All at once Dron threw himself at his feet.
‘Yakov Alpatitch, discharge me! Take the keys from me; discharge me, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Stop that!’ said Alpatitch sternly. ‘I can see through you three yards into the earth,’ he repeated, knowing that his skill in bee-keeping, his knowledge of the right day to sow the oats, and his success in pleasing the old prince for twenty years had long ago gained him the reputation of a wizard, and that the power of seeing for three yards under a man is ascribed to wizards.
Dron got up, and w'ould have said something, but Alpatitch interrupted him.
‘What’s this you’ve all got in your head? Eh? . . . What are you thinking about? Eh?’
‘What am I to do with the people?’ said Dron. ‘They’re all in a ferment. I do tell them . .
‘Oh, I dare say you do,’ said Alpatitch. ‘Are they drinking?’ he asked ! briefly.
‘They’re all in a ferment, Yakov Alpatitch; they have got hold of another barrel.’
‘Then you listen to me. I’ll go to the police-captain and you tell them so, and tell them to drop all this and get the carts ready.’
‘Certainly,’ answered Dron.
Yakov Alpatitch did not insist further. He had much experience in managing the peasants, and knew that the chief means for securing obedience was not to show the slightest suspicion that they could do anything but obey. Having wrung from Dron a submissive ‘certainly,’ Yakov Alpatitch rested content with it, though he had more than doubts -—he had a conviction—that the carts would not be provided without the intervention of the military authorities.
And as a fact when evening came, the carts had not been provided. There had been again a village meeting at the tavern, and at the meeting ; it had been resolved to drive the horses out into the forest and not to : provide the conveyances. Without saying a word of all this to the princess, Alpatitch ordered his own baggage to be unloaded from the waggons that had come from Bleak Hills and the horses to be taken from them for the princess’s carriage, while he rode off himself to the police authorities.
X
After her father’s funeral Princess Marya locked herself in her room and would not let any one come near her. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatitch had come to ask for instructions in regard to the journey. (This was before Alpatitch had talked to Dron.) Princess Marya got up from the sofa on which she was lying, and through the closed door replied that she was never going away, and begged to be left in peace.
The windows of the room in which Princess Marya lay looked to the west. She lay on the sofa facing the wall, and fingering the buttons on the leather bolster, she saw nothing but that bolster, and her thoughts were concentrated obscurely on one subject. She thought of the finality : of death and of her spiritual baseness, of which she had had no idea till it showed itself during her father’s illness. She longed to pray, but dared not; dared not, in the spiritual state she was in, turn to God. For a long while she lay in that position.
The sun was setting, and the slanting rays lighted up the room through the open window, and threw a glow on part of the morocco cushion at which Princess Marya was looking. The current of her thoughts was suddenly arrested. She unconsciously sat up, smoothed her hair, stood up, and
walked to the window, involuntarily drawing a deep breath of the refreshing coolness of the clear, windy evening.
‘Yes, now you can admire the sunset at your ease! He is not here, and there is no one to hinder you,’ she said to herself, and sinking into a chair, she let her head fall on the window-sill.
Some one spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden and kissed her on the head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a black dress and pleureuses. She softly approached Princess Marya, kissed her with a sigh, and promptly burst into tears. Princess Marya looked round at her. All her old conflicts with her, her jealousy of her, recurred to Princess Marya’s mind. She remembered too that he had changed of late to Mademoiselle Bourienne, could not bear the sight of her, and therefore how unjust had been the censure that she had in her heart passed upon her. ‘Yes, and is it for me, for me, after desiring his death, to pass judgment on any one?’ she thought.
