XV

A cold rainy day, with gusts of wind and sleet, inhospitably greeted the party of convicts when they left the stuffy halting-station. Katerina Lvovna came out fairly cheerfully, but she had hardly taken her place in the row when she turned green and trembled all over. It grew black before her eyes, and all her joints ached and weakened. Sonetka stood before her in the well-known pair of blue woollen stockings with red clocks.

Katerina Lvovna started on her way almost lifeless; only her eyes were fixed with a terrible look on Sergei, and she never took them off him.

At the first halt she quietly went up to Sergei, whispered "Scoundrel," and quite unexpectedly spat in his face.

Sergei wanted to fall upon her, but the others held him back.

"Just you wait," said he wiping himself.

"All the same she treats you audaciously," jeered the other convicts, and Sonetka greeted him with specially gay laughter.

This intrigue into which Sonetka had entered was quite to her taste.

"This is not the last you will hear of it," Sergei threatened Katerina Lvovna.

Worn out by the long distance and the bad weather, Katerina Lvovna with a broken heart slept restlessly on the hard boards at night in the halting-station and did not hear two men come into the women's ward.

When they entered Sonetka sat up on her pallet and silently pointed to Katerina Lvovna, lay down again, and covered herself up with her coat.

At that moment Katerina Lvovna's coat was thrown over her head, and the thick end of a double-twisted cord was swung with all the strength of a peasant's arm across her back, which was only covered by a coarse shift.

Katerina Lvovna shrieked but her voice could not be heard under the coat in which her head was wrapt up. She struggled, but also without success, as a burly convict was sitting on her shoulders holding her arms.

"Fifty," counted a voice at last, and it was not difficult to recognize the voice of Sergei, and then the nocturnal visitors disappeared behind the door.

Katerina Lvovna disentangled her head and got up, but nobody was there, only not far off somebody under a coat tittered malevolently. Katerina Lvovna recognized Sonetka's laugh.

This insult passed all measure, and there was also no limit to the feeling of wrath which boiled up at that moment in Katerina Lvovna's soul. Not knowing what she did she rushed forward and fell unconscious on Fiona's breast and was caught in her arms.

On that full bosom, which so lately had diverted with its sweet depravity Katerina Lvovna's faithless lover, she now sobbed out her own unbearable sorrow, and pressed herself close to her stupid and coarse rival, as a child would to its mother. They were now equal. They were both of equal price and both cast away.

They were equal!—the caprice of a passing moment—Fiona; and she who had committed that drama of love, Katerina Lvovna.

Nothing was an insult to Katerina Lvovna now. Having shed her tears she became hardened and with wooden calmness prepared to go out to the roll-call.

The drum sounded Rapa-ta-tap. The prisoners went out into the yard; the chained and the unchained Sergei and Fiona, Sonetka and Katerina Lvovna; the schismatic fettered to the Jew, the Pole on the same chain with the Tarter.

All crowded together, then formed into some sort of order and started.

It was a most desolate picture: a small number of people torn from the light and deprived of every shadow of hope of a better future—sinking into the cold black mud of the common road. Everything around was frightfully ugly: unending mud, a grey sky, the leafless wet cytisus and the ravens with bristling feathers sitting in their spreading branches. The wind sighed and raged, howled and tore.

In these hellish, soul-rending sounds that completed the horror of the picture there seemed to echo the advice of the wife of the biblical Job: "Curse the day of your birth and die."

Those who do not wish to listen to these words; those who are not attracted by the thoughts of death even in this sorrowful position, but are frightened by them, must try to silence these warring voices by something even more monstrous. The simple man understands this very well; he lets lose all his animal simplicity, begins to play the fool, to laugh at himself, at other people and at feelings. At no time very delicate he becomes doubly bad.

* * * * *

"Well, my merchant's wife, is your honour in good health?" Sergei asked Katerina Lvovna impudently as soon as the village where they had passed the night, disappeared out of sight behind the wet hills.

With these words he turned at once to Sonetka, covered her up with his coat, and began to sing in a high falsetto voice:

When he sang these words Sergei put his arms round Sonetka and gave her a loud kiss before the whole party.

