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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cossacks, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Cossacks
+       A Tale of 1852
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Translators: Louise and Aylmer Maude
+
+Release Date: March 13, 2002 [eBook #4761]
+[Most recently updated: May 7, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COSSACKS ***
+
+
+
+
+THE COSSACKS
+
+A Tale of 1852
+
+By Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ Chapter I
+ Chapter II
+ Chapter III
+ Chapter IV
+ Chapter V
+ Chapter VI
+ Chapter VII
+ Chapter VIII
+ Chapter IX
+ Chapter X
+ Chapter XI
+ Chapter XII
+ Chapter XIII
+ Chapter XIV
+ Chapter XV
+ Chapter XVI
+ Chapter XVII
+ Chapter XVIII
+ Chapter XIX
+ Chapter XX
+ Chapter XXI
+ Chapter XXII
+ Chapter XXIII
+ Chapter XXIV
+ Chapter XXV
+ Chapter XXVI
+ Chapter XXVII
+ Chapter XXVIII
+ Chapter XXIX
+ Chapter XXX
+ Chapter XXXI
+ Chapter XXXII
+ Chapter XXXIII
+ Chapter XXXIV
+ Chapter XXXV
+ Chapter XXXVI
+ Chapter XXXVII
+ Chapter XXXVIII
+ Chapter XXXIX
+ Chapter XL
+ Chapter XLI
+ Chapter XLII
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the
+snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the
+street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne
+over the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning.
+The streets are deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman’s sledge
+kneads up the snow and sand in the street as the driver makes his way
+to another corner where he falls asleep while waiting for a fare. An
+old woman passes by on her way to church, where a few wax candles burn
+with a red light reflected on the gilt mountings of the icons. Workmen
+are already getting up after the long winter night and going to their
+work—but for the gentlefolk it is still evening.
+
+From a window in Chevalier’s Restaurant a light—illegal at that hour—is
+still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the entrance a
+carriage, a sledge, and a cabman’s sledge, stand close together with
+their backs to the curbstone. A three-horse sledge from the
+post-station is there also. A yard-porter muffled up and pinched with
+cold is sheltering behind the corner of the house.
+
+“And what’s the good of all this jawing?” thinks the footman who sits
+in the hall weary and haggard. “This always happens when I’m on duty.”
+From the adjoining room are heard the voices of three young men,
+sitting there at a table on which are wine and the remains of supper.
+One, a rather plain, thin, neat little man, sits looking with tired
+kindly eyes at his friend, who is about to start on a journey. Another,
+a tall man, lies on a sofa beside a table on which are empty bottles,
+and plays with his watch-key. A third, wearing a short, fur-lined coat,
+is pacing up and down the room stopping now and then to crack an almond
+between his strong, rather thick, but well-tended fingers. He keeps
+smiling at something and his face and eyes are all aglow. He speaks
+warmly and gesticulates, but evidently does not find the words he wants
+and those that occur to him seem to him inadequate to express what has
+risen to his heart.
+
+“Now I can speak out fully,” said the traveller. “I don’t want to
+defend myself, but I should like you at least to understand me as I
+understand myself, and not look at the matter superficially. You say I
+have treated her badly,” he continued, addressing the man with the
+kindly eyes who was watching him.
+
+“Yes, you are to blame,” said the latter, and his look seemed to
+express still more kindliness and weariness.
+
+“I know why you say that,” rejoined the one who was leaving. “To be
+loved is in your opinion as great a happiness as to love, and if a man
+obtains it, it is enough for his whole life.”
+
+“Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow, more than enough!” confirmed the
+plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes.
+
+“But why shouldn’t the man love too?” said the traveller thoughtfully,
+looking at his friend with something like pity. “Why shouldn’t one
+love? Because love doesn’t come ... No, to be beloved is a misfortune.
+It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you
+cannot give. O my God!” he added, with a gesture of his arm. “If it all
+happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a
+way of its own! Why, it’s as if I had stolen that love! You think so
+too, don’t deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all
+the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and
+there are many—this is one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at
+the beginning nor afterwards did I lie to myself or to her. It seemed
+to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I saw that it was an
+involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to love, and I
+could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I couldn’t? What was I
+to do?”
+
+“Well, it’s ended now!” said his friend, lighting a cigar to master his
+sleepiness. “The fact is that you have not yet loved and do not know
+what love is.”
+
+The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put his
+hands to his head, but could not express what he wanted to say.
+
+“Never loved! ... Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I have
+within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger than that
+desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There always remains
+something incomplete. Ah well! What’s the use of talking? I’ve made an
+awful mess of life! But anyhow it’s all over now; you are quite right.
+And I feel that I am beginning a new life.”
+
+“Which you will again make a mess of,” said the man who lay on the sofa
+playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen to him.
+
+“I am sad and yet glad to go,” he continued. “Why I am sad I don’t
+know.”
+
+And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing that
+this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man is never
+such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it
+seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and
+interesting than himself.
+
+“Dmítri Andréich! The coachman won’t wait any longer!” said a young
+serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf tied round
+his head. “The horses have been standing since twelve, and it’s now
+four o’clock!”
