Peasant Women

In the village of Raybuzh, directly opposite the church, stands a two-story house on a stone foundation with an iron roof. On the lower floor lives the master himself with his family, Filipp Ivanov Katin, by nickname Dyudya, while on the upper floor – very hot in summer and very cold in winter – passing officials, merchants, and landowners put up for the night. Dyudya leases land, keeps a tavern on the high road, trades in tar, honey, cattle, and magpies, and has already scraped together some eight thousand roubles, which lie in a bank in town.

His eldest son Fyodor works as a senior mechanic at a factory and, as the peasants say of him, has gone so far up in the world that he’s now out of reach; Fyodor’s wife Sofya, a plain and sickly woman, lives at home with her father-in-law, weeps continually, and goes to the hospital for treatment every Sunday. Dyudya’s second son, hunchbacked little Alyoshka, lives at home with his father. He was recently married off to Varvara, who was taken from a poor family; she is a young woman, pretty, healthy, and a bit of a coquette. When officials and merchants put up for the night, they always insist that it be Varvara who brings the samovar and makes up the beds.

One June evening, as the sun was setting and the air smelled of hay, warm dung, and fresh milk, a plain cart drove into Dyudya’s yard with three people in it: a man of about thirty in a canvas suit, beside him a boy of seven or eight in a long black frock coat with big bone buttons, and a young fellow in a red shirt driving.

The fellow unharnessed the horses and led them out into the street to walk them, while the traveler washed, said a prayer facing the church, then spread a mat by the cart and sat down to supper with the boy; he ate unhurriedly, with dignity, and Dyudya, who had seen many travelers in his time, recognized in his manner a serious, businesslike man who knew his own worth.

Dyudya sat on the porch in his waistcoat alone, without a cap, waiting for the traveler to start talking. He was used to travelers telling all kinds of stories in the evening before turning in, and he liked it. His old woman Afanasyevna and his daughter-in-law Sofya were milking the cows under the shed; the other daughter-in-law, Varvara, sat at the open window upstairs, eating sunflower seeds.

"That boy there – your son, is he?" Dyudya asked the traveler.

"No, adopted – an orphan. I took him in for the good of my soul."

They fell to talking. The traveler proved to be a chatty and eloquent man, and Dyudya learned from the conversation that he was a townsman, a houseowner, that his name was Matvei Savvich, that he was on his way now to look over some orchards he leased from German colonists, and that the boy was called Kuzka. The evening was hot and close, and no one felt like sleeping. When it grew dark and pale stars had begun to blink here and there in the sky, Matvei Savvich began telling how he had come to have Kuzka. Afanasyevna and Sofya stood a little way off and listened, while Kuzka went off toward the gate.