Katerina Lvovna saw all this, and yet did not see it. She went along like a lifeless person. The others nudged her and pointed out how Sergei was playing the fool with Sonetka. She had become an object of ridicule.

"Leave her alone," Fiona said, trying to defend her, when one of the party attempted to laugh at Katerina Lvovna as she stumbled blindly along; "you devils, don't you see that the woman is quite ill?"

"Probably she got wet feet," a young convict said waggishly.

"Naturally, she's from a merchant's race; had a delicate up-bringing," answered Sergei.

"Of course, if she had warm stockings, it would not be so bad," continued he.

Katerina Lvovna seemed to wake up.

"Vile serpent," she uttered, unable to bear it any more; "laugh at me, villain, laugh at me."

"No, I am not laughing at all, my merchant's wife. I only say it because Sonetka wants to sell some stockings that are still quite good, so I thought our merchant's wife might perhaps buy them."

Many laughed; Katerina Lvovna walked on like an automaton.

The weather became worse. From the dark clouds that covered the sky wet snow fell in large flakes, that melted as soon as it reached the ground, and added to the impassable mud. At last a long leaden line could be seen; the other side of it could not be distinguished. This line was the Volga. Over the Volga a strong wind blew, and rocked the slowly-rising, dark-crested waves backwards and forwards.

The gang of convicts, wet through and shivering, came slowly up to the river's bank and stopped to wait for the ferry-boat.

The dark wet ferry-boat arrived; the guards began to find places for the convicts.

"They say there is vodka to be had on this ferry-boat," observed one of the convicts, when the ferry-boat, covered with large flakes of wet snow, had put off from the bank and was rocking on the waves of the rough river.

"Yes, it would be a good thing to have a drop now," said Sergei, and persecuting Katerina Lvovna for Sonetka's amusement, he continued: "Well now, merchant's wife, for old friendship's sake treat us to some vodka. Don't be stingy. Remember, my ungracious one, our former love, how you and I, my joy, loved each other, how we passed long autumn nights together, and sent your relations in secret, without priest or deacon, to their eternal rest."

Katerina Lvovna was shivering with cold. Besides the cold that pierced through her wet clothes to the very bones, something more was going on in Katerina Lvovna. Her head was burning like fire; the dilated pupils of her eyes shone brightly, her eyes wandered wildly round, or looking before her, rested immovable on the rolling waves.

"Yes, I would gladly drink some vodka. I can bear it no longer," Sonetka chimed in.

"Merchant's wife, won't you stand us a drink?" Sergei continued to annoy her.

"Where's your conscience?" said Fiona, shaking her head reproachfully.

"It's no honour to yourself to have such a conscience," said the convict Gorushek in support of the soldier's wife.

"If you're not ashamed before her, ye might be ashamed for her, before others."

"Get along, you worldly old snuff-box," shouted Sergei at Fiona. "Ashamed indeed! What have I to be ashamed of! Perhaps I never loved her. . . . and now Sonetka's worn-out boot is worth more to me than her phiz—the draggle-tailed cat! What can you canswer to that? Let her love crooked-mouthed Gorushek or else"—he looked round at the guard who was sitting on his horse wrapped up in his burka and military cap with its cocade, and added—"better still, let her make up to the guard. Under his burka she would at least not get wet when it rains."

"And all would call her the officer's lady," tittered Sonetka.

"Of course it would be a trifle then to get stockings," continued Sergei.

Katerina Lvovna did not defend herself: she only looked more fixedly at the waves and her lips moved. Between Sergei's base talk she heard the roar and sighing of the rising and breaking waves. Suddenly out of one broken billow she saw the blue head of Boris Timofeich appear, from another her husband looked out, and rolled about embracing Fedia's drooping head. Katerina Lvovna tried to remember a prayer and moved her lips, but her lips only whispered: "How you and I loved each other; sat long autumn nights together; sent people from the light of day by violent deaths."

Katerina Lvovna shuddered. Her wandering gaze became fixed and grew wild. Once or twice her arms stretched out into space aimlessly, and then fell down again. Another minute—she rocked about, not taking her eyes off the dark waves, bent forwards, seized Sonetka by the legs and with one bound threw herself and her overboard.