‘You don’t know that she has disgraced herself, but there’s no stopping people’s mouths. Here’s the ikon and here’s the door,’ says he. ‘You needn’t take her. Only pay back the money you’ve had.’ Then I talked it over with Filka and I sent Mitri Bikov to tell him I’d dishonour him now over all the world; and right up to the wedding, lad, I was dead drunk. I was only just sober for the wedding. When we were driven home from the wedding and sat down, Mitrofan Stepanovitch, my uncle, said, ‘Though it’s done in dishonour, it’s just as binding,’ says he, ‘the thing’s done and finished.’ Old Ankudim was drunk too and he cried, he sat there and the tears ran down his beard. And I tell you what I did, my lad: I’d put a whip in my pocket, I got it ready before the wedding. I’d made up my mind to have a bit of fun with Akulka, to teach her what it meant to get married by a dirty trick and that folks might know I wasn’t being fooled over the marriage.
“Quite right too! To make her future . . .”
“No, old chap, you hold your tongue. In our part of the country they take us straight after the wedding to a room apart while the others drink outside. So they left Akulka and me inside. She sits there so white, not a drop of blood in her face. She was scared, to be sure. Her hair, too, was as white as flax, her eyes were large and she was always quiet, you heard nothing of her, she was like a dumb thing in the house. A strange girl altogether. And can you believe it, brother, I got that whip ready and laid it beside me by the bed, but it turned out she had not wronged me at all, my lad!”
“You don’t say so!”.
“Not at all. She was quite innocent. And what had she had to go through all that torment for! Why had Filka Morozov put her to shame before all the world?”
“Yes . . .”
“I knelt down before her then, on the spot, and clasped my hands. ‘Akulina Kudimovna,’ says I, ‘forgive me, fool as I am, for thinking ill of you too. Forgive a scoundrel like me,’ says I. She sat before me on the bed looking at me, put both hands on my shoulders while her tears were flowing. She was crying and laughing. . . . Then I went out to all of them. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘if I meet Filka Morozov now he is a dead man!’ As for the old people, they did not know which saint to pray to. The mother almost fell at her feet, howling. And the old fellow said, ‘Had