"It’s an exceedingly detailed story, grandfather," Matvei Savvich began, "and if I were to tell you everything just as it happened, a whole night wouldn’t be enough. About ten years back, on our street, right next door to me, in the little house where the candle factory and the oil mill are now, there lived Marfa Simonovna Kapluntseva, an old widow, and she had two sons: one served as a conductor on the railway, and the other, Vasya, my age, lived at home with his mother. The late old man Kapluntsev had kept horses, five teams, and sent out carters around the town; the widow didn’t give up the business, and she ran the carters no worse than her late husband, so that on some days they’d bring in a clear five roubles. And the lad had his own little income too. He bred pedigree pigeons and sold them to fanciers; he’d stand on the roof all the time, tossing a broom up and whistling, and his tumblers up under the very sky, and still it wasn’t enough for him, he wanted them higher yet. He caught siskins and starlings, built cages... A trifling business, but look, in a month it would bring in ten roubles by trifles. Well, sir, as time went on, the old woman’s legs gave out, and she took to her bed. On account of that fact the house was left without a mistress, and that’s the same as a man without an eye. The old woman fretted and made up her mind to marry off her Vasya. They called in a matchmaker at once, this and that, women’s talk, and off our Vasya went to look at brides. He got engaged to Mashenka, the widow Samokhvalikha’s daughter. Without much deliberating, they gave their blessing and settled the whole business in a week. The girl was young, about seventeen, small, a bit dumpy, but fair-faced and pleasant, with all the qualities of a young lady; and the dowry wasn’t bad either – some five hundred roubles in cash, a little cow, a featherbed... And the old woman, her heart must have told her something, for on the very third day after the wedding she departed for the heavenly Jerusalem, where there is neither sickness nor sighing. The young couple held the memorial meal and settled down to live. They lived together splendidly for about half a year, and then suddenly a new misfortune. Trouble came, open the gates: Vasya was called up to draw lots at the induction board. They took him, poor fellow, into the army and didn’t even give him any exemption. Shaved his forehead and marched him off to the Kingdom of Poland. God’s will, nothing to be done about it. When he said goodbye to his wife in the yard – that was all right, but when he took one last look at the hayloft with the pigeons, he burst into a flood of tears. It was pitiful to watch. At first, so that Mashenka wouldn’t be lonely, she took her mother in to live with her; the mother stayed until after the birth, when this very Kuzka was born, and then went off to Oboyan to another daughter, also married, and Mashenka was left alone with the baby. Five carters, all of them drunkards, unruly folk; horses, carts, and then look, a fence has fallen down or soot’s caught fire in a chimney – not a woman’s business to handle, and so she took to coming to me next door about every little thing. Well, I’d go over, sort things out, give advice... Naturally, it wasn’t without its side – you’d drop into the house, drink some tea, have a talk. I was a young man then, a thinking man, I liked talking about all sorts of subjects, and she too was educated and polite. She dressed neatly and in summer walked about with a parasol. Sometimes I’d start in on something religious, or about politics, and she’d be flattered, and treat me to tea and jam... In short, not to draw it out, I’ll tell you, grandfather, before a year was out the unclean spirit, the enemy of mankind, had led me astray. I began to notice that on any day I didn’t go to see her, I felt somehow not myself, bored. And I was forever thinking up excuses to go over. ’It’s time you put in your winter window frames,’ I’d say, and spend the whole day cooling my heels at her place, fitting frames, and contriving to leave two more frames for the next day. ’We ought to count Vasya’s pigeons, in case any are missing’ – and so on, always something. We’d talk across the fence for hours, and in the end, so as not to have so far to walk, I made a little gate in the fence. In this world there’s much evil and every kind of mischief from the female sex. Not only we sinners, but holy men too have been led astray. Mashenka didn’t drive me off. Instead of remembering her husband and keeping herself virtuous, she fell in love with me. I began to notice that she was bored too, and that she was forever pacing by the fence and peering through the cracks into my yard. My head began to spin with fancies. On the Thursday of Easter week I go out early in the morning, at first light, to the market, and pass by her gate, and the unclean one is right there; I look – her wicket has a sort of little grille at the top – and there she is, standing in the middle of the yard, already awake, feeding the ducks. I couldn’t help myself and called out to her. She came up and looked at me through the grille. A white little face, tender eyes, still sleepy... I liked her very much, and I began paying her compliments, as if we weren’t standing by a gate but at a name-day party, and she blushed, laughed, and kept looking straight into my eyes without blinking. I lost my head and began declaring my feelings of love to her... She unlocked the gate, let me in, and from that morning we began living as man and wife."

From the street the hunchbacked Alyoshka came into the yard and, out of breath, without looking at anyone, ran into the house; a minute later he ran out again with a concertina and, jingling the copper coins in his pocket, cracking sunflower seeds as he went, disappeared beyond the gate.

"And who’s that of yours?" asked Matvei Savvich.

"My son Aleksei," answered Dyudya. "Gone off carousing, the rascal. God punished him with a hump, so we don’t press him too hard."

"And he’s always off carousing with the lads, always carousing," sighed Afanasyevna. "We married him before the last Shrovetide, thought it would be for the better, but if anything he’s grown worse."

"No good came of it. Only made some other man’s girl happy for nothing," said Dyudya.

Somewhere behind the church a splendid, mournful song began. The words couldn’t be made out, only the voices were heard: two tenors and a bass. Because everyone listened, the yard grew very quiet... Two voices suddenly broke off the song with a peal of laughter, while the third, the tenor, went on singing and took so high a note that everyone involuntarily looked upward, as though the voice, in its height, were reaching heaven itself. Varvara came out of the house and, shading her eyes with her hand as if from the sun, looked toward the church.

"That’s priest-na-strastnoy-nedele/">the priest’s sons with the schoolteacher," she said.