+
+Dmítri Andréich looked at his serf, Vanyúsha. The scarf round
+Vanyúsha’s head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be calling
+his master to a new life of labour, hardship, and activity.
+
+“True enough! Good-bye!” said he, feeling for the unfastened hook and
+eye on his coat.
+
+In spite of advice to mollify the coachman by another tip, he put on
+his cap and stood in the middle of the room. The friends kissed once,
+then again, and after a pause, a third time. The man in the fur-lined
+coat approached the table and emptied a champagne glass, then took the
+plain little man’s hand and blushed.
+
+“Ah well, I will speak out all the same ... I must and will be frank
+with you because I am fond of you ... Of course you love her—I always
+thought so—don’t you?”
+
+“Yes,” answered his friend, smiling still more gently.
+
+“And perhaps...”
+
+“Please sir, I have orders to put out the candles,” said the sleepy
+attendant, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation
+and wondering why gentlefolk always talk about one and the same thing.
+“To whom shall I make out the bill? To you, sir?” he added, knowing
+whom to address and turning to the tall man.
+
+“To me,” replied the tall man. “How much?”
+
+“Twenty-six rubles.”
+
+The tall man considered for a moment, but said nothing and put the bill
+in his pocket.
+
+The other two continued their talk.
+
+“Good-bye, you are a capital fellow!” said the short plain man with the
+mild eyes. Tears filled the eyes of both. They stepped into the porch.
+
+“Oh, by the by,” said the traveller, turning with a blush to the tall
+man, “will you settle Chevalier’s bill and write and let me know?”
+
+“All right, all right!” said the tall man, pulling on his gloves. “How
+I envy you!” he added quite unexpectedly when they were out in the
+porch.
+
+The traveller got into his sledge, wrapped his coat about him, and
+said: “Well then, come along!” He even moved a little to make room in
+the sledge for the man who said he envied him—his voice trembled.
+
+“Good-bye, Mítya! I hope that with God’s help you...” said the tall
+one. But his wish was that the other would go away quickly, and so he
+could not finish the sentence.
+
+They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, “Good-bye,” and a
+voice cried, “Ready,” and the coachman touched up the horses.
+
+“Hy, Elisár!” One of the friends called out, and the other coachman and
+the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their tongues and pulling at
+the reins. Then the stiffened carriage-wheels rolled squeaking over the
+frozen snow.
+
+“A fine fellow, that Olénin!” said one of the friends. “But what an
+idea to go to the Caucasus—as a cadet, too! I wouldn’t do it for
+anything. ... Are you dining at the club tomorrow?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+They separated.
+
+The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on the
+bottom of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three shaggy
+post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another,
+past houses he had never before seen. It seemed to Olénin that only
+travellers starting on a long journey went through those streets. All
+was dark and silent and dull around him, but his soul was full of
+memories, love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful feeling.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter II
+
+
+“I’m fond of them, very fond! ... First-rate fellows! ... Fine!” he
+kept repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to cry, who
+were the first-rate fellows he was so fond of—was more than he quite
+knew. Now and then he looked round at some house and wondered why it
+was so curiously built; sometimes he began wondering why the post-boy
+and Vanyúsha, who were so different from himself, sat so near, and
+together with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the
+side-horses gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: “First
+rate ... very fond!” and once he even said: “And how it seizes one ...
+excellent!” and wondered what made him say it. “Dear me, am I drunk?”
+he asked himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was
+not the wine alone that was having this effect on Olénin. He remembered
+all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he
+believed) addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of
+hands, glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice
+saying, “Good-bye, Mítya!” when he was already in the sledge. He
+remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching
+significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people
+who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him,
+seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him,
+before his departure, as people do before confession or death. “Perhaps
+I shall not return from the Caucasus,” he thought. And he felt that he
+loved his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But
+it was not love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart
+that he could not repress the meaningless words that seemed to rise of
+themselves to his lips; nor was it love for a woman (he had never yet
+been in love) that had brought on this mood. Love for himself, love
+full of hope—warm young love for all that was good in his own soul (and
+at that moment it seemed to him that there was nothing but good in
+it)—compelled him to weep and to mutter incoherent words.
+
+Olénin was a youth who had never completed his university course, never
+served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government office
+or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the age
+of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career. He
+was what in Moscow society is termed _un jeune homme_.
