will be returning soon. Have you the money ready?
Pras. The money? Yes, yes! I will get it ready. It is not here. Come, Varvára. [They put on coats and shawls.]
Ast. If it is in the bank we must wait till the daytime.
Pras. My money in the bank? I am not so foolish. [She lights the lantern.] Get the spade, Varvára. [Varvára goes out and fetches a spade.] It is buried in the field, in a place that no one knows but myself.
Ast. Are you not afraid to go out?
Pras. Afraid? No, I am not afraid.
Fomá. But your supper—you have not eaten your supper.
Pras. How can I think of supper at such a moment?
Fomá. No supper? Oh, what a wonderful thing is a mother's love!
Pras. [to Astéryi and Fomá]. Stay here till we return.
Var. [drawing back]. I am afraid, Praskóvya Petróvna.
Pras. Nonsense, there is nothing to fear.
Fomá. [throwing his coat over his back]. I will go with you to the corner of the street.
Ast. [shuffling the cards]. I must try one for myself.
Fomá. [mockingly]. What's the use? It will never come out.
Ast. [cheerfully]. Oh, it never does to be discouraged.
[Exeunt Praskóvya, Varvára, and Fomá. Astéryi plays patience. Everything is silent and monotonous again. The clock ticks.]
Fomá. [reënters, dancing and singing roguishly to the tune of the Russian folksong, "Vo sadú li v vogoróde"]:
In the shade there walked a maid
As fair as any flower,
Picking posies all of roses
For to deck her bower.
Ast. Don't make such a noise.
Fomá. I can't help it. I'm gay. I have a sympathetic soul. I rejoice with Praskóvya Petróvna. I think she is mad, but I rejoice with her.
Ast. So do I; but I don't disturb others on that account.
Fomá. Come, old grumbler, have a mouthful of vodka. [Melodramatically.] A glass of wine with Cæsar Borgia! [Singing.]
As she went adown the bent
She met a merry fellow,
He was drest in all his best
In red and blue and yellow.
So he was a saint, was he, that son of hers? Well, well, of what advantage is that? Saints are not so easy to love as sinners. You and I are not saints, are we, Astéryi Ivanovitch?
Ast. I do not care to parade my halo in public.
Fomá. Oh, as for me, I keep mine in a box under the bed; it only frightens people. Do you think he would have remained a saint all this time if he had lived?
Ast. Who can say?
Fomá. Nonsense! He would have become like the rest of us. Then why make all this fuss about him? Why go on for twenty years sacrificing her own life to a fantastic image?
Ast. Why not, if it please her to do so?
Fomá. Say what you please, but all the same she is mad; yes, Praskóvya is mad.
Ast. We call every one mad who is faithful to their ideas. If people think only of food and money and clothing we call them sane, but if they have ideas beyond those things we call them mad. I envy Praskóvya. Praskóvya has preserved in her old age what I myself have lost. I, too, had ideas once, but I have been unfaithful to them; they have evaporated and vanished.
Fomá. What ideas were these?
Ast. Liberty! Political regeneration!
Fomá. Ah, yes; you were a sad revolutionary once, I have been told.
Ast. I worshiped Liberty, as Praskóvya worships her Sasha. But I have lived my ideals down in the dull routine of my foolish, aimless life as an office hack, a clerk in the District Council, making copies that no one will ever see of documents that no one ever wants to read.... Suddenly there comes the Revolution; there is fighting in the streets; men raise the red flag; blood flows. I might go forth and strike a blow for that Liberty which I loved twenty years ago. But no, I have become indifferent. I do not care who wins, the Government or the Revolutionaries; it is all the same to me.
Fomá. You are afraid. One gets timid as one gets older.
Ast. Afraid? No. What have I to be afraid of? Death is surely not so much worse than life? No, it is because my idea is dead and cannot be made to live again, while Praskóvya, whose routine as a lodging-house keeper is a hundred times duller than mine, is still faithful to her old idea. Let us not call her mad; let us rather worship her as something holy, for her fidelity to an idea in this wretched little town where ideas are as rare as white ravens.
Fomá. She has no friends to love?
Ast. She has never had any friends; she needed none.
Fomá. She has relatives, I suppose?
Ast. None.
Fomá. What mystery explains this solitude?
Ast. If there is a mystery it is easily guessed. It is an everyday story; the story of a peasant woman betrayed and deserted by a nobleman. She came with her child to this town; and instead of sinking, set herself bravely to work, to win a living for the two of them. She was young and strong then; her work prospered with her.
Fomá. And her son was worthy of her love?
Ast. He was a fine boy—handsome and intelligent. By dint of the fiercest economy she got him a nobleman's education; sent him to the Gymnase, and thence, when he was eighteen, to the University of Moscow. Praskóvya herself cannot read or write, but her boy ... the books on that shelf are the prizes which he won. She thought him a pattern of all the virtues.
Fomá. Aha! now we're coming to it! So he was a sinner after all?
Ast. We are none of us perfect. His friends were ill-chosen. The hard-earned money that Praskóvya thought was spent on University expenses went on many other things—on drink, on women, and on gambling. But he did one good thing—he hid it all safely from his mother. I helped him in that. Together we kept her idea safe through a difficult period. And before he was twenty it was all over—he was dead.
Fomá. Yes, he was murdered by some foreigner, I know.
Ast. By Adámek, a Pole.
Fomá. And what was the motive of the crime?
Ast.
