The crime she had committed was that when a recruit was, according to the peasants' view, unlawfully taken from their village, and the people stopped the police officer and took the recruit away from him, she (an aunt of the lad unlawfully taken) was the first to catch hold of the bridle of the horse on which he was being carried off.
The other, who sat doing nothing, was a kindly, grey-haired old woman, hunchbacked and with a flat bosom.
She sat behind the stove on the bedshelf, and pretended to catch a fat four-year-old boy, who ran backwards and forwards in front of her, laughing gaily.
This boy had only a little shirt on and his hair was cut short. As he ran past the old woman he kept repeating,
"There, haven't caught me!"
This old woman and her son were accused of incendiarism. She bore her imprisonment with perfect cheerfulness, but was concerned about her son, and chiefly about her "old man," who she feared would get into a terrible state with no one to wash for him.
Besides these seven women, there were four standing at one of the open windows, holding on to the iron bars. They were making signs and shouting to the convicts whom Maslova had met when returning to prison, and who were now passing through the yard.
One of these women was big and heavy, with a flabby body, red hair, and freckled on her pale yellow face, her hands, and her fat neck. She shouted something in a loud, raucous voice, and laughed hoarsely. This woman was serving her term for theft.
Beside her stood an awkward, dark little woman, no bigger than a child of ten, with a long waist and very short legs, a red, blotchy face, thick lips which did not hide her long teeth, and eyes too far apart.
She broke by fits and starts into screeching laughter at what was going on in the yard.
She was to be tried for stealing and incendiarism. They called her Khoroshavka.
Behind her, in a very dirty grey chemise, stood a thin, miserable-looking pregnant woman, who was to be tried for concealment of theft.
This woman stood silent, but kept smiling with pleasure and approval at what was going on below.
With these stood a peasant woman of medium height, the mother of the boy who was playing with the old woman and of a seven-year-old girl. These were in prison with her because she had no one to leave them with. She was serving her term of imprisonment for illicit sale of spirits. She stood a little further from the window knitting a stocking, and though she listened to the other prisoners' words she shook her head disapprovingly, frowned, and closed her eyes.
But her seven-year-old daughter stood in her little chemise, her flaxen hair done up in a little pigtail, her blue eyes fixed, and, holding the red-haired woman by the skirt, attentively listened to the words of abuse that the women and the convicts flung at each other, and repeated them softly, as if learning them by heart.
The twelfth prisoner, who paid no attention to what was going on, was a very tall, stately girl, the daughter of a deacon, who had drowned her baby in a well. She went about with bare feet, wearing only a dirty chemise. The thick, short plait of her fair hair had come undone and hung down dishevelled, and she paced up and down the free space of the cell, not looking at any one, turning abruptly every time she came up to the wall.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE PRISONERS.
When the padlock rattled and the door opened to let Maslova into the cell, all turned towards her.
Even the deacon's daughter stopped for a moment and looked at her with lifted brows before resuming her steady striding up and down.
Korableva stuck her needle into the brown sacking and looked questioningly at Maslova through her spectacles.
"Eh, eh, deary me, so you have come back.
And I felt sure they'd acquit you. So you've got it?"
She took off her spectacles and put her work down beside her on the shelf bed.
"And here have I and the old lady been saying, 'Why, it may well be they'll let her go free at once.'
Why, it happens, ducky, they'll even give you a heap of money sometimes, that's sure," the watchman's wife began, in her singing voice: "Yes, we were wondering, 'Why's she so long?' And now just see what it is. Well, our guessing was no use.
The Lord willed otherwise," she went on in musical tones.
"Is it possible? Have they sentenced you?" asked Theodosia, with concern, looking at Maslova with her bright blue, child-like eyes; and her merry young face changed as if she were going to cry.
Maslova did not answer, but went on to her place, the second from the end, and sat down beside Korableva.
"Have you eaten anything?" said Theodosia, rising and coming up to Maslova.
Maslova gave no reply, but putting the rolls on the bedstead, took off her dusty cloak, the kerchief off her curly black head, and began pulling off her shoes.
The old woman who had been playing with the boy came up and stood in front of Maslova.
"Tz, tz, tz," she clicked with her tongue, shaking her head pityingly.
The boy also came up with her, and, putting out his upper lip, stared with wide open eyes at the roll Maslova had brought.
When Maslova saw the sympathetic faces of her fellow-prisoners, her lips trembled and she felt inclined to cry, but she succeeded in restraining herself until the old woman and the boy came up.
When she heard the kind, pitying clicking of the old woman's tongue, and met the boy's serious eyes turned from the roll to her face, she could bear it no longer; her face quivered and she burst into sobs.
"Didn't I tell you to insist on having a proper advocate?" said Norableva. "Well, what is it? Exile?"
Maslova could not answer, but took from inside the roll a box of cigarettes, on which was a picture of a lady with hair done up very high and dress cut low in front, and passed the box to Korableva.
Korableva looked at it and shook her head, chiefly because see did not approve of Maslova's putting her money to such bad use; but still she took out a cigarette, lit it at the lamp, took a puff, and almost forced it into Maslova's hand.
Maslova, still crying, began greedily to inhale the tobacco smoke. "Penal servitude," she muttered, blowing out the smoke and sobbing.
"Don't they fear the Lord, the cursed soul-slayers?" muttered Korableva, "sentencing the lass for nothing."
At this moment the sound of loud, coarse laughter came from the women who were still at the window.
The little girl also laughed, and her childish treble mixed with the hoarse and screeching laughter of the others.
One of the convicts outside had done something that produced this effect on the onlookers.
"Lawks! see the shaved hound, what he's doing," said the red-haired woman, her whole fat body shaking with laughter; and leaning against the grating she shouted meaning less obscene words.
"Ugh, the fat fright's cackling," said Korableva, who disliked the red-haired woman. Then, turning to Maslova again, she asked: "How many years?"
"Four," said Maslova, and the tears ran down her cheeks in such profusion that one fell on the cigarette.
Maslova crumpled it up angrily and took another.
Though the watchman's wife did not smoke she picked up the cigarette Maslova had thrown away and began straightening it out, talking unceasingly.
"There, now, ducky, so it's true," she said. "Truth's gone to the dogs and they do what they please, and here we were guessing that you'd go free.
Norableva says, 'She'll go free.' I say, 'No,' say I. 'No, dear, my heart tells me they'll give it her.' And so it's turned out," she went on, evidently listening with pleasure to her own voice.