+
+At the age of eighteen he was free—as only rich young Russians in the
+’forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither
+physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as
+he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor
+fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in
+nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he
+was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the
+contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the
+conclusion that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always
+overflowed in the presence of any young and attractive woman. He had
+long been aware that honours and position were nonsense, yet
+involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius came up and
+spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so far as
+they did not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to any
+influence and became conscious of its leading on to labour and
+struggle, he instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or
+activity into which he was being drawn and to regain his freedom. In
+this way he experimented with society-life, the civil service, farming,
+music—to which at one time he intended to devote his life—and even with
+the love of women in which he did not believe. He meditated on the use
+to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man
+only once in a lifetime: that force which gives a man the power of
+making himself, or even—as it seemed to him—of making the universe,
+into anything he wishes: should it be to art, to science, to love of
+woman, or to practical activities? It is true that some people are
+devoid of this impulse, and on entering life at once place their necks
+under the first yoke that offers itself and honestly labour under it
+for the rest of their lives. But Olénin was too strongly conscious of
+the presence of that all-powerful God of Youth—of that capacity to be
+entirely transformed into an aspiration or idea—the capacity to wish
+and to do—to throw oneself headlong into a bottomless abyss without
+knowing why or wherefore. He bore this consciousness within himself,
+was proud of it and, without knowing it, was happy in that
+consciousness. Up to that time he had loved only himself, and could not
+help loving himself, for he expected nothing but good of himself and
+had not yet had time to be disillusioned. On leaving Moscow he was in
+that happy state of mind in which a young man, conscious of past
+mistakes, suddenly says to himself, “That was not the real thing.” All
+that had gone before was accidental and unimportant. Till then he had
+not really tried to live, but now with his departure from Moscow a new
+life was beginning—a life in which there would be no mistakes, no
+remorse, and certainly nothing but happiness.
+
+It is always the case on a long journey that till the first two or
+three stages have been passed imagination continues to dwell on the
+place left behind, but with the first morning on the road it leaps to
+the end of the journey and there begins building castles in the air. So
+it happened to Olénin.
+
+After leaving the town behind, he gazed at the snowy fields and felt
+glad to be alone in their midst. Wrapping himself in his fur coat, he
+lay at the bottom of the sledge, became tranquil, and fell into a doze.
+The parting with his friends had touched him deeply, and memories of
+that last winter spent in Moscow and images of the past, mingled with
+vague thoughts and regrets, rose unbidden in his imagination.
+
+He remembered the friend who had seen him off and his relations with
+the girl they had talked about. The girl was rich. “How could he love
+her knowing that she loved me?” thought he, and evil suspicions crossed
+his mind. “There is much dishonesty in men when one comes to reflect.”
+Then he was confronted by the question: “But really, how is it I have
+never been in love? Every one tells me that I never have. Can it be
+that I am a moral monstrosity?” And he began to recall all his
+infatuations. He recalled his entry into society, and a friend’s sister
+with whom he spent several evenings at a table with a lamp on it which
+lit up her slender fingers busy with needlework, and the lower part of
+her pretty delicate face. He recalled their conversations that dragged
+on like the game in which one passes on a stick which one keeps alight
+as long as possible, and the general awkwardness and restraint and his
+continual feeling of rebellion at all that conventionality. Some voice
+had always whispered: “That’s not it, that’s not it,” and so it had
+proved. Then he remembered a ball and the mazurka he danced with the
+beautiful D——. “How much in love I was that night and how happy! And
+how hurt and vexed I was next morning when I woke and felt myself still
+free! Why does not love come and bind me hand and foot?” thought he.
+“No, there is no such thing as love! That neighbour who used to tell
+me, as she told Dubróvin and the Marshal, that she loved the stars, was
+not _it_ either.”
+
+And now his farming and work in the country recurred to his mind, and
+in those recollections also there was nothing to dwell on with
+pleasure. “Will they talk long of my departure?” came into his head;
+but who “they” were he did not quite know. Next came a thought that
+made him wince and mutter incoherently. It was the recollection of M.
+Cappele the tailor, and the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles he
+still owed him, and he recalled the words in which he had begged him to
+wait another year, and the look of perplexity and resignation which had
+appeared on the tailor’s face. “Oh, my God, my God!” he repeated,
+wincing and trying to drive away the intolerable thought. “All the same
+and in spite of everything she loved me,” thought he of the girl they
+had talked about at the farewell supper. “Yes, had I married her I
+should not now be owing anything, and as it is I am in debt to
+Vasílyev.” Then he remembered the last night he had played with
+Vasílyev at the club (just after leaving her), and he recalled his
+humiliating requests for another game and the other’s cold refusal. “A
+year’s economizing and they will all be paid, and the devil take
+them!”... But despite this assurance he again began calculating his
+outstanding debts, their dates, and when he could hope to pay them off.
+“And I owe something to Morell as well as to Chevalier,” thought he,
+recalling the night when he had run up so large a debt. It was at a
+carousel at the gipsies arranged by some fellows from Petersburg:
+Sáshka B——, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar, Prince D——, and that pompous
+old——. “How is it those gentlemen are so self-satisfied?” thought he,
+“and by what right do they form a clique to which they think others
+must be highly flattered to be admitted? Can it be because they are on
+the Emperor’s staff? Why, it’s awful what fools and scoundrels they
+consider other people to be! But I showed them that I at any rate, on
+the contrary, do not at all want their intimacy. All the same, I fancy
+Andrew, the steward, would be amazed to know that I am on familiar
+terms with a man like Sáshka B——, a colonel and an aide-de-camp to the
+Tsar! Yes, and no one drank more than I did that evening, and I taught
+the gipsies a new song and everyone listened to it. Though I have done
+many foolish things, all the same I am a very good fellow,” thought he.
