up to the body. Eleonora Karpovna, on taking farewell of Susanna, suddenly broke into a roar that filled the church; but she was soon soothed and continually asked in an exasperated whisper, ‘But where’s my reticule?’ Viktor held himself aloof, and seemed to be trying by his whole demeanour to convey that he was out of sympathy with all such customs and was only performing a social duty. The person who showed the most sympathy was the little old man in the smock, who had been, fifteen years before, a land surveyor in the Tambov province, and had not seen Ratsch since then. He did not know Susanna at all, but had drunk a couple of glasses of spirits at the sideboard before starting. My aunt had also come to the church. She had somehow or other found out that the deceased woman was the very lady who had paid me a visit, and had been thrown into a state of indescribable agitation! She could not bring herself to suspect me of any sort of misconduct, but neither could she explain such a strange chain of circumstances…. Not improbably she imagined that Susanna had been led by love for me to commit suicide, and attired in her darkest garments, with an aching heart and tears, she prayed on her knees for the peace of the soul of the departed, and put a rouble candle before the picture of the Consolation of Sorrow…. ‘Amishka’ had come with her too, and she too prayed, but was for the most part gazing at me, horror-stricken…. That elderly spinster, alas! did not regard me with indifference. On leaving the church, my aunt distributed all her money, more than ten roubles, among the poor.
At last the farewell was over. They began closing the coffin. During the whole service I had not courage to look straight at the poor girl’s distorted face; but every time that my eyes passed by it—’he did not come, he did not come,’ it seemed to me that it wanted to say. They were just going to lower the lid upon the coffin. I could not restrain myself: I turned a rapid glance on to the dead woman. ‘Why did you do it?’ I was unconsciously asking…. ‘He did not come!’ I fancied for the last time…. The hammer was knocking in the nails, and all was over.
XXVII
We followed the hearse towards the cemetery. We were forty in number, of all sorts and conditions, nothing else really than an idle crowd. The wearisome journey lasted more than an hour. The weather became worse and worse. Halfway there Viktor got into a carriage, but Mr. Ratsch stepped gallantly on through the sloppy snow; just so must he have stepped through the snow when, after the fateful interview with Semyon Matveitch, he led home with him in triumph the girl whose life he had ruined for ever. The ‘veteran’s’ hair and eyebrows were edged with snow; he kept blowing and uttering exclamations, or manfully drawing deep breaths and puffing out his round, dark-red cheeks…. One really might have thought he was laughing. ‘On my death the pension was to pass to Ivan Demianitch’; these words from Susanna’s manuscript recurred again to my mind. We reached the cemetery at last; we moved up to a freshly dug grave. The last ceremony was quickly performed; all were chilled through, all were in haste. The coffin slid on cords into the yawning hole; they began to throw earth on it. Mr. Ratsch here too showed the energy of his spirit, so rapidly, with such force and vigour, did he fling clods of earth on to the coffin lid, throwing himself into an heroic pose, with one leg planted firmly before him… he could not have shown more energy if he had been stoning his bitterest foe. Viktor, as before, held himself aloof; he kept muffling himself up in his coat, and rubbing his chin in the fur of his collar. Mr. Ratsch’s other children eagerly imitated their father. Flinging sand and earth was a source of great enjoyment to them, for which, of course, they were in no way to blame. A mound began to rise up where the hole had been; we were on the point of separating, when Mr. Ratsch, wheeling round to the left in soldierly fashion, and slapping himself on the thigh, announced to all of us ‘gentlemen present,’ that he invited us, and also the ‘reverend clergy,’ to a ‘funeral banquet,’ which had been arranged at no great distance from the cemetery, in the chief saloon of an extremely superior restaurant, ‘thanks to the kind offices of our honoured friend Sigismund Sigismundovitch.’… At these words he indicated the assistant of the police superintendent, and added that for all his grief and his Lutheran faith, he, Ivan Demianitch Ratsch, as a genuine Russian, put the old Russian usages before everything. ‘My spouse,’ he cried, ‘with the ladies that have accompanied her, may go home, while we gentlemen commemorate in a modest repast the shade of Thy departed servant!’ Mr. Ratsch’s proposal was received with genuine sympathy; ‘the reverend clergy’ exchanged expressive glances with one another, while the officer of roads and highways slapped Ivan Demianitch on the shoulder, and called him a patriot and the soul of the company.
