My Childhood - Maxim Gorky [83]
"'I hid the ring under the floor,' said your mother, 'so that you should not see it. We can sell it.'
"Such children they were--both of them! However, we discussed the ways and means for them to be married in a week's time, and I promised to arrange the matter with the priest. But I felt very uncomfortable myself, and my heart went pit-a-pat, because I was so frightened of grandfather; and Varia was frightened too, painfully so. Well, we arranged it all!
"But your father had an enemy--a certain workman, an evil-minded man who had guessed what was going on long ago, and now watched our movements. Well, I arrayed my only daughter in the best things I could get, and took her out to the gate, where there was a troika waiting. She got into it, Maxim whistled, and away they drove. I was going back to the house, in tears, when I ran across this man, who said in a cringing tone:
"'I have a good heart, and I shall not interfere with the workings of Fate; only, Akulina Ivanovna, you must give me fifty roubles for keeping quiet.'
"But I had no money; I did not like it, nor care to save it, and so I told him, like a fool:
"'I have no money, so I can't give you any.'
"'Well,' he said, 'you can promise it to me.'
"'How can I do that? Where am I to get it from after I have promised?'
"'Is it so difficult to steal from a rich husband?' he says.
"'If I had not been a fool I should have temporized with him; but I spat full in his ugly mug, and went into the house. And he rushed into the yard and raised a hue and cry."
Closing her eyes, she said, smiling:
"Even now I have a lively remembrance of that daring deed of mine. Grandfather roared like a wild beast, and wanted to know if they were making fun of him. As it happened, he had been taking stock of Varia lately, and boasting about her: 'I shall marry her to a nobleman--a gentleman!' Here was a pretty nobleman for him!--here was a pretty gentleman! Bur the Holy Mother of God knows better than we do what persons ought to be drawn together.
"Grandfather tore about the yard as if he were on fire, calling Jaakov and Michael and even--at the suggestion of that wicked workman--Klima, the coachman too. I saw him take a leathern strap with a weight tied on the end of it, and Michael seized his gun. We had good horses then, full of spirit, and the carriage was light. 'Ah well!' I thought, 'they are sure to overtake them.' But here Varia's Guardian Angel suggested something to me. I took a knife and cut the ropes belonging to the shafts. 'There! they will break down on the road now.' And so they did. The shafts came unfastened on the way, and nearly killed grandfather and Michael--and Klima too, besides delaying them; and by the time they had repaired it, and dashed up to the church, Varia and Maxim were standing in the church porch married--thank God!
"Then our people started a fight with Maxim; but he was in very good condition and he was rare and strong. He threw Michael away from the porch and broke his arm. Klima also was injured; and grandfather and Jaakov and that workman were all frightened!
"Even in his rage he did not lose his presence of mind, but he said to grandfather:
"'You can throw away that strap. Don't wave it about over me, for I am a man of peace, and what I have taken is only what God gave me, and no man shall take from me . . . and that is all I have to say to you.'
"They gave it up then, and grandfather returned to the carriage crying:
"'It is good-by now, Varvara! You are no daughter of mine, and I never wish to see you again, either alive or dead of hunger.'
"When he came home he beat me, and he scolded me; but all I did was to groan and hold my tongue.
"Everything passes away, and what is to be will be. After this he said to me:
"'Now, look here, Akulina, you have no daughter now. Remember that.'
"But I only said to myself:
"'Tell more lies, sandy-haired, spiteful man--say that ice is warm!'"
I listened attentively, greedily. Some part of her story surprised me, for grandfather had given quite a different account of mother's wedding;