+
+Morning found him at the third post-stage. He drank tea, and himself
+helped Vanyúsha to move his bundles and trunks and sat down among them,
+sensible, erect, and precise, knowing where all his belongings were,
+how much money he had and where it was, where he had put his passport
+and the post-horse requisition and toll-gate papers, and it all seemed
+to him so well arranged that he grew quite cheerful and the long
+journey before him seemed an extended pleasure-trip.
+
+All that morning and noon he was deep in calculations of how many
+versts he had travelled, how many remained to the next stage, how many
+to the next town, to the place where he would dine, to the place where
+he would drink tea, and to Stavrópol, and what fraction of the whole
+journey was already accomplished. He also calculated how much money he
+had with him, how much would be left over, how much would pay off all
+his debts, and what proportion of his income he would spend each month.
+Towards evening, after tea, he calculated that to Stavrópol there still
+remained seven-elevenths of the whole journey, that his debts would
+require seven months’ economy and one-eighth of his whole fortune; and
+then, tranquillized, he wrapped himself up, lay down in the sledge, and
+again dozed off. His imagination was now turned to the future: to the
+Caucasus. All his dreams of the future were mingled with pictures of
+Amalat-Beks, Circassian women, mountains, precipices, terrible
+torrents, and perils. All these things were vague and dim, but the love
+of fame and the danger of death furnished the interest of that future.
+Now, with unprecedented courage and a strength that amazed everyone, he
+slew and subdued an innumerable host of hillsmen; now he was himself a
+hillsman and with them was maintaining their independence against the
+Russians. As soon as he pictured anything definite, familiar Moscow
+figures always appeared on the scene. Sáshka B—— fights with the
+Russians or the hillsmen against him. Even the tailor Cappele in some
+strange way takes part in the conqueror’s triumph. Amid all this he
+remembered his former humiliations, weaknesses, and mistakes, and the
+recollection was not disagreeable. It was clear that there among the
+mountains, waterfalls, fair Circassians, and dangers, such mistakes
+could not recur. Having once made full confession to himself there was
+an end of it all. One other vision, the sweetest of them all, mingled
+with the young man’s every thought of the future—the vision of a woman.
+And there, among the mountains, she appeared to his imagination as a
+Circassian slave, a fine figure with a long plait of hair and deep
+submissive eyes. He pictured a lonely hut in the mountains, and on the
+threshold _she_ stands awaiting him when, tired and covered with dust,
+blood, and fame, he returns to her. He is conscious of her kisses, her
+shoulders, her sweet voice, and her submissiveness. She is enchanting,
+but uneducated, wild, and rough. In the long winter evenings he begins
+her education. She is clever and gifted and quickly acquires all the
+knowledge essential. Why not? She can quite easily learn foreign
+languages, read the French masterpieces and understand them: _Notre
+Dame de Paris_, for instance, is sure to please her. She can also speak
+French. In a drawing-room she can show more innate dignity than a lady
+of the highest society. She can sing, simply, powerfully, and
+passionately.... “Oh, what nonsense!” said he to himself. But here they
+reached a post-station and he had to change into another sledge and
+give some tips. But his fancy again began searching for the “nonsense”
+he had relinquished, and again fair Circassians, glory, and his return
+to Russia with an appointment as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose
+before his imagination. “But there’s no such thing as love,” said he to
+himself. “Fame is all rubbish. But the six hundred and seventy-eight
+rubles?... And the conquered land that will bring me more wealth than I
+need for a lifetime? It will not be right though to keep all that
+wealth for myself. I shall have to distribute it. But to whom? Well,
+six hundred and seventy-eight rubles to Cappele and then we’ll see.”
+... Quite vague visions now cloud his mind, and only Vanyúsha’s voice
+and the interrupted motion of the sledge break his healthy youthful
+slumber. Scarcely conscious, he changes into another sledge at the next
+stage and continues his journey.
+
+Next morning everything goes on just the same: the same kind of
+post-stations and tea-drinking, the same moving horses’ cruppers, the
+same short talks with Vanyúsha, the same vague dreams and drowsiness,
+and the same tired, healthy, youthful sleep at night.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter III
+
+
+The farther Olénin travelled from Central Russia the farther he left
+his memories behind, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus the lighter
+his heart became. “I’ll stay away for good and never return to show
+myself in society,” was a thought that sometimes occurred to him.
+“These people whom I see here are _not_ people. None of them know me
+and none of them can ever enter the Moscow society I was in or find out
+about my past. And no one in that society will ever know what I am
+doing, living among these people.” And quite a new feeling of freedom
+from his whole past came over him among the rough beings he met on the
+road whom he did not consider to be _people_ in the sense that his
+Moscow acquaintances were.
+
+The rougher the people and the fewer the signs of civilization the
+freer he felt. Stavrópol, through which he had to pass, irked him. The
+signboards, some of them even in French, ladies in carriages, cabs in
+the marketplace, and a gentleman wearing a fur cloak and tall hat who
+was walking along the boulevard and staring at the passersby, quite
+upset him. “Perhaps these people know some of my acquaintances,” he
+thought; and the club, his tailor, cards, society ... came back to his
+mind. But after Stavrópol everything was satisfactory—wild and also
+beautiful and warlike, and Olénin felt happier and happier. All the
+Cossacks, post-boys, and post-station masters seemed to him simple folk
+with whom he could jest and converse simply, without having to consider
+to what class they belonged. They all belonged to the human race which,
+without his thinking about it, all appeared dear to Olénin, and they
+all treated him in a friendly way.