We set off all together to the restaurant. In the restaurant, in the middle of a long, wide, and quite empty room on the first storey, stood two tables laid for dinner, covered with bottles and eatables, and surrounded by chairs. The smell of whitewash, mingled with the odours of spirits and salad oil, was stifling and oppressive. The police superintendent’s assistant, as the organiser of the banquet, placed the clergy in the seats of honour, near which the Lenten dishes were crowded together conspicuously; after the priests the other guests took their seats; the banquet began. I would not have used such a festive word as banquet by choice, but no other word would have corresponded with the real character of the thing. At first the proceedings were fairly quiet, even slightly mournful; jaws munched busily, and glasses were emptied, but sighs too were audible—possibly sighs of digestion, but possibly also of feeling. There were references to death, allusions to the brevity of human life, and the fleeting nature of earthly hopes. The officer of roads and highways related a military but still edifying anecdote. The priest in the calotte expressed his approval, and himself contributed an interesting fact from the life of the saint, Ivan the Warrior. The priest with the superbly arranged hair, though his attention was chiefly engrossed by the edibles, gave utterance to something improving on the subject of chastity. But little by little all this changed. Faces grew redder, and voices grew louder, and laughter reasserted itself; one began to hear disconnected exclamations, caressing appellations, after the manner of ‘dear old boy,’ ‘dear heart alive,’ ‘old cock,’ and even ‘a pig like that’—everything, in fact, of which the Russian nature is so lavish, when, as they say, ‘it comes unbuttoned.’ By the time that the corks of home-made champagne were popping, the party had become noisy; some one even crowed like a cock, while another guest was offering to bite up and swallow the glass out of which he had just been drinking. Mr. Ratsch, no longer red but purple, suddenly rose from his seat; he had been guffawing and making a great noise before, but now he asked leave to make a speech. ‘Speak! Out with it!’ every one roared; the old man in the smock even bawled ‘bravo!’ and clapped his hands… but he was already sitting on the floor. Mr. Ratsch lifted his glass high above his head, and announced that he proposed in brief but ‘impressionable’ phrases to refer to the qualities of the noble soul which,’leaving here, so to say, its earthly husk (die irdische Hülle) has soared to heaven, and plunged…’ Mr. Ratsch corrected himself: ‘and plashed….’ He again corrected himself: ‘and plunged…’
‘Father deacon! Reverend sir! My good soul!’ we heard a subdued but insistent whisper, ‘they say you’ve a devilish good voice; honour us with a song, strike up: «We live among the fields!»‘
‘Sh! sh!… Shut up there!’ passed over the lips of the guests.
…’Plunged all her devoted family,’ pursued Mr. Ratsch, turning a severe glance in the direction of the lover of music, ‘plunged all her family into the most irreplaceable grief! Yes!’ cried Ivan Demianitch, ‘well may the Russian proverb say, «Fate spares not the rod.»…’
‘Stop! Gentlemen!’ shouted a hoarse voice at the end of the table, ‘my purse has just been stolen!…’
‘Ah, the swindler!’ piped another voice, and slap! went a box on the ear.
Heavens! What followed then! It was as though the wild beast, till then only growling and faintly stirring within us, had suddenly broken from its chains and reared up, ruffled and fierce in all its hideousness. It seemed as though every one had been secretly expecting ‘a scandal,’ as the natural outcome and sequel of a banquet, and all, as it were, rushed to welcome it, to support it…. Plates, glasses clattered and rolled about, chairs were upset, a deafening din arose, hands were waving in the air, coat-tails were flying, and a fight began in earnest.
‘Give it him! give it him!’ roared like mad my neighbour, the fishmonger, who had till that instant seemed to be the most peaceable person in the world; it is true he had been silently drinking some dozen glasses of spirits. ‘Thrash him!…’
Who was to be thrashed, and