Again all three voices began singing together. Matvei Savvich sighed and went on:

"Such were the doings, grandfather. About two years later we got a letter from Vasya in Warsaw. He wrote that his superiors were sending him home to recover. Not well. By that time I’d knocked the foolishness out of my head, and a good match was already being arranged for me, and I only didn’t know how to break off with the little love affair. Every day I meant to have it out with Mashenka but didn’t know from which side to approach her, so there wouldn’t be any woman’s shrieking. The letter freed my hands. We read it together, Mashenka and I; she went white as snow, and I said: ’Thank God, now, I said, you’ll be a wife to your husband again.’ And she says to me: ’I won’t live with him.’ ’But he’s your husband, isn’t he?’ I say. ’Easy for you to say... I never loved him and went to him against my will. My mother made me.’ ’Now, I say, don’t wriggle out of it, you fool, tell me: were you married to him in church or weren’t you?’ ’I was married,’ she says, ’but I love you and will live with you till my dying day. Let people laugh... I don’t care...’ ’You,’ I say, ’are a churchgoing woman and you’ve read the Scriptures – what’s written there?’"

"Given to a husband, she must live with her husband," said Dyudya.

"’Wife and husband are one flesh. We have sinned, I say, you and I, and enough of it, we must have a conscience and fear God. Let’s confess our guilt, I say, before Vasya, he’s a mild, timid man – he won’t kill us. And besides, I say, it’s better in this world to suffer torment from a lawful husband than to gnash your teeth at the Last Judgment.’ The woman won’t listen, stands her ground, and there’s nothing to be done! ’I love you’ – and nothing more. Vasya arrived on the Saturday just before Trinity, early in the morning. I could see everything over the fence: he ran into the house, and a minute later came out with Kuzka in his arms, laughing and crying, kissing Kuzka, but himself glancing at the hayloft – sorry to put Kuzka down, and drawn to the pigeons too. A tender man, sensitive. The day passed peacefully, quiet and modest. They rang for the vigil, and I thought: tomorrow’s Trinity, why haven’t they decked out the gate and fence with greenery? Something’s not right, I thought. I went over to them. I look, and there he is, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, his eyes rolling like a drunk man’s, tears running down his cheeks and his hands shaking; he’s taking bread rings, beads, gingerbread, and all sorts of presents out of a bundle and flinging them about the floor. Kuzka – he was three years old then – crawls about near him, chewing gingerbread, and Mashenka stands by the stove, pale, all a-tremble, muttering: ’I’m not your wife, I don’t want to live with you’ – and all sorts of foolishness. I bowed at Vasya’s feet and said: ’We’re guilty before you, Vasily Maksimych, forgive us for Christ’s sake!’ Then I got up and said these words to Mashenka: ’You, Marya Semyonovna, I say, must now wash Vasily Maksimych’s feet and drink the washings. And be an obedient wife to him, and pray to God for me, that he, I say, in his mercy, forgive me my transgression.’ As if I’d had a revelation from a heavenly angel, I read her a lecture and spoke so movingly that I was even brought to tears myself. Well, about two days later Vasya comes to me. ’I forgive you,’ he says, ’Matyusha, and my wife too, God be with you both. She’s a soldier’s wife, it’s a woman’s way, she’s young, it’s hard to keep oneself in check. She’s not the first, nor the last. Only, he says, I ask you to go on living as though nothing had happened between you, and don’t let it show, and I, he says, will try to please her in everything, so that she’ll come to love me again.’ He shook my hand, drank some tea, and left in good spirits. Well, I thought, thank God, and I felt cheerful that everything had turned out so well. But no sooner was Vasya out of the yard than Mashenka came. A regular punishment! Hanging on my neck, crying and begging: ’For God’s sake don’t leave me, I can’t live without you.’"

"What a low woman!" sighed Dyudya.

"I shouted at her, stamped my feet, dragged her out into the entryway and bolted the door. Go, I shout, to your husband! Don’t shame me before people, fear God! And every day it was the same story. Once, in the morning, I’m standing in my yard by the stable, mending a bridle. Suddenly I see her running through the gate into my yard, barefoot, in nothing but a petticoat, and straight at me; she grabs hold of the bridle with both hands, all smeared with tar, shaking, crying... ’I can’t live with him, the hateful one, I’ve no strength left! If you don’t love me, better kill me.’ I got angry and struck her once or twice with the bridle, and at that moment Vasya comes running in through the gate and shouts in a desperate voice: ’Don’t beat her! Don’t beat her!’ And he himself ran up and, as if gone mad, swung and set to beating her with his fists with all his might, then knocked her to the ground and began trampling her with his feet; I tried to hold him off, and he grabbed the reins and set to with the reins. He beats her and keeps squealing like a colt: gee-gee-gee!"