+
+Already in the province of the Don Cossacks his sledge had been
+exchanged for a cart, and beyond Stavrópol it became so warm that
+Olénin travelled without wearing his fur coat. It was already spring—an
+unexpected joyous spring for Olénin. At night he was no longer allowed
+to leave the Cossack villages, and they said it was dangerous to travel
+in the evening. Vanyúsha began to be uneasy, and they carried a loaded
+gun in the cart. Olénin became still happier. At one of the
+post-stations the post-master told of a terrible murder that had been
+committed recently on the high road. They began to meet armed men. “So
+this is where it begins!” thought Olénin, and kept expecting to see the
+snowy mountains of which mention was so often made. Once, towards
+evening, the Nogáy driver pointed with his whip to the mountains
+shrouded in clouds. Olénin looked eagerly, but it was dull and the
+mountains were almost hidden by the clouds. Olénin made out something
+grey and white and fleecy, but try as he would he could find nothing
+beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and heard. The
+mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike, and he thought
+the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he had so often been
+told, was as much an invention as Bach’s music and the love of women,
+in which he did not believe. So he gave up looking forward to seeing
+the mountains. But early next morning, being awakened in his cart by
+the freshness of the air, he glanced carelessly to the right. The
+morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces away
+as it seemed to him at first glance, pure white gigantic masses with
+delicate contours, the distinct fantastic outlines of their summits
+showing sharply against the far-off sky. When he had realized the
+distance between himself and them and the sky and the whole immensity
+of the mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty, he became
+afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself a shake
+to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.
+
+“What’s that! What is it?” he said to the driver.
+
+“Why, the mountains,” answered the Nogáy driver with indifference.
+
+“And I too have been looking at them for a long while,” said Vanyúsha.
+“Aren’t they fine? They won’t believe it at home.”
+
+The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road
+caused the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon, while
+their rosy crests glittered in the light of the rising sun. At first
+Olénin was only astonished at the sight, then gladdened by it; but
+later on, gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain that
+seemed to rise not from among other black mountains, but straight out
+of the plain, and to glide away into the distance, he began by slow
+degrees to be penetrated by their beauty and at length to _feel_ the
+mountains. From that moment all he saw, all he thought, and all he
+felt, acquired for him a new character, sternly majestic like the
+mountains! All his Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his
+trivial dreams about the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. “Now it
+has begun,” a solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the
+Térek, just becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages
+and the people, all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at
+himself or Vanyúsha, and again thought of the mountains. ... Two
+Cossacks ride by, their guns in their cases swinging rhythmically
+behind their backs, the white and bay legs of their horses mingling
+confusedly ... and the mountains! Beyond the Térek rises the smoke from
+a Tartar village... and the mountains! The sun has risen and glitters
+on the Térek, now visible beyond the reeds ... and the mountains! From
+the village comes a Tartar wagon, and women, beautiful young women,
+pass by... and the mountains! “_Abreks_ canter about the plain, and
+here am I driving along and do not fear them! I have a gun, and
+strength, and youth... and the mountains!”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter IV
+
+
+That whole part of the Térek line (about fifty miles) along which lie
+the villages of the Grebénsk Cossacks is uniform in character both as
+to country and inhabitants. The Térek, which separates the Cossacks
+from the mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already
+broad and smooth, always depositing greyish sand on its low reedy right
+bank and washing away the steep, though not high, left bank, with its
+roots of century-old oaks, its rotting plane trees, and young
+brushwood. On the right bank lie the villages of pro-Russian, though
+still somewhat restless, Tartars. Along the left bank, back half a mile
+from the river and standing five or six miles apart from one another,
+are Cossack villages. In olden times most of these villages were
+situated on the banks of the river; but the Térek, shifting northward
+from the mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and now there
+remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear
+and plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and
+wild vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the
+deer, the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to
+love these places. From village to village runs a road cut through the
+forest as a cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of
+Cossacks and watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip
+about seven hundred yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the
+Cossacks. To the north of it begin the sand-drifts of the Nogáy or
+Mozdók steppes, which fetch far to the north and run, Heaven knows
+where, into the Trukhmén, Astrakhán, and Kirghíz-Kaisátsk steppes. To
+the south, beyond the Térek, are the Great Chéchnya river, the
+Kochkálov range, the Black Mountains, yet another range, and at last
+the snowy mountains, which can just be seen but have never yet been
+scaled. In this fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has dwelt as
+far back as memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian tribe
+belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebénsk
+Cossacks.
