Freedom! forward! Shoulder to shoulder!' could be distinguished, hoarse and noisy, above a multitude of other words less comprehensible. The peasants, who had met before the granary to deliberate how it could be filled, if only in appearance (it was the commune granary, and consequently empty) stared at Nezhdanov and seemed to be listening to his address with great attention; but can hardly have understood much, as when at last he rushed away from them, shouting for the last time, 'Freedom!' one of them, the most acute, shook his head with an air of deep reflection, and commented, 'Wasn't he severe?' while another observed, 'Some captain, seemingly!' to which the acute peasant rejoined, 'To be sure—he wouldn't strain his throat for nothing. That's what they give us nowadays for our money!' Nezhdanov himself, as he clambered into the cart and sat beside Pavel, thought to himself, 'Lord! what idiocy! But there, not one of us knows just how one ought to stir up the people—isn't that it, perhaps? There's no time to analyse now. Tear along! Does your heart ache? Let it!'
They drove into the village street. In the very middle of it a good many peasants were crowding round a tavern. Pavel tried to restrain Nezhdanov; but he flew head over heels out of the cart, and with a wailing shout of 'Brothers!' he was in the crowd. . . . It parted a little; and Nezhdanov again fell to preaching, looking at no one, in a violent passion as it seemed, and almost weeping.
But here the result that followed was quite different. A gigantic fellow with a beardless but ferocious face, in a short greasy cape, high boots, and a sheepskin cap, went up to Nezhdanov, and clapping him on the shoulder with all his might, 'Bravo! you're a fine chap!' he bellowed in a voice of thunder; 'but stop a bit! don't you know, dry words scorch the mouth? Come this way! It's much handier talking here.' He dragged Nezhdanov into the tavern; the rest of the crowd trooped in after them. 'Miheitch!' bawled the young giant, 'look sharp! two penn'orth! My favourite tap! I'm treating a friend! Who he is, what's his family, and where he's from, old Nick knows, but he's laying into the gentry pretty hot. Drink!' he said turning to Nezhdanov, and handing him a full heavy glass, moist all over the outside as though perspiring, 'drink—if you've really any feeling for the likes of us!' 'Drink!' rose a noisy chorus around. Nezhdanov grasped the pot (he was in a sort of nightmare), shouted, 'To your health, lads!' and emptied it at a gulp. Ugh! He drank it off with the same desperate heroism with which he would have flung himself on a storm of battery or a row of bayonets.. . . But what was happening in him? Something seemed to dart along his spine and down his legs, to set his throat, his chest, and his stomach on fire, to drive the tears into his eyes. . . . A shudder of nausea passed all over him, and with difficulty he kept it down. . . . He shouted at the top of his voice, if only to drown the throbbing in his head. The dark tavern room seemed suddenly hot, sticky, stifling, full of crowds of people! Nezhdanov began talking, talking endlessly, shouting wrathfully, malignantly, shaking broad, horny hands, kissing slobbery beards.. . . The young giant in the cape kissed him too, he almost crushed his ribs in. And he showed himself a perfect demon. 'I'll split his gullet for him!' he roared, 'I'll split his gullet for him! if any one's rude to our brother! or else I'll pound his skull into a jelly.. . . I'll make him squeak! I'm up to it, I am; I've been a butcher; I'm a good hand at that sort of job!' And he shook his huge freckled fist.. . . And then, good God! some one bellowed again, 'Drink!' and again Nezhdanov gulped down that loathsome poison. But this second time it was terrible! He seemed to be full of blunt hooks tearing him to pieces inside. His head was on fire, green circles were going round before his eyes. There was a loud roar, a ringing in his ears.. . . Oh, horror! A third pot.. . . Was it possible he had emptied it? Purple noses seemed to creep up close and hem him in, and dusty heads of hair, and tanned necks and throats ploughed over with networks of wrinkles. Rough hands caught hold of him. 'Hold on!' raging voices were bawling. 'Talk away! The day before yesterday another, a stranger, talked like that. Go on! . . .' The earth seem reeling under Nezhdanov's feet. His own voice sounded strange to him, as if it came from a long way off.. . . Was it death, or what?
And all of a sudden . . . a sense of the fresh air on his face, and no more hubbub, no red faces, no stench of spirits, sheepskins, pitch and leather.. . . And again he was sitting in the cart with Pavel, at first struggling and shouting, 'Stop! Where are you off to? I'd not time to tell them anything, I must explain . . .' then adding, 'And you yourself, you sly devil, what are your views?' To which Pavel replied, 'It would be nice if there were no gentry, and the land was all ours—what could be better? but there's been no order to that effect so far'; while he stealthily turned his horse's head, and suddenly lashing him on the back with the reins, set off at full trot away from the din and clamour . . . to the factory.. . .
