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Page 2
So passed a year, at the end of which a little incident befell Gerasim.
The old lady, in whose service he lived as porter, adhered in everything
to the ancient ways, and kept a large number of servants. In her house
were not only laundresses, sempstresses, carpenters, tailors and
tailoresses, there was even a harness-maker--he was reckoned as a
veterinary surgeon, too,--and a doctor for the servants; there was a
household doctor for the mistress; there was, lastly, a shoemaker, by
name Kapiton Klimov, a sad drunkard. Klimov regarded himself as an
injured creature, whose merits were unappreciated, a cultivated man from
Petersburg, who ought not to be living in Moscow without occupation--in
the wilds, so to speak; and if he drank, as he himself expressed it
emphatically, with a blow on his chest, it was sorrow drove him to it.
So one day his mistress had a conversation about him with her head
steward, Gavrila, a man whom, judging solely from his little yellow eyes
and nose like a duck's beak, fate itself, it seemed, had marked out as a
person in authority. The lady expressed her regret at the corruption of
the morals of Kapiton, who had, only the evening before, been picked up
somewhere in the street.
"Now, Gavrila," she observed, all of a sudden, "now, if we were to marry
him, what do you think, perhaps he would be steadier?"
"Why not marry him, indeed, 'm? He could be married, 'm," answered
Gavrila, "and it would be a very good thing, to be sure, 'm."
"Yes; only who is to marry him?"
"Ay, 'm. But that's at your pleasure, 'm. He may, any way, so to say, be
wanted for something; he can't be turned adrift altogether."
"I fancy he likes Tatiana."
Gavrila was on the point of making some reply, but he shut his lips
tightly.
"Yes! . . . let him marry Tatiana," the lady decided, taking a pinch of
snuff complacently, "Do you hear?"
"Yes, 'm," Gavrila articulated, and he withdrew.
Returning to his own room (it was in a little lodge, and was almost
filled up with metal-bound trunks), Gavrila first sent his wife away,
and then sat down at the window and pondered. His mistress's unexpected
arrangement had clearly put him in a difficulty. At last he got up and
sent to call Kapiton. Kapiton made his appearance. . . But before
reporting their conversation to the reader, we consider it not out of
place to relate in few words who was this Tatiana, whom it was to be
Kapiton's lot to marry, and why the great lady's order had disturbed the
steward.
Tatiana, one of the laundresses referred to above (as a trained and
skilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), was a woman
of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles
on the left cheek are regarded as of evil omen in Russia--a token of
unhappy life. . . Tatiana could not boast of her good luck. From her
earliest youth she had been badly treated; she had done the work of two,
and had never known affection; she had been poorly clothed and had
received the smallest wages. Relations she had practically none; an
uncle she had once had, a butler, left behind in the country as useless,
and other uncles of hers were peasants--that was all. At one time she
had passed for a beauty, but her good looks were very soon over. In
disposition, she was very meek, or, rather, scared; towards herself, she
felt perfect indifference; of others, she stood in mortal dread; she
thought of nothing but how to get her work done in good time, never
talked to any one, and trembled at the very name of her mistress, though
the latter scarcely knew her by sight. When Gerasim was brought from the
country, she was ready to die with fear on seeing his huge figure, tried
all she could to avoid meeting him, even dropped her eyelids when
sometimes she chanced to run past him, hurrying from the house to the
laundry. Gerasim at first paid no special attention to her, then he used
to smile when she came his way, then he began even to stare admiringly
at her, and at last he never took his eyes off her. She took his fancy,
whether by the mild expression of her face or the timidity of her
movements, who can tell? So one day she was stealing across the yard,
with a starched dressing-jacket of her mistress's carefully poised on her
outspread fingers . . . some one suddenly grasped her vigorously by the
elbow; she turned round and fairly screamed; behind her stood Gerasim.
With a foolish smile, making inarticulate caressing grunts, he held out
to her a gingerbread cock with gold tinsel on his tail and wings. She
was about to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly into her hand, shook
his head, walked away, and turning round, once more grunted something
very affectionately to her.
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