“That was clever, Pavloushka,” shouted Peredonov. “He got what he deserved.”
“Yes, that was quite proper,” chimed in Varvara. “People like that shouldn’t be let off. You’re a smart young fellow, Pavel Vassilyevitch.”
Volodin, with an air of injured innocence, went on:
“And then he says to me: ‘Each to his trade.’ Then he turns and goes out. That’s all there was to it and nothing else.”
Volodin nevertheless felt himself a hero. Peredonov, to mollify him, gave him a caramel.
A new visitor arrived—Sofya Efimovna Prepolovenskaya, the wife of the forester, a fat woman, with a face half good-natured, half cunning—brisk in her movements. She sat down at the table and asked Volodin slyly:
“Pavel Vassilyevitch, why do you come so often to visit Varvara Dmitrievna?”
“I don’t come to visit Varvara Dmitrievna,” answered Volodin bashfully, “but to see Ardalyon Borisitch.”
“You haven’t yet fallen in love with anyone?” asked Prepolovenskaya with a laugh.
Everyone knew Volodin was looking for a wife with a dowry, offered himself to many and was always rejected. Prepolovenskaya’s joke seemed to him out of place. In a manner resembling that of an injured sheep, he said in a trembling voice:
“If I fell in love, Sofya Efimovna, that wouldn’t concern anyone except my own self and her. And in such an affair you wouldn’t be considered.”
But Prepolovenskaya refused to be suppressed.
“Suppose,” she said, “that you fell in love with Varvara Dmitrievna, who would make jam tarts for Ardalyon Borisitch?”
Volodin again protruded his lips and lifted his eyebrows. He was at a loss what to say.
“Don’t be fainthearted, Pavel Vassilyevitch,” Prepolovenskaya went on. “Why aren’t you engaged? You’re young and handsome.”
“Perhaps Varvara Dmitrievna wouldn’t have me,” said Volodin, sniggering.
“Why shouldn’t she? You’re much too timid!”
“And perhaps I wouldn’t have her,” said Volodin, in desperation. “Perhaps I don’t want to marry other people’s cousins; perhaps I have a cousin of my own in my village.”
He was already beginning to believe that Varvara would marry him. Varvara was angry; she considered Volodin a fool, and moreover, his wages were only three-quarters of Peredonov’s.
Prepolovenskaya wanted to marry Peredonov to her sister, the fat daughter of a priest. That is why she tried to create a quarrel between Peredonov and Varvara.
“Why are you trying to marry us?” asked Varvara, in an irritated way. “You’d better try to marry your little fool of a sister to Pavel Vassilyevitch.”
“Why should I take him from you?” said Prepolovenskaya, jokingly.
Prepolovenskaya’s jests gave a new turn to Peredonov’s slow thoughts, and the erli had already taken possession of his mind. Why did Volodin advise such a dish? Peredonov disliked thinking. He believed at once everything he was told; that was why he began to believe that Volodin was in love with Varvara. He thought: they would entangle Varvara, and then when he left for the inspector’s job, they would poison him on the way with erlis, and Volodin would take his place; he would be buried as Volodin, and Volodin would become inspector. A clever trick!
There was a sudden noise in the passage. Peredonov and Varvara were frightened. Peredonov fixed his screwed-up eyes on the door. Varvara crept up to the parlour door, looked in, then, just as quietly, on tiptoe, balancing her arms and smiling in a distracted way, returned to the table. From the passage came a noise and shrill outcries as if two people were wrestling. Varvara whispered:
“That’s Ershova, frightfully drunk. Natashka won’t let her in and she’s trying to get into the parlour.”
“What shall we do?” asked Peredonov, fearfully.
“I suppose we’d better go into the parlour,” decided Varvara, “so that she shan’t get in here.”
They entered the parlour and closed the door tightly behind them. Varvara went into the passage in the faint hope of restraining the landlady, or of persuading her to sit down in the kitchen. But the insolent woman kept pushing her way in, propped herself up against the doorpost and poured out abusive compliments on the whole company. Peredonov and Varvara fussed about her and tried to make her sit down on a chair near the passage and farther from the dining-room. Varvara brought her from the kitchen, on a tray, vodka, beer and some tarts, but the landlady would not sit nor drink anything and kept on edging towards the dining-room, but she could not exactly find the door. Her face was red, her clothes were disordered, she was filthy and smelt of vodka, even at a distance. She shouted:
“No! You must let me sit at your own table. I’ll not have it on a tray. I want it on a tablecloth. I’m the landlady and I will be respected. Never mind if I’m drunk. I’m at least honest and a good wife to my husband.”
Varvara, smiling at once with contempt and fear, said: “Yes, we know.”
Ershova winked at Varvara, laughed hoarsely and snapped her fingers defiantly. She became more and more arrogant.
“Cousin!” she shouted. “We know the sort of cousin you are. Why doesn’t the Headmaster’s wife come to see you, eh?”
“Don’t make so much noise,” said Varvara.
But Ershova began to shout even louder:
“How dare you order me about? I’m in my own house and I can do what I please. If I like I can have you thrown out so that there’d not even be a smell of you left behind. Only I’m too kindhearted.”
Meanwhile Volodin and Prepolovenskaya sat timidly at the window in silence. Prepolovenskaya smiled slightly, looking at the shrew out of the corner of her eye, but pretended that she was looking into the street. Volodin sat with an injured expression on his face.
Ershova eventually became more good-humoured and gave Varvara a friendly slap on the shoulder, saying with a drunken smile:
“Now listen to me. Put me at your table and treat me like a lady. Then give me some zhamochki,5 and treat your landlady decently. Come, my dear girl!”
“Here are some tarts,” said Varvara.
“I don’t want tarts!” shouted Ershova. “I want some