+
+Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled
+beyond the Térek among the Chéchens on the Grebén, the first range of
+wooded mountains of Chéchnya. Living among the Chéchens the Cossacks
+intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs of the hill
+tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all its
+purity, as well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among
+them, declares that Tsar Iván the Terrible came to the Térek, sent for
+their Elders, and gave them the land on this side of the river,
+exhorting them to remain friendly to Russia and promising not to
+enforce his rule upon them nor oblige them to change their faith. Even
+now the Cossack families claim relationship with the Chéchens, and the
+love of freedom, of leisure, of plunder and of war, still form their
+chief characteristics. Only the harmful side of Russian influence shows
+itself—by interference at elections, by confiscation of church bells,
+and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march through it.
+
+A Cossack is inclined to hate less the _dzhigit_ hillsman who maybe has
+killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his
+village, but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects
+his enemy the hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an
+alien and an oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack’s point of view a
+Russian peasant is a foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he
+sees a sample in the hawkers who come to the country and in the
+Ukrainian immigrants whom the Cossack contemptuously calls
+“woolbeaters”. For him, to be smartly dressed means to be dressed like
+a Circassian. The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the
+best horses are bought, or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack
+likes to show off his knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks
+Tartar even to his fellow Cossack.
+
+In spite of all these things this small Christian clan stranded in a
+tiny corner of the earth, surrounded by half-savage Mohammedan tribes
+and by soldiers, considers itself highly advanced, acknowledges none
+but Cossacks as human beings, and despises everybody else. The Cossack
+spends most of his time in the cordon, in action, or in hunting and
+fishing. He hardly ever works at home. When he stays in the village it
+is an exception to the general rule and then he is holiday-making. All
+Cossacks make their own wine, and drunkenness is not so much a general
+tendency as a rite, the non-fulfilment of which would be considered
+apostasy. The Cossack looks upon a woman as an instrument for his
+welfare; only the unmarried girls are allowed to amuse themselves. A
+married woman has to work for her husband from youth to very old age:
+his demands on her are the Oriental ones of submission and labour. In
+consequence of this outlook women are strongly developed both
+physically and mentally, and though they are—as everywhere in the
+East—nominally in subjection, they possess far greater influence and
+importance in family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from
+public life and inurement to heavy male labour give the women all the
+more power and importance in the household. A Cossack, who before
+strangers considers it improper to speak affectionately or needlessly
+to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her
+superiority. His house and all his property, in fact the entire
+homestead, has been acquired and is kept together solely by her labour
+and care. Though firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack
+and is only proper for a Nogáy labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware
+of the fact that all he makes use of and calls his own is the result of
+that toil, and that it is in the power of the woman (his mother or his
+wife) whom he considers his slave, to deprive him of all he possesses.
+Besides, the continuous performance of man’s heavy work and the
+responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebénsk women with
+a peculiarly independent masculine character and have remarkably
+developed their physical powers, common sense, resolution, and
+stability. The women are in most cases stronger, more intelligent, more
+developed, and handsomer than the men. A striking feature of a Grebénsk
+woman’s beauty is the combination of the purest Circassian type of face
+with the broad and powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear
+the Circassian dress: a Tartar smock, _beshmet_, and soft slippers; but
+they tie their kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion.
+Smartness, cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of
+their huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations
+with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect
+freedom.
+
+Novomlínsk village was considered the very heart of Grebénsk
+Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebénsk
+population have been preserved, and its women have from time immemorial
+been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack’s
+livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and
+pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing,
+and from war plunder. Novomlínsk village lies about two and a half
+miles away from the Térek, from which it is separated by a dense
+forest. On one side of the road which runs through the village is the
+river; on the other, green vineyards and orchards, beyond which are
+seen the driftsands of the Nogáy Steppe. The village is surrounded by
+earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered by tall gates
+hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched roofs. Beside
+them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy cannon captured by the
+Cossacks at some time or other, and which has not been fired for a
+hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with dagger and gun
+sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on guard beside the
+gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing officer and sometimes
+does not.
+
+Below the roof of the gateway is written in black letters on a white
+board: “Houses 266: male inhabitants 897: female 1012.” The Cossacks’
+houses are all raised on pillars two and a half feet from the ground.
+They are carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved gables. If
+not new they are at least all straight and clean, with high porches of
+different shapes; and they are not built close together but have ample
+space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad streets
+and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses,
+beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their
+delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses,
+and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape
+vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery,
+sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold;
+and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier and larger than the other
+houses, stands the Regimental Commander’s dwelling with its casement
+windows, behind a row of tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the
+streets of the village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young men
+are on duty in the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are
+fishing or helping the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very
+old, the sick, and the children, remain at home.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter V
+
+
+It was one of those wonderful evenings that occur only in the Caucasus.
+The sun had sunk behind the mountains but it was still light. The
+evening glow had spread over a third of the sky, and against its
+brilliancy the dull white immensity of the mountains was sharply
+defined. The air was rarefied, motionless, and full of sound. The
+shadow of the mountains reached for several miles over the steppe. The
+steppe, the opposite side of the river, and the roads, were all
+deserted. If very occasionally mounted men appeared, the Cossacks in
+the cordon and the Chéchens in their _aouls_ (villages) watched them
+with surprised curiosity and tried to guess who those questionable men
+could be.
