the old man?"
"Yes, the old man. The warden more than once has punished him before the whole assembly, and, would you believe it? he would shake himself, go home, and be as bad as ever. And Davidka, I assure your excellency, is a law-abiding peasant, and a quick-witted peasant; that is, he doesn't smoke and doesn't drink," explained Yakof; "and yet he's worse than the other who gets drunk. There's nothing else to do with him than to make a soldier of him or send him to Siberia. All the Kazyóls are the same; and Matriushka who lives in the village belongs to their family, and is the same sort of cursed good-for-nothing. Don't you care to have me here, your excellency?" inquired the overseer, perceiving that the prince did not heed what he was saying.
"No, go away," replied Nekhliudof absent-mindedly, and turned his steps toward Davidka Byélui's.
Davidka's hovel28 stood askew and alone at the very edge of the village. It had neither yard, nor cornkiln, nor barn. Only some sort of dirty stalls for cattle were built against one side. On the other a heap of brush-wood and logs was piled up, in imitation of a yard.29
Tall green steppe-grass was growing in the place where the court-yard should have been.
There was no living creature to be seen near the hovel, except a sow lying in the mire at the threshold, and grunting.
Nekhliudof tapped at the broken window; but as no one made answer, he went into the entry and shouted, "Holloa there!"30
This also brought no response. He passed through the entry, peered into the empty stalls, and entered the open hut.
An old red cock and two hens with ruffs were scratching with their legs, and strutting about over the floor and benches. When they saw a man they spread their wings, and, cackling with terror, flew against the walls, and one took refuge on the oven.
The whole hut, which was not quite fourteen feet31 square, was occupied by the oven with its broken pipe, a loom, which in spite of its being summer-time was not taken down, and a most filthy table made of a split and uneven plank.
Although it was a dry situation, there was a filthy puddle at the door, caused by the recent rain, which had leaked through roof and ceiling. Loft there was none. It was hard to realize that this was a human habitation, such decided evidence of neglect and disorder was impressed upon both the exterior and the interior of the hovel; nevertheless, in this hovel lived Davidka Byélui and all his family.
At the present moment, notwithstanding the heat of the June day, Davidka, with his head covered by his sheep-skin,32 was fast asleep, curled up on one corner of the oven. The panic-stricken hen, skipping up on the oven, and growing more and more agitated, took up her position on Davidka's back, but did not awaken him.
Nekhliudof, seeing no one in the hovel, was about to go, when a prolonged humid sigh betrayed the sleeper.33
"Holloa! who's there?" cried the prince.
A second prolonged sigh was heard from the oven.
"Who's there? Come here!"
Still another sigh, a sort of a bellow, and a heavy yawn responded to the prince's call.
"Well, who are you?"
Something moved slightly on the oven. The skirt of a torn sheep-skin34 was lifted; one huge leg in a dilapidated boot was put down, then another, and finally Davidka's entire figure emerged. He sat up on the oven, and rubbed his eyes drowsily and morosely with his fist.
Slowly shaking his head, and yawning, he looked down into the hut, and, seeing the prince, began to make greater haste than before; but still his motions were so slow, that Nekhliudof had time to walk back and forth three times from the puddle to the loom before Davidka got down from the oven.
Davidka Byélui or David White was white in reality: his hair, and his body, and his face all were perfectly white.
He was tall and very stout, but stout as peasants are wont to be, that is, not in the waist alone, but in the whole body. His stoutness, however, was of a peculiar flabby, unhealthy kind. His rather comely face, with pale-blue good-natured eyes, and a wide trimmed beard, bore the impress of ill health. There was not the slightest trace of tan or blood: it was of a uniform yellowish ashen tint, with pale livid circles under the eyes, quite as though his face were stuffed with fat or bloated.
His hands were puffy and yellow, like the hands of men afflicted with dropsy, and they wore a growth of fine white hair. He was so drowsy that he could scarcely open his eyes or cease from staggering and yawning.
"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself," began Nekhliudof, "sleeping in the very best part of the day,35 when you ought to be attending to your work, when you haven't any corn?"
As Davidka little by little shook off his drowsiness, and began to realize that it was the prince who was standing before him, he folded his arms across his stomach, hung his head, inclining it a trifle to one side, and did not move a limb or say a word; but the expression of his face and the pose of his whole body seemed to say, "I know, I know; it is an old story with me. Well, strike me, if it must be: I will endure it."
He evidently was anxious for the prince to get through speaking and give him his thrashing as quickly as possible, even if he struck him severely on his swollen cheeks, and then leave him in peace.
Perceiving that Davidka did not understand him, Nekhliudof endeavored by various questions to rouse the peasant from his vexatiously obstinate silence.
"Why have you asked me for wood when you have enough to last you a whole month here, and you haven't had any thing to do? What?"
Davidka still remained silent, and did not move.
"Well, answer me."
Davidka muttered something, and blinked his white eyelashes.
"You must go to work, brother. What will become of you if you don't work? Now you have no grain, and what's the reason of it? Because your land is badly ploughed, and not harrowed, and no seed put in at the right time, – all from laziness. You asked me for grain: well, let us suppose that I gave it to you, so as to keep you from starving to death, still it is not becoming to do so. Whose grain do I give you? whose do you think? Answer me, – whose grain do I give you?" demanded Nekhliudof obstinately.
"The Lord's," muttered Davidka, raising his eyes timidly and questioningly.
"But where did the Lord's grain come from? Think for yourself, who ploughed for it? who harrowed? who planted it? who harvested it? The peasants, hey? Just look here: if the Lord's grain is given to the peasants, then those peasants who work most will get most; but you work less than anybody. You are complained about on all sides. You work less than all the others, and yet you ask for more of the Lord's grain than all the rest. Why should it be given to you, and not to the others? Now, if all, like you, lay on their backs, it would not be long before everybody in the world died of starvation. Brother, you've got to labor. This is disgraceful. Do you hear, David?"
"I hear you," said the other slowly through his teeth.
X
At
Six
Literally, "middle of the white day."