Nezhdanov dozed and was jolted about, but the wind blew sweetly in his face, and kept back gloomy thoughts.
Only he was vexed that he had not been allowed to explain himself fully.. . . And again the wind soothed his heated face.
And then the momentary vision of Marianna, a momentary burning sense of disgrace, and sleep, heavy, deathlike sleep.. . .
All this Pavel told afterwards to Solomin. He made no secret of the fact that he had not hindered Nezhdanov's getting drunk . . . he could not have got him away else. The others wouldn't have let him go.
'But there, when he was getting quite feeble, I begged them with many bows: "Honest gentlemen," says I, "let the poor boy go; see, he's quite young.. . ." And so they let him go. "Only give us half a rouble for ransom," says they. And so I gave it them.'
'Quite right,' said Solomin approvingly.
Nezhdanov slept; and Marianna sat at the window and looked into the little enclosure. And, strange to say, the angry, almost wicked thoughts and feelings that had been astir within her before Nezhdanov's arrival with Pavel left her all at once; Nezhdanov himself was far from being repulsive or disgusting to her; she pitied him. She knew very well that he was neither a rake nor a drunkard, and was already pondering what to say to him when he should wake up: something affectionate, that he might not be too much distressed and ashamed.'I must manage so that he should tell of his own accord how this mishap befell him.'
She was not excited; but she felt sad . . . desperately sad. It was as if a breath had blown upon her from that real world which she had been struggling to reach . . . and she shuddered at its coarseness and darkness. What Moloch was this to which she was going to sacrifice herself?
But no! It could not be! This was nothing; it was a chance event, and would be over directly.
It was the impression of an instant, which had impressed her only because it was unexpected. She got up, went to the sofa, on which Nezhdanov was lying, passed a handkerchief over his pale brow, which was contracted with suffering even in his sleep, and pushed back his hair.. . .
Again she felt sorry for him, as a mother pities her sick child. But it made her heart ache a little to look at him, and she softly went away into her room, leaving the door ajar.
She did not take up any work, and sat down again, and again a mood of musing came upon her. She felt the time melting away, minute after minute flying past, and it was positively sweet to her to feel it, and her heart beat, and again she fell to waiting for something.
Where had Solomin got to?
The door creaked softly, and Tatyana came into the room.
'What do you want?' asked Marianna almost with annoyance.
'Marianna Vikentyevna,' began Tatyana in an undertone, 'look here. Don't you upset yourself, for it's a thing that will happen in life, and thank God too———'
'I'm not the least upset, Tatyana Osipovna,' Marianna cut her short. 'Alexey Dmitritch isn't quite well; it's of no great consequence!. . .'
'Well, now, that's first-rate! But here have I been thinking, my Marianna Vikentyevna doesn't come, what's wrong with her, thinks I? But for all that I wouldn't have come in to you, for in such cases the first rule is "mind your own business!" Only here's some one—I don't know who come to the factory. A little man like this, and a bit lame; and nothing'll content him but to get at Alexey Dmitritch! It seems so queer; this morning that female came asking for him . . . and now here's this lame man. "And if," says he, "Alexey Dmitritch's not here," we're to let him see Vassily Fedotitch!" I won't go without," says he, "for," says he, "it's very important business." We try to pack him off like that female; tell him Vassily Fedotitch isn't here . . . has gone away, but this lame man keeps on, "I'm not going," says he, " if I've to wait till midnight. . . ." So he's walking in the yard. Here, come this way into the passage; you can see him from the window. . . . Can you tell me what sort of a fine gentleman he is?'
Marianna followed Tatyana—she had to pass close by Nezhdanov—and again she noticed his brow contracted painfully, and again she passed her handkerchief over it. Through the dusty window-pane she caught sight of the visitor, of whom Tatyana had been speaking. He was a stranger to her. But at that very instant Solomin came into sight round the corner of the house.
The little lame man went rapidly to him, and held out his hand. Solomin took it. He obviously knew the man. Both of them vanished. . . .
But now their steps could be heard on the stairs.. . . They were coming up.. . .
Marianna went back hurriedly into her room and stood still in the middle, hardly able to breathe. She felt dread . . . of what? She did not know.
Solomin's head appeared in the doorway.
'Marianna Vikentyevna, allow us to come in to you. I have brought a person whom it's absolutely necessary for you to see.'
Marianna merely nodded in reply, and behind Solomin in walked—Paklin.