+
+At nightfall people from fear of one another flock to their dwellings,
+and only birds and beasts fearless of man prowl in those deserted
+spaces. Talking merrily, the women who have been tying up the vines
+hurry away from the gardens before sunset. The vineyards, like all the
+surrounding district, are deserted, but the villages become very
+animated at that time of the evening. From all sides, walking, riding,
+or driving in their creaking carts, people move towards the village.
+Girls with their smocks tucked up and twigs in their hands run chatting
+merrily to the village gates to meet the cattle that are crowding
+together in a cloud of dust and mosquitoes which they bring with them
+from the steppe. The well-fed cows and buffaloes disperse at a run all
+over the streets and Cossack women in coloured _beshmets_ go to and fro
+among them. You can hear their merry laughter and shrieks mingling with
+the lowing of the cattle. There an armed and mounted Cossack, on leave
+from the cordon, rides up to a hut and, leaning towards the window,
+knocks. In answer to the knock the handsome head of a young woman
+appears at the window and you can hear caressing, laughing voices.
+There a tattered Nogáy labourer, with prominent cheekbones, brings a
+load of reeds from the steppes, turns his creaking cart into the
+Cossack captain’s broad and clean courtyard, and lifts the yoke off the
+oxen that stand tossing their heads while he and his master shout to
+one another in Tartar. Past a puddle that reaches nearly across the
+street, a barefooted Cossack woman with a bundle of firewood on her
+back makes her laborious way by clinging to the fences, holding her
+smock high and exposing her white legs. A Cossack returning from
+shooting calls out in jest: “Lift it higher, shameless thing!” and
+points his gun at her. The woman lets down her smock and drops the
+wood. An old Cossack, returning home from fishing with his trousers
+tucked up and his hairy grey chest uncovered, has a net across his
+shoulder containing silvery fish that are still struggling; and to take
+a short cut climbs over his neighbour’s broken fence and gives a tug to
+his coat which has caught on the fence. There a woman is dragging a dry
+branch along and from round the corner comes the sound of an axe.
+Cossack children, spinning their tops wherever there is a smooth place
+in the street, are shrieking; women are climbing over fences to avoid
+going round. From every chimney rises the odorous _kisyak_ smoke. From
+every homestead comes the sound of increased bustle, precursor to the
+stillness of night.
+
+Granny Ulítka, the wife of the Cossack cornet who is also teacher in
+the regimental school, goes out to the gates of her yard like the other
+women, and waits for the cattle which her daughter Maryánka is driving
+along the street. Before she has had time fully to open the wattle gate
+in the fence, an enormous buffalo cow surrounded by mosquitoes rushes
+up bellowing and squeezes in. Several well-fed cows slowly follow her,
+their large eyes gazing with recognition at their mistress as they
+swish their sides with their tails.
+
+The beautiful and shapely Maryánka enters at the gate and throwing away
+her switch quickly slams the gate to and rushes with all the speed of
+her nimble feet to separate and drive the cattle into their sheds.
+“Take off your slippers, you devil’s wench!” shouts her mother, “you’ve
+worn them into holes!” Maryánka is not at all offended at being called
+a “devil’s wench”, but accepting it as a term of endearment cheerfully
+goes on with her task. Her face is covered with a kerchief tied round
+her head. She is wearing a pink smock and a green _beshmet_. She
+disappears inside the lean-to shed in the yard, following the big fat
+cattle; and from the shed comes her voice as she speaks gently and
+persuasively to the buffalo: “Won’t she stand still? What a creature!
+Come now, come old dear!” Soon the girl and the old woman pass from the
+shed to the dairy carrying two large pots of milk, the day’s yield.
+From the dairy chimney rises a thin cloud of _kisyak_ smoke: the milk
+is being used to make into clotted cream. The girl makes up the fire
+while her mother goes to the gate. Twilight has fallen on the village.
+The air is full of the smell of vegetables, cattle, and scented
+_kisyak_ smoke. From the gates and along the streets Cossack women come
+running, carrying lighted rags. From the yards one hears the snorting
+and quiet chewing of the cattle eased of their milk, while in the
+street only the voices of women and children sound as they call to one
+another. It is rare on a week-day to hear the drunken voice of a man.
+
+One of the Cossack wives, a tall, masculine old woman, approaches
+Granny Ulítka from the homestead opposite and asks her for a light. In
+her hand she holds a rag.
+
+“Have you cleared up, Granny?”
+
+“The girl is lighting the fire. Is it fire you want?” says Granny
+Ulítka, proud of being able to oblige her neighbour.
+
+Both women enter the hut, and coarse hands unused to dealing with small
+articles tremblingly lift the lid of a matchbox, which is a rarity in
+the Caucasus. The masculine-looking new-comer sits down on the doorstep
+with the evident intention of having a chat.
+
+“And is your man at the school, Mother?” she asked.
+
+“He’s always teaching the youngsters, Mother. But he writes that he’ll
+come home for the holidays,” said the cornet’s wife.
+
+“Yes, he’s a clever man, one sees; it all comes useful.”
