Akimovna!' and all at once he gasped and clasped his hands as though in terrible alarm. 'Benefactress!'
With a moan he ran to her, grunting inarticulately as though he were paralyzed—there was cabbage on his beard and he smelt of vodka—pressed his forehead to her muff, and seemed as though he were in a swoon.
'Your hand, your holy hand!' he brought out breathlessly. 'It's a dream, a glorious dream! Children, awaken me!'
He turned towards the table and said in a sobbing voice, shaking his fists:
'Providence has heard us! Our saviour, our angel, has come! We are saved! Children, down on your knees! on your knees!'
Madame Tchalikov and the little girls, except the youngest one, began for some reason rapidly clearing the table.
'You wrote that your wife was very ill,' said Anna Akimovna, and she felt ashamed and annoyed. 'I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred,' she thought.
'Here she is, my wife,' said Tchalikov in a thin feminine voice, as though his tears had gone to his head. 'Here she is, unhappy creature! With one foot in the grave! But we do not complain, madam. Better death than such a life. Better die, unhappy woman!'
'Why is he playing these antics?' thought Anna Akimovna with annoyance. 'One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants.'
'Speak to me like a human being,' she said. 'I don't care for farces.''
'Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother's coffin with funeral candles—that's a farce? Eh?' said Tchalikov bitterly, and turned away.
'Hold your tongue,' whispered his wife, and she pulled at his sleeve.
'The place has not been tidied up, madam,' she said, addressing
Anna Akimovna; 'please excuse it . . . you know what it is where
there are children. A crowded hearth, but harmony.'
'I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred,' Anna Akimovna thought again.
And to escape as soon as possible from these people and from the sour smell, she brought out her purse and made up her mind to leave them twenty-five roubles, not more; but she suddenly felt ashamed that she had come so far and disturbed people for so little.
'If you give me paper and ink, I will write at once to a doctor who is a friend of mine to come and see you,' she said, flushing red. 'He is a very good doctor. And I will leave you some money for medicine.'
Madame Tchalikov was hastening to wipe the table.
'It's messy here! What are you doing?' hissed Tchalikov, looking at her wrathfully. 'Take her to the lodger's room! I make bold to ask you, madam, to step into the lodger's room,' he said, addressing Anna Akimovna. 'It's clean there.'
'Osip Ilyitch told us not to go into his room!' said one of the little girls, sternly.
But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through a narrow passage room between two bedsteads: it was evident from the arrangement of the beds that in one two slept lengthwise, and in the other three slept across the bed. In the lodger's room, that came next, it really was clean. A neat-looking bed with a red woollen quilt, a pillow in a white pillow-case, even a slipper for the watch, a table covered with a hempen cloth and on it, an inkstand of milky-looking glass, pens, paper, photographs in frames— everything as it ought to be; and another table for rough work, on which lay tidily arranged a watchmaker's tools and watches taken to pieces. On the walls hung hammers, pliers, awls, chisels, nippers, and so on, and there were three hanging clocks which were ticking; one was a big clock with thick weights, such as one sees in eating-houses.
As she sat down to write the letter, Anna Akimovna saw facing her on the table the photographs of her father and of herself. That surprised her.
'Who lives here with you?' she asked.
'Our lodger, madam, Pimenov. He works in your factory.'
'Oh, I thought he must be a watchmaker.'
'He repairs watches privately, in his leisure hours. He is an amateur.'
After a brief silence during which nothing could be heard but the ticking of the clocks and the scratching of the pen on the paper, Tchalikov heaved a sigh and said ironically, with indignation:
'It's a true saying: gentle birth and a grade in the service won't put a coat on your back. A cockade in your cap and a noble title, but nothing to eat. To my thinking, if any one of humble class helps the poor he is much more of a gentleman than any Tchalikov who has sunk into poverty and vice.'
To flatter Anna Akimovna, he uttered a few more disparaging phrases about his gentle birth, and it was evident that he was humbling himself because he considered himself superior to her. Meanwhile she had finished her letter and had sealed it up. The letter would be thrown away and the money would not be spent on medicine— that she knew, but she put twenty-five roubles on the table all the same, and after a moment's thought, added two more red notes. She saw the wasted, yellow hand of Madame Tchalikov, like the claw of a hen, dart out and clutch the money tight.
'You have graciously given this for medicine,' said Tchalikov in a quivering voice, 'but hold out a helping hand to me also . . . and the children!' he added with a sob. 'My unhappy children! I am not afraid for myself; it is for my daughters I fear! It's the hydra of vice that I fear!'
Trying to open her purse, the catch of which had gone wrong, Anna Akimovna was confused and turned red. She felt ashamed that people should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting, and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her. At that instant some one came into the kitchen and stamped his feet, knocking the snow off.
'The lodger has come in,' said Madame Tchalikov.
Anna Akimovna grew even more confused. She did not want any one from the factory to find her in this ridiculous position. As ill-luck would have it, the lodger came in at the very moment when, having broken the catch at last, she was giving Tchalikov some notes, and Tchalikov, grunting as though he were paraylzed, was feeling about with his lips where he could kiss her. In the lodger she recognized the workman who had once clanked the sheet-iron before her in the forge, and had explained things to her. Evidently he had come in straight from the factory; his face looked dark and grimy, and on one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot. His hands were perfectly black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and grease. He was a man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and broad shoulders, and a look of great physical strength. At the first glance Anna Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must be receiving at least thirty-five roubles a month, and a stern, loud-voiced man who struck the workmen in the face; all this was evident from his manner of standing, from the attitude he involuntarily assumed at once on seeing a lady in his room, and most of all from the fact that he did not wear top- boots, that he had breast pockets, and a pointed, picturesquely clipped beard. Her father, Akim Ivanovitch, had been the brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been afraid of foremen like this lodger and had tried to win their favour.
'Excuse me for having come in here in your absence,' said Anna
Akimovna.
The workman looked at her in surprise, smiled in confusion and did not speak.
'You must speak a little louder, madam . . . .' said Tchalikov softly. 'When Mr. Pimenov comes home from the factory in the evenings he is a little hard of hearing.'
But Anna Akimovna was by now relieved that there was nothing more for her to do here; she nodded to them and went rapidly out of the room. Pimenov went to see her out.
'Have you been long in our employment?' she asked in a loud voice, without turning to him.
'From nine years old. I entered the factory in your uncle's time.'
'That's a long while! My uncle and my father knew all the workpeople, and I know hardly any of them. I had seen you before, but I did not know your name was Pimenov.'
