"Why so gloomy, Nakhodka?" asked the girl.
"The widow has good eyes," answered the Little Russian. "I was thinking maybe my mother has such eyes. You know, I keep thinking of her as alive."
"You said she was dead?"
"That's my adopted mother. I am speaking now of my real mother. It seems to me that perhaps she may be somewhere in Kiev begging alms and drinking whisky."
"Why do you think such awful things?"
"I don't know. And the policemen pick her up on the street drunk and beat her."
"Oh, you poor soul," thought the mother, and sighed.
Natasha muttered something hotly and rapidly; and again the sonorous voice of the Little Russian was heard.
"Ah, you are young yet, comrade," he said. "You haven't eaten enough onions yet. Everyone has a mother, none the less people are bad. For although it is hard to rear children, it is still harder to teach a man to be good."
"What strange ideas he has," the mother thought, and for a moment she felt like contradicting the Little Russian and telling him that here was she who would have been glad to teach her son good, but knew nothing herself. The door, however, opened and in came Nikolay Vyesovshchikov, the son of the old thief Daniel, known in the village as a misanthrope. He always kept at a sullen distance from people, who retaliated by making sport of him.
"You, Nikolay! How's that?" she asked in surprise.
Without replying he merely looked at the mother with his little gray eyes, and wiped his pockmarked, high-cheeked face with the broad palm of his hand.
"Is Pavel at home?" he asked hoarsely.
"No."
He looked into the room and said:
"Good evening, comrades."
"He, too. Is it possible?" wondered the mother resentfully, and was greatly surprised to see Natasha put her hand out to him in a kind, glad welcome.
The next to come were two young men, scarcely more than boys. One of them the mother knew. He was Yakob, the son of the factory watchman, Somov. The other, with a sharp-featured face, high forehead, and curly hair, was unknown to her; but he, too, was not terrible.
Finally Pavel appeared, and with him two men, both of whose faces she recognized as those of workmen in the factory.
"You've prepared the samovar! That's fine. Thank you!" said Pavel as he saw what his mother had done.
"Perhaps I should get some vodka," she suggested, not knowing how to express her gratitude to him for something which as yet she did not understand.
"No, we don't need it!" he responded, removing his coat and smiling affectionately at her.
It suddenly occurred to her that her son, by way of jest, had purposely exaggerated the danger of the gathering.
"Are these the ones they call illegal people?" she whispered.
"The very ones!" answered Pavel, and passed into the room.
She looked lovingly after him and thought to herself condescendingly:
"Mere children!"
When the samovar boiled, and she brought it into the room, she found the guests sitting in a close circle around the table, and Natasha installed in the corner under the lamp with a book in her hands.
"In order to understand why people live so badly," said Natasha.
"And why they are themselves so bad," put in the Little Russian.
"It is necessary to see how they began to live – "
"See, my dears, see!" mumbled the mother, making the tea.
They all stopped talking.
"What is the matter, mother?" asked Pavel, knitting his brows.
"What?" She looked around, and seeing the eyes of all upon her she explained with embarrassment, "I was just speaking to myself."
Natasha laughed and Pavel smiled, but the Little Russian said: "Thank you for the tea, mother."
"Hasn't drunk it yet and thanks me already," she commented inwardly. Looking at her son, she asked: "I am not in your way?"
"How can the hostess in her own home be in the way of her guests?" replied Natasha, and then continuing with childish plaintiveness: "Mother dear, give me tea quick! I am shivering with cold; my feet are all frozen."
"In a moment, in a moment!" exclaimed the mother, hurrying.
Having drunk a cup of tea, Natasha drew a long breath, brushed her hair back from her forehead, and began to read from a large yellow-covered book with pictures. The mother, careful not to make a noise with the dishes, poured tea into the glasses, and strained her untrained mind to listen to the girl's fluent reading. The melodious voice blended with the thin, musical hum of the samovar. The clear, simple narrative of savage people who lived in caves and killed the beasts with stones floated and quivered like a dainty ribbon in the room. It sounded like a tale, and the mother looked up to her son occasionally, wishing to ask him what was illegal in the story about wild men. But she soon ceased to follow the narrative and began to scrutinize the guests, unnoticed by them or her son.
Pavel sat at Natasha's side. He was the handsomest of them all. Natasha bent down very low over the book. At times she tossed back the thin curls that kept running down over her forehead, and lowered her voice to say something not in the book, with a kind look at the faces of her auditors. The Little Russian bent his broad chest over a corner of the table, and squinted his eyes in the effort to see the worn ends of his mustache, which he constantly twirled. Vyesovshchikov sat on his chair straight as a pole, his palms resting on his knees, and his pockmarked face, browless and thin-lipped, immobile as a mask. He kept his narrow-eyed gaze stubbornly fixed upon the reflection of his face in the glittering brass of the samovar. He seemed not even to breathe. Little Somov moved his lips mutely, as if repeating to himself the words in the book; and his curly-haired companion, with bent body, elbows on knees, his face supported on his hands, smiled abstractedly. One of the men who had entered at the same time as Pavel, a slender young chap with red, curly hair and merry green eyes, apparently wanted to say something; for he kept turning around impatiently. The other, light-haired and closely cropped, stroked his head with his hand and looked down on the floor so that his face remained invisible.
It was warm in the room, and the atmosphere was genial. The mother responded to this peculiar charm, which she had never before felt. She was affected by the purling of Natasha's voice, mingled with the quavering hum of the samovar, and recalled the noisy evening parties of her youth – the coarseness of the young men, whose breath always smelled of vodka – their cynical jokes. She remembered all this, and an oppressive sense of pity for her own self gently stirred her worn, outraged heart.
Before her rose the scene of the wooing of her husband. At one of the parties he had seized her in a dark porch, and pressing her with his whole body to the wall asked in a gruff, vexed voice:
"Will you marry me?"
She had been pained and had felt offended; but he rudely dug his fingers into her flesh, snorted heavily, and breathed his hot, humid breath into her face. She struggled to tear herself out of his grasp.
"Hold on!" he roared. "Answer me! Well?"
Out of breath, shamed and insulted, she remained silent.
"Don't put on airs now, you fool! I know your kind. You are mighty pleased."
Some one opened the door. He let her go leisurely, saying:
"I will send a matchmaker to you next Sunday."
And he did.
The mother covered her eyes and heaved a deep sigh.
"I do not want to know how people used to live, but how they ought to live!" The dull, dissatisfied voice of Vyesovshchikov was heard in the room.
"That's it!" corroborated the red-headed man, rising.
"And I disagree!" cried Somov. "If we are to go forward, we must