“What’s he driving at with all this?” Deniska said to himself.
But Tikhon Ilitch had come to a decision, and wound up: “Yes, and ’tis time you married.”
“So‑oo, that’s it!” said Deniska to himself, and began in a leisurely way to roll himself a cigarette.
“Very good,” he responded, with a barely perceptible trace of sadness, and without raising his eyelashes. “I’ll not resist. I might marry. ’Tis worse to go with the public women.”
“Well, and that’s precisely the point,” put in Tikhon Ilitch, perturbed. “Only, brother, bear in mind that you must make a sensible marriage. ’Tis a good thing to have money on which to rear your children.”
Deniska burst out laughing.
“What are you guffawing about?”
“Why, what you say, of course! Rear! As though they were chickens or pigs.”
“They require food, just as much as chickens and pigs do.”
“And whom shall I marry?” inquired Deniska, with a melancholy smile.
“Whom? Why, anyone you like.”
“You mean the Bride?”
Tikhon Ilitch flushed deeply. “Fool! What’s wrong with the Bride? She’s a peaceable, hardworking woman—”
Deniska remained silent, and picked with his fingernail at one of the tin nailheads on the valise. Then he pretended to be stupid. “There’s a lot of them—of young women,” he drawled. “I don’t know which one you’re jabbering about. Do you happen to mean the one with whom you lived?”
But Tikhon Ilitch had already recovered his composure. “Whether I have lived with her or not is none of your business, you pig,” he retorted, and that so swiftly and peremptorily that Deniska submissively muttered:
“Well, ’tis all the same to me. I only said—’Twas a chance remark—slipped off my tongue.”
“Well, then, mind what you’re about, and don’t indulge in idle chatter. I’ll make decent people of you. Do you understand? I’ll give you a dowry. Understand that?”
Deniska reflected. “I think I’ll go to Tula—” he began.
“The cock has found a pearl! A priceless idea! What are you going to do in Tula?”
“We’re too starved at home.”
Tikhon Ilitch unfastened his coat, thrust his hand into the pocket of his sleeveless under-kaftan—he had almost made up his mind to give Deniska a twenty-kopek coin. But he came to his senses—’twas stupid to squander his money, and, what was more, that dolt would become conceited, would say he had been bribed. So he pretended to be hunting for something. “Ah, I’ve forgotten my cigarettes! Come, give me some tobacco.”
Deniska gave him his tobacco-pouch. The lantern over the station entrance had already been lighted, and by its dim light Tikhon Ilitch read aloud the inscription embroidered in coarse white thread on the bag: “To whoam I luv I giv I luv hartilie I giv a poch foureaver.” “That’s clever!” he said, when he had finished reading.
Deniska modestly cast down his eyes.
“So you have a ladylove already?”
“There’s a lot of them, the hussies, roaming about!” replied Deniska, quite unembarrassed. “But as for marrying—I don’t refuse. I’ll be back by the Meat-days, and then, Lord bless our marriage!”
From behind the palisade thundered a peasant cart, spattered all over with mud. It rolled up to the platform with a peasant perched on the side-rail and the deacon, Govoroff, from Ulianovka, seated on the straw inside. “Has it gone?” shouted the deacon in agitated tones, thrusting out of the straw one foot in a new overshoe. Every individual hair of his frowsy, reddish-sandy beard curled turbulently; his cap had retreated to the nape of his neck: his face was fiery-red from the wind and his excitement.
“The train, you mean?” inquired Tikhon Ilitch. “No, sir, it hasn’t even arrived yet. Good morning, Father Deacon.”
“Aha! Well then, thank God!” said the deacon joyfully and hastily; but nevertheless he leaped from the cart and rushed headlong to the door.
Tikhon Ilitch shook his head. “Oh, that long-maned fellow came at the wrong time! Nothing will come of my affair!”11 But as he grasped the handle of the door he said, firmly and confidently: “Well, so be it. It’s settled for the meat-season.”
XXI
The railway station was permeated with the odours of wet sheepskin coats, the samovar, cheap tobacco, and kerosene. The smoke was so dense that it gripped one’s throat; the lamps hardly shone through the clouds of it, and of the semidarkness, dampness, and cold. The doors squeaked and banged; peasants, whips in hand, jostled and yelled—cabmen from Ulianovka, who sometimes waited a whole week before they captured a passenger. In and out among them, with brows elevated, perambulated a Jew grain-dealer, wearing a round-topped hat and a hooded overcoat and carrying an umbrella over his shoulder. Near the ticket-seller’s window peasants were dragging to the scales the trunks of some landowners and basket-hampers enveloped in oilcloth. The telegraph clerk, who was discharging the duties of assistant station agent, was shouting at the peasants. He was a short-legged young fellow with a big head and a curly yellow crest of hair, brought forth from beneath his cap on the left temple, kazak fashion. A pointer dog as spotted as a frog, with melancholy eyes like those of a human being, was sitting on the dirty floor and shivering violently.
Elbowing his way through the crowd of peasants, Tikhon Ilitch approached the door of the first-class waiting-room, beside which, on the wall, hung a wooden frame containing letters, telegrams, and newspapers, which sometimes lay on the floor. It turned out that there were no letters for him. There was nothing but three numbers of the Orloff Messenger. Tikhon Ilitch was on the point of stepping over to the counter to