"Take the reins to you, and serve you right..." muttered Varvara, moving away. "You’ve done our sister in, damn you all..."

"Quiet, you!" Dyudya shouted at her. "Mare!"

"Gee-gee-gee!" Matvei Savvich went on. "A carter came running from his yard, I called my own hired man, and the three of us together got Mashenka away from him and led her home under the arms. What a disgrace! That same evening I went to see how she was. She’s lying in bed, all wrapped up, in compresses, only her eyes and nose showing, staring at the ceiling. I say: ’Good evening, Marya Semyonovna!’ Silence. And Vasya’s sitting in the other room, holding his head and crying: ’I’m a villain! I’ve ruined my own life! Send me death, O Lord!’ I sat with Mashenka about half an hour and read her a lecture. Frightened her a bit. The righteous, I say, will go to paradise in the next world, and you to the fires of hell, along with all the harlots... Don’t resist your husband, go bow at his feet. But she didn’t say a single word, didn’t even blink, as if I were talking to a post. The next day Vasya fell ill, something like cholera, and by evening, I hear, he died. They buried him. Mashenka wasn’t at the cemetery – didn’t want to show people her shameless face and the bruises. And soon there began to be talk among the townsfolk that Vasya hadn’t died a natural death, that Mashenka had poisoned him. It reached the authorities. They dug Vasya up, opened him up, and found arsenic in his stomach. The matter was as clear as day; the police came and took Mashenka away, and with her Kuzma the pauper here. They put her in prison. The woman had played her game to the end, God punished her... About eight months later they tried her. I remember, she sat on the little bench in a white kerchief and a gray smock, thin, pale, sharp-eyed, pitiful to look at. Behind her a soldier with a rifle. She wouldn’t confess. Some at the trial said she’d poisoned her husband, others argued the husband had poisoned himself out of grief. I was among the witnesses. When they questioned me, I told everything according to my conscience. It’s her sin, I said. No use hiding it, she didn’t love her husband, she had a temper... The trial began in the morning and by night such a verdict was handed down: to exile her to hard labor in Siberia for thirteen years. After that verdict Mashenka sat about three months more in our town jail. I used to go to see her and, out of common humanity, brought her tea and sugar. And she, whenever she saw me, would start trembling all over, waving her hands and muttering: ’Go away! Go away!’ And she’d press Kuzka to herself, as if afraid I might take him from her. So, I’d say, this is what you’ve come to! Ah, Masha, Masha, you lost soul! You wouldn’t listen to me when I taught you sense, now you can weep for it. It’s your own fault, I say, blame yourself. I read her a lecture, and she just says: ’Go away! Go away!’ – and huddles with Kuzka against the wall and trembles. When they sent her off from us to the provincial town, I went to see her off at the station and slipped a rouble into her bundle, for the good of her soul. But she never reached Siberia... In the provincial town she came down with a fever and died in the jail."

"A dog’s death for a dog," said Dyudya.

"They sent Kuzka back home... I thought it over, thought it over, and took him in myself. What of it? Even if he’s a jailbird’s offspring, still he’s a living soul, a baptized one... I felt sorry for him. I’ll make a shop clerk of him, and if I have no children of my own, I’ll set him up as a merchant. Now, wherever I go, I take him with me: let him get used to it."

While Matvei Savvich was telling his story, Kuzka sat the whole time by the gate on a little stone and, propping his head in both hands, gazed at the sky; in the darkness, from a distance, he looked like a tree stump.

"Kuzka, go to sleep!" Matvei Savvich shouted to him.

"Yes, it’s time," said Dyudya, getting up; he yawned loudly and added: "Everyone wants to live by his own wits, won’t listen, and see what comes of it."

