_ XV
IVAN MIRONOV'S murderers were brought to trial, Stepan Pelageushkine
among them. He had a heavier charge to answer than the others,
all the witnesses having stated that it was he who had smashed Ivan
Mironov's head with a stone. Stepan concealed nothing when in court.
He contented himself with explaining that, having been
robbed of his two last horses, he had informed the police.
Now it was comparatively easy at that time to trace the horses
with the help of professional thieves among the gipsies.
But the police officer would not even permit him, and no search
had been ordered.
"Nothing else could be done with such a man. He has ruined us all."
"But why did not the others attack him. It was you alone who broke
his head open."
"That is false. We all fell upon him. The village agreed to kill him.
I only gave the final stroke. What is the use of inflicting unnecessary
sufferings on a man?"
The judges were astonished at Stepan's wonderful coolness in narrating
the story of his crime--how the peasants fell upon Ivan Mironov,
and how he had given the final stroke. Stepan actually did
not see anything particularly revolting in this murder.
During his military service he had been ordered on one occasion
to shoot a soldier, and, now with regard to Ivan Mironov, he saw
nothing loathsome in it. "A man shot is a dead man--that's all.
It was him to-day, it might be me to-morrow," he thought.
Stepan was only sentenced to one year's imprisonment,
which was a mild punishment for what he had done. His peasant's
dress was taken away from him and put in the prison stores,
and he had a prison suit and felt boots given to him instead.
Stepan had never had much respect for the authorities, but now
he became quite convinced that all the chiefs, all the fine folk,
all except the Czar--who alone had pity on the peasants and
was just--all were robbers who suck blood out of the people.
All he heard from the deported convicts, and those sentenced
to hard labour, with whom he had made friends in prisons,
confirmed him in his views. One man had been sentenced
to hard labour for having convicted his superiors of a theft;
another for having struck an official who had unjustly confiscated
the property of a peasant; a third because he forged bank notes.
The well-to-do-people, the merchants, might do whatever they
chose and come to no harm; but a poor peasant, for a trumpery
reason or for none at all, was sent to prison to become
food for vermin.
He had visits from his wife while in prison. Her life without him was
miserable enough, when, to make it worse, her cottage was destroyed by fire.
She was completely ruined, and had to take to begging with her children.
His wife's misery embittered Stepan still more. He got on very badly with
all the people in the prison; was rude to every one; and one day he nearly
killed the cook with an axe, and therefore got an additional year in prison.
In the course of that year he received the news that his wife was dead,
and that he had no longer a home.
When Stepan had finished his time in prison, he was taken
to the prison stores, and his own dress was taken down from
the shelf and handed to him.
"Where am I to go now?" he asked the prison officer, putting on his old dress.
"Why, home."
"I have no home. I shall have to go on the road.
Robbery will not be a pleasant occupation."
"In that case you will soon be back here."
"I am not so sure of that."
And Stepan left the prison. Nevertheless he took the road to his own place.
He had nowhere else to turn.
On his way he stopped for a night's rest in an inn
that had a public bar attached to it. The inn was kept
by a fat man from the town, Vladimir, and he knew Stepan.
He knew that Stepan had been put into prison through ill luck,
and did not mind giving him shelter for the night.
He was a rich man, and had persuaded his neighbour's
wife to leave her husband and come to live with him.
She lived in his house as his wife, and helped him in his
business as well.
Stepan knew all about the innkeeper's affairs--how he had wronged the peasant,
and how the woman who was living with him had left her husband.
He saw her now sitting at the table in a rich dress, and looking very hot
as she drank her tea. With great condescension she asked Stepan to have
tea with her. No other travellers were stopping in the inn that night.
Stepan was given a place in the kitchen where he might sleep.
Matrena--that was the woman's name--cleared the table and went to her room.
Stepan went to lie down on the large stove in the kitchen, but he could
not sleep, and the wood splinters put on the stove to dry were crackling
under him, as he tossed from side to side. He could not help thinking
of his host's fat paunch protruding under the belt of his shirt,
which had lost its colour from having been washed ever so many times.
Would not it be a good thing to make a good clean incision in that paunch.
And that woman, too, he thought.
One moment he would say to himself, "I had better go from here
to-morrow, bother them all!" But then again Ivan Mironov came
back to his mind, and he went on thinking of the innkeeper's
paunch and Matrena's white throat bathed in perspiration.
"Kill I must, and it must be both!"
He heard the cock crow for the second time.
"I must do it at once, or dawn will be here." He had seen in the evening
before he went to bed a knife and an axe. He crawled down from
the stove, took the knife and axe, and went out of the kitchen door.
At that very moment he heard the lock of the entrance door open.
The innkeeper was going out of the house to the courtyard. It all turned
out contrary to what Stepan desired. He had no opportunity of using
the knife; he just swung the axe and split the innkeeper's head in two.
The man tumbled down on the threshold of the door, then on the ground.
Stepan stepped into the bedroom. Matrena jumped out of bed,
and remained standing by its side. With the same axe Stepan
killed her also.
Then he lighted the candle, took the money out of the desk,
and left the house. _