At this moment from behind the corner of the station suddenly appeared a crowd of workmen in bark shoes, wearing sheepskin coats and carrying bags on their backs. The workmen went up to the nearest carriage with soft yet determined steps, and were about to get in, but were at once driven away by a guard. Without stopping, the workmen passed on, hurrying and jostling one another, to the next carriage and began getting in, catching their bags against the corners and door of the carriage, but another guard caught sight of them from the door of the station, and shouted at them severely. The workmen, who had already got in, hurried out again and went on, with the same soft and firm steps, still further towards Nekhlúdoff’s carriage. A guard was again going to stop them, but Nekhlúdoff said there was plenty of room inside, and that they had better get in. They obeyed and got in, followed by Nekhlúdoff.
The workmen were about to take their seats, when the gentleman with the cockade and the two ladies, looking at this attempt to settle in their carriage as a personal insult to themselves, indignantly protested and wanted to turn them out. The workmen—there were twenty of them, old men and quite young ones, all of them wearied, sunburnt, with haggard faces—began at once to move on through the carriage, catching the seats, the walls, and the doors with their bags. They evidently felt they had offended in some way, and seemed ready to go on indefinitely wherever they were ordered to go.
“Where are you pushing to, you fiends? Sit down here,” shouted another guard they met.
“Voilà encore des nouvelles,” exclaimed the younger of the two ladies, quite convinced that she would attract Nekhlúdoff’s notice by her good French.
The other lady with the bracelets kept sniffing and making faces, and remarked something about how pleasant it was to sit with smelly peasants.
The workmen, who felt the joy and calm experienced by people who have escaped some kind of danger, threw off their heavy bags with a movement of their shoulders and stowed them away under the seats.
The gardener had left his own seat to talk with Tarás, and now went back, so that there were two unoccupied seats opposite and one next to Tarás. Three of the workmen took these seats, but when Nekhlúdoff came up to them, in his gentleman’s clothing, they got so confused that they rose to go away, but Nekhlúdoff asked them to stay, and himself sat down on the arm of the seat, by the passage down the middle of the carriage.
One of the workmen, a man of about fifty, exchanged a surprised and even frightened look with a young man. That Nekhlúdoff, instead of scolding and driving them away, as was natural to a gentleman, should give up his seat to them, astonished and perplexed them. They even feared that this might have some evil result for them.
However, they soon noticed that there was no underlying plot when they heard Nekhlúdoff talking quite simply with Tarás, and they grew quiet and told one of the lads to sit down on his bag and give his seat to Nekhlúdoff. At first the elderly workman who sat opposite Nekhlúdoff shrank and drew back his legs for fear of touching the gentleman, but after a while he grew quite friendly, and in talking to him and Tarás even slapped Nekhlúdoff on the knee when he wanted to draw special attention to what he was saying.
He told them all about his position and his work in the peat bogs, whence he was now returning home. He had been working there for two and a half months, and was bringing home his wages, which only came to ten roubles, since part had been paid beforehand when he was hired. They worked, as he explained, up to their knees in water from sunrise to sunset, with two hours’ interval for dinner.
“Those who are not used to it find it hard, of course,” he said; “but when one’s hardened it doesn’t matter, if only the food is right. At first the food was bad. Later the people complained, and they got good food, and it was easy to work.”
Then he told them how, during twenty-eight years he went out to work, and sent all his earnings home. First to his father, then to his eldest brother, and now to his nephew, who was at the head of the household. On himself he spent only two or three roubles of the fifty or sixty he earned a year, just for luxuries—tobacco and matches.
“I’m a sinner, when tired I even drink a little vodka sometimes,” he added, with a guilty smile.
Then he told them how the women did the work at home, and how the contractor had treated them to half a pail of vodka before they started today, how one of them had died, and another was returning home ill. The sick workman he was talking about was in a corner of the same carriage. He was a young lad, with a pale, sallow face and bluish lips. He was evidently tormented by intermittent fever. Nekhlúdoff went up to him, but the lad looked up with such a severe and suffering expression that Nekhlúdoff did not care to bother him with questions, but advised the elder man to give him quinine, and wrote down the name of the medicine. He wished to give him some money, but the old workman said he would pay for it himself.
“Well, much as I have travelled, I have never met such a gentleman before. Instead of punching your head, he actually gives up his place to you,” said the old man to Tarás. “It seems there are all sorts of gentlefolk, too.”
“Yes, this is quite a new and different world,” thought Nekhlúdoff, looking at these spare, sinewy, limbs, coarse, homemade garments, and sunburnt, kindly, though weary-looking faces, and feeling himself surrounded on all
