IV

On the morning of the Monday before Good Friday, Matvey heard from his room Dashutka say to Aglaia: 

“Uncle Matvey said, the other day, that there is no need to fast.”

Matvey remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening before with Dashutka, and he felt hurt all at once.

“Girl, don’t do wrong!” he said in a moaning voice, like a sick man.  “You can’t do without fasting; our Lord Himself fasted forty days.  I only explained that fasting does a bad man no good.”

“You should just listen to the factory hands; they can teach you goodness,” Aglaia said sarcastically as she washed the floor (she usually washed the floors on working days and was always angry with everyone when she did it).  “We know how they keep the fasts in the factory.  You had better ask that uncle of yours—­ask him about his ‘Darling,’ how he used to guzzle milk on fast days with her, the viper.  He teaches others; he forgets about his viper.  But ask him who was it he left his money with—­who was it?”

Matvey had carefully concealed from everyone, as though it were a foul sore, that during that period of his life when old women and unmarried girls had danced and run about with him at their prayers he had formed a connection with a working woman and had had a child by her.  When he went home he had given this woman all he had saved at the factory, and had borrowed from his landlord for his journey, and now he had only a few roubles which he spent on tea and candles.  The “Darling” had informed him later on that the child was dead, and asked him in a letter what she should do with the money.  This letter was brought from the station by the labourer.  Aglaia intercepted it and read it, and had reproached Matvey with his “Darling” every day since.

“Just fancy, nine hundred roubles,” Aglaia went on.  “You gave nine hundred roubles to a viper, no relation, a factory jade, blast you!” She had flown into a passion by now and was shouting shrilly:  “Can’t you speak?  I could tear you to pieces, wretched creature!  Nine hundred roubles as though it were a farthing You might have left it to Dashutka—­she is a relation, not a stranger—­or else have it sent to Byelev for Marya’s poor orphans.  And your viper did not choke, may she be thrice accursed, the she-devil!  May she never look upon the light of day!”

Yakov Ivanitch called to her:  it was time to begin the “Hours.”  She washed, put on a white kerchief, and by now quiet and meek, went into the prayer-room to the brother she loved.  When she spoke to Matvey or served peasants in the tavern with tea she was a gaunt, keen-eyed, ill-humoured old woman; in the prayer-room her face was serene and softened, she looked younger altogether, she curtsied affectedly, and even pursed up her lips.