Over the yard the moon was already sailing across the sky; it moved swiftly in one direction, while the clouds beneath it moved in the other; the clouds went off further, but the moon still hung over the yard. Matvei Savvich said a prayer facing the church and, wishing everyone good night, lay down on the ground by the cart. Kuzka too said a prayer, lay down in the cart, and covered himself with the frock coat; to make himself comfortable he pressed out a little hollow for himself in the hay and curled up so that his elbows touched his knees. From the yard one could see Dyudya, down below, light a candle, put on his spectacles, and stand in the corner with a book. He read for a long time and bowed low again and again.

The travelers fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sofya came up to the cart and began looking at Kuzka.

"The little orphan’s asleep," said the old woman. "Thin, skinny, nothing but bones. No mother of his own, and no one to feed him properly."

"My Grishutka must be about two years older," said Sofya. "Living at the factory in bondage, without a mother. His master beats him too, I shouldn’t wonder. When I looked at this boy just now, I remembered my own Grishutka – my heart bled."

A minute passed in silence.

"I dare say he doesn’t remember his mother," said the old woman.

"How could he remember!"

And large tears began to flow from Sofya’s eyes.

"Curled up like a little roll..." she said, sobbing and laughing at once from tenderness and pity. "My poor little orphan."

Kuzka started and opened his eyes. He saw before him a plain, wrinkled, tear-stained face, and beside it another, an old woman’s, toothless, with a sharp chin and hooked nose, and above them the bottomless sky with running clouds and the moon, and he cried out in terror. Sofya cried out too; an echo answered them both, and a restlessness swept through the sultry air; nearby a watchman began knocking, a dog began barking. Matvei Savvich muttered something in his sleep and turned onto his other side.

Late in the evening, when Dyudya, and the old woman, and the neighboring watchman had all fallen asleep, Sofya went out beyond the gate and sat down on the bench. She felt stifled, and her head ached from crying. The street was wide and long; to the right about two versts, to the left just as far, and no end to it in sight. The moon had already left the yard and stood behind the church. One side of the street was flooded with moonlight, while the other lay black with shadow; the long shadows of the poplars and the birdhouses stretched across the whole street, and the shadow of the church, black and fearsome, lay broad and swallowed up Dyudya’s gate and half the house. It was deserted and quiet. From the end of the street, now and then, came faint, barely audible music; it must have been Alyoshka playing his concertina.

In the shadow by the churchyard fence someone was walking, and it was impossible to tell whether it was a person or a cow, or perhaps there was no one there at all, and it was only a large bird rustling in the trees. But then a figure came out of the shadow, stopped, and said something in a man’s voice, then vanished into the lane by the church. A little later, some ten yards from the gate, another figure appeared; it walked from the church straight toward the gate and, seeing Sofya on the bench, stopped.

"Varvara, is that you?" asked Sofya.

"And what if it is."

It was Varvara. She stood a moment, then came up to the bench and sat down.

"Where were you walking?" asked Sofya.

Varvara made no answer.

"Take care you don’t bring some grief on yourself, young wife," said Sofya. "Did you hear how they beat Mashenka, with their feet and with the reins? Mind that doesn’t happen to you."

"And what if it does."

Varvara laughed into her kerchief and said in a whisper:

"I’ve just been out walking with the priest’s son."

"You’re talking nonsense."

"As God’s my witness."

"That’s a sin!" whispered Sofya.

"And what if it is... What’s there to be sorry about? A sin’s a sin, but better to be struck dead by lightning than live a life like this. I’m young, healthy, and my husband’s a hunchback, hateful, bad-tempered, worse than that damned Dyudya. When I was a girl I never ate my fill, went barefoot, and I left those wretches behind, tempted by Alyoshka’s wealth, and landed in bondage like a fish in a trap, and I’d sooner sleep with a viper than with that mangy Alyoshka. And what about your life? I wouldn’t wish to see it with my own eyes. Your Fyodor drove you off from the factory back to his father, and got himself another woman; they took your little boy from you and put him into bondage too. You work like a horse and never hear a kind word. Better to spend your whole life unmarried, better to take fifty-copeck pieces from priests’ sons, go begging for alms, better to throw yourself headfirst down a well..."

"That’s a sin!" Sofya whispered again.

"And what if it is."

Somewhere behind the church the same three voices began singing the mournful song again: two tenors and a bass. And again the words couldn’t be made out.

"Night owls..." Varvara laughed.

