II
Seventeen years had passed. It was late in autumn. The sun did not rise high all day, and twilight descended before four in the afternoon.
The communal herd of Andréyevo village was returning from pasture. The herdsman, hired for the summer, had completed his engagement and gone away, so that the village women and children were taking turns to drive the cattle.
The herd had just left the fields of oat-stubble where they had been grazing; and, continually bleating and lowing, moved slowly towards the village, along the black, unmetalled road indented all over with cloven hoof-prints and cut by deep ruts. Ahead of the herd walked a tall, grey-bearded old man, with curly grey hair and black eyebrows. His patched coat was black with moisture, and he had a leather wallet on his bent back. He walked heavily, dragging his feet in their clumsy, downtrodden, foreign-looking boots, and leaned on his oak staff at every other step. When the herd overtook him, he stopped and leant on his staff. The young woman who was driving the herd, her skirt tucked up, a piece of sacking over her head, and a man’s boots on her feet, kept running with quick steps from side to side of the road, urging on the sheep and pigs that lagged behind. When she overtook the old man she stopped, looked at him, and said in her sweet young voice:
“How do you do, daddy?”
“How d’ye do, my dear?” replied the old man.
“You’ll be wanting a night’s lodging, eh?”
“Yes, it seems so … I’m tired,” said the old man in a hoarse voice.
“Don’t go and ask the Elder, daddy, but come straight to us,” she said kindly. “Ours is the third hut from the end. My mother-in-law lets pilgrims in free.”
“The third hut? That’s Zinóvyef’s?” said the old man, moving his black eyebrows expressively.
“Ah, do you know it?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“Fédya, what are you gaping at there? The lame one has stopped behind!” cried the young woman, pointing to a sheep limping on three legs and lagging behind the herd; and, swinging her switch with her right hand, she pulled the sacking well over her head, catching it from underneath with her left hand in a peculiar way as she ran back to drive the lame black sheep on.
The old man was Kornéy; the young woman was Agatha, whose arm he had broken seventeen years before. She had married into a well-to-do peasant family at Andréyevo, three miles from Gáyi.
From a strong prosperous proud man, Kornéy Vasílyef had become what he now was: an old beggar possessing nothing but the shabby clothes on his back, and two shirts and a soldier’s passport which he carried in his wallet. This change had come about so gradually that he could not tell when it began nor how it happened. The one thing he knew, and was sure of, was that his wicked wife had been the cause of all his misfortunes. It was strange and painful to him to remember what he had once been; and when he did remember it, he also remembered and hated her whom he considered to be the cause of all the evil he had suffered these seventeen years.
After that night when he beat his wife, he had gone to the landowner whose wood was for sale, but he was unsuccessful: the wood had already been sold. So he returned to Moscow, and there took to drink. Before this he used to drink at times, but now he drank for a fortnight on end. When he came to himself he went south to buy cattle. His purchase proved unlucky, and he lost money. He went again, but lost a second time; and in a year his three thousand roubles had dwindled to twenty-five, and he was obliged to work for an employer instead of being his own master. From that time onwards he drank more and more often. For a year he lived as assistant to a cattle-dealer, but had a drinking bout while on the road, and the dealer dismissed him. Then, through a friend, he got a place as shopman at a wine and spirit dealer’s, but did not stay there long, either, for his accounts got wrong, and he was dismissed. Shame and anger prevented his returning home.
“Let them live without me! Maybe the boy is not mine, either,” thought he.
Matters went from bad to worse. He could not live without drink, and could no longer get employment as a clerk, but only as a cattle-drover. At last no one would take him even for that.
The more wretched his own plight became, the more he blamed her, and the fiercer his anger against her burnt within him.
The last time Kornéy found a place as a drover was with a stranger. The cattle fell ill. It was not Kornéy’s fault, but his master got angry, and dismissed both him and the clerk over him. As he could get no employment, Kornéy resolved to go on pilgrimage.
He provided himself with a pair of boots and a good wallet, took some tea and sugar, and, with eight roubles in his pocket, started for Kiev. Kiev did not satisfy him, and he went on to New Athos, in the Caucasus; but, before reaching it, he fell ill with ague, and suddenly lost all his strength. He had only one rouble and seventy kopecks left, and he knew no one, so he decided to return home to his son.
“That wicked wife of mine may be dead by now,” thought he as he journeyed homewards; “or if she’s still alive, I’ll tell her everything before I die, that the wretch may know what she has done to me.”
The fever-attacks came on every other day. He grew weaker and weaker, so that he could not walk more than eight or ten miles. When still a hundred and fifty miles from home, he had no money at all left, and had to beg his way in Christ’s name, and to sleep where the village officials lodged him.
“Rejoice at what you have brought me to,” said he, mentally addressing his wife, and from habit he clenched his feeble old fists. But there was no one to strike, and his fists had no strength left in them.
It took him a fortnight to walk those last hundred and fifty miles. Quite ill and worn out, he reached the place three miles from home, where he met Agatha, who was wrongly considered to be his daughter, and whose arm he had broken.