And she began telling, in a whisper, how she went out walking at night with the priest’s son, and what he said to her, and what sort of friends he had, and how she’d walked out with passing officials and merchants too. The mournful song brought a breath of free living, and Sofya began to laugh; it felt sinful, and frightening, and sweet to listen, and she envied Varvara, and was sorry for herself, that she hadn’t sinned when she was young and pretty...

In the old church by the graveyard the midnight bell struck.

"Time for bed," said Sofya, rising, "or Dyudya might notice we’re gone."

The two of them walked quietly back into the yard.

"I left and didn’t hear what he told about Mashenka after that," said Varvara, spreading her bedding under the window.

"She died in prison, he said. Poisoned her husband."

Varvara lay down beside Sofya, thought a moment, and said quietly:

"I’d do away with my Alyoshka and never feel sorry."

"You’re talking nonsense, God forgive you."

When Sofya was falling asleep, Varvara pressed close to her and whispered in her ear:

"Let’s do away with Dyudya and Alyoshka!"

Sofya started and said nothing, then opened her eyes and gazed a long time, without blinking, at the sky.

"People will find out," she said.

"They won’t. Dyudya’s old already, it’s time for him to die, and as for Alyoshka, they’ll say he drank himself to death."

"It’s frightening... God will strike us down."

"And what if he does..."

Neither of them slept, both lay thinking in silence.

"I’m cold," said Sofya, beginning to shiver all over. "Morning must be coming soon... Are you asleep?"

"No... Don’t listen to me, my dove," Varvara began whispering. "I’m angry at them, damn them, and don’t even know what I’m saying myself. Sleep, the dawn’s already breaking... Sleep..."

Both fell silent, grew calm, and soon fell asleep.

The old woman woke earliest of all. She woke Sofya, and the two of them went under the shed to milk the cows. Hunchbacked Alyoshka came in, thoroughly drunk, without his concertina; his chest and knees were covered with dust and straw – he must have fallen down on the way home. Swaying, he went under the shed and, without undressing, collapsed into a sledge and at once began snoring. When the rising sun set the crosses on the church ablaze with bright flame, then the windows, and shadows of the trees and the well-sweep stretched across the dewy grass of the yard, Matvei Savvich jumped up and bustled into action.

"Kuzka, get up!" he shouted. "Time to harness! Quick now!"

The morning bustle began. A young Jewish woman, in a brown dress with flounces, led a horse into the yard to water it. The well-sweep creaked plaintively, the bucket clattered... Kuzka, sleepy, listless, covered with dew, sat on the cart, lazily putting on his little frock coat, listening to the water splashing from the bucket in the well, and shivering with cold.

"Auntie," Matvei Savvich called to Sofya, "give my lad a nudge, tell him to go and harness up!"

And Dyudya at that moment was shouting from the window:

"Sofya, take a kopeck from the Jewess for the watering! They’ve got into the habit of it, the mangy lot."

In the street sheep ran back and forth, bleating; the women shouted at the shepherd, and he played on his pipe, cracked his whip, or answered them in a heavy, husky bass. Three sheep ran into the yard and, unable to find the gate, kept butting against the fence. Roused by the noise, Varvara gathered her bedding into an armful and went off to the house.

"You might at least have driven the sheep out!" the old woman shouted after her. "Fine lady!"

"That’s a good one! I’m going to go working for you, you tyrants," muttered Varvara, going into the house.

They greased the cart and harnessed the horses. Dyudya came out of the house with an abacus in his hands, sat down on the porch, and began reckoning how much was owed by the traveler for lodging, for the oats, and for the watering.

"That’s dear, grandfather, what you’re charging for the oats," said Matvei Savvich.

"If it’s dear, don’t take them. We’re not forcing you, merchant."

When the travelers went to the cart to get in and be off, one circumstance held them up for a minute.

Kuzka’s cap was missing.

"Now where have you gone and put it, you little pig?" Matvei Savvich shouted angrily. "Where is it?"

Kuzka’s face twisted with terror, he rushed about the cart and, not finding it there, ran to the gate, then under the shed. The old woman and Sofya helped him look.

"I’ll tear your ears off!" shouted Matvei Savvich. "You little wretch!"

The cap turned up at the bottom of the cart. Kuzka shook the hay off it with his sleeve, put it on, and, still with a look of terror on his face, as though afraid of being struck from behind, timidly climbed into the cart. Matvei Savvich crossed himself, the fellow tugged at the reins, and the cart, setting off, rolled out of the yard.