+
+“Of course it does.”
+
+“And my Lukáshka is at the cordon; they won’t let him come home,” said
+the visitor, though the cornet’s wife had known all this long ago. She
+wanted to talk about her Lukáshka whom she had lately fitted out for
+service in the Cossack regiment, and whom she wished to marry to the
+cornet’s daughter, Maryánka.
+
+“So he’s at the cordon?”
+
+“He is, Mother. He’s not been home since last holidays. The other day I
+sent him some shirts by Fómushkin. He says he’s all right, and that his
+superiors are satisfied. He says they are looking out for _abreks_
+again. Lukáshka is quite happy, he says.”
+
+“Ah well, thank God,” said the cornet’s wife. “‘Snatcher’ is certainly
+the only word for him.” Lukáshka was surnamed “the Snatcher” because of
+his bravery in snatching a boy from a watery grave, and the cornet’s
+wife alluded to this, wishing in her turn to say something agreeable to
+Lukáshka’s mother.
+
+“I thank God, Mother, that he’s a good son! He’s a fine fellow,
+everyone praises him,” says Lukáshka’s mother. “All I wish is to get
+him married; then I could die in peace.”
+
+“Well, aren’t there plenty of young women in the village?” answered the
+cornet’s wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid of the matchbox
+with her horny hands.
+
+“Plenty, Mother, plenty,” remarked Lukáshka’s mother, shaking her head.
+“There’s your girl now, your Maryánka—that’s the sort of girl! You’d
+have to search through the whole place to find such another!” The
+cornet’s wife knows what Lukáshka’s mother is after, but though she
+believes him to be a good Cossack she hangs back: first because she is
+a cornet’s wife and rich, while Lukáshka is the son of a simple Cossack
+and fatherless, secondly because she does not want to part with her
+daughter yet, but chiefly because propriety demands it.
+
+“Well, when Maryánka grows up she’ll be marriageable too,” she answers
+soberly and modestly.
+
+“I’ll send the matchmakers to you—I’ll send them! Only let me get the
+vineyard done and then we’ll come and make our bows to you,” says
+Lukáshka’s mother. “And we’ll make our bows to Elias Vasílich too.”
+
+“Elias, indeed!” says the cornet’s wife proudly. “It’s to me you must
+speak! All in its own good time.”
+
+Lukáshka’s mother sees by the stern face of the cornet’s wife that it
+is not the time to say anything more just now, so she lights her rag
+with the match and says, rising: “Don’t refuse us, think of my words.
+I’ll go, it is time to light the fire.”
+
+As she crosses the road swinging the burning rag, she meets Maryánka,
+who bows.
+
+“Ah, she’s a regular queen, a splendid worker, that girl!” she thinks,
+looking at the beautiful maiden. “What need for her to grow any more?
+It’s time she was married and to a good home; married to Lukáshka!”
+
+But Granny Ulítka had her own cares and she remained sitting on the
+threshold thinking hard about something, till the girl called her.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter VI
+
+
+The male population of the village spend their time on military
+expeditions and in the cordon—or “at their posts”, as the Cossacks say.
+Towards evening, that same Lukáshka the Snatcher, about whom the old
+women had been talking, was standing on a watch-tower of the
+Nízhni-Protótsk post situated on the very banks of the Térek. Leaning
+on the railing of the tower and screwing up his eyes, he looked now far
+into the distance beyond the Térek, now down at his fellow Cossacks,
+and occasionally he addressed the latter. The sun was already
+approaching the snowy range that gleamed white above the fleecy clouds.
+The clouds undulating at the base of the mountains grew darker and
+darker. The clearness of evening was noticeable in the air. A sense of
+freshness came from the woods, though round the post it was still hot.
+The voices of the talking Cossacks vibrated more sonorously than
+before. The moving mass of the Térek’s rapid brown waters contrasted
+more vividly with its motionless banks. The waters were beginning to
+subside and here and there the wet sands gleamed drab on the banks and
+in the shallows. The other side of the river, just opposite the cordon,
+was deserted; only an immense waste of low-growing reeds stretched far
+away to the very foot of the mountains. On the low bank, a little to
+one side, could be seen the flat-roofed clay houses and the
+funnel-shaped chimneys of a Chéchen village. The sharp eyes of the
+Cossack who stood on the watch-tower followed, through the evening
+smoke of the pro-Russian village, the tiny moving figures of the
+Chéchen women visible in the distance in their red and blue garments.
+
+Although the Cossacks expected _abreks_ to cross over and attack them
+from the Tartar side at any moment, especially as it was May when the
+woods by the Térek are so dense that it is difficult to pass through
+them on foot and the river is shallow enough in places for a horseman
+to ford it, and despite the fact that a couple of days before a Cossack
+had arrived with a circular from the commander of the regiment
+announcing that spies had reported the intention of a party of some
+eight men to cross the Térek, and ordering special vigilance—no special
+vigilance was being observed in the cordon. The Cossacks, unarmed and
+with their horses unsaddled just as if they were at home, spent their
+time some in fishing, some in drinking, and some in hunting. Only the
+horse of the man on duty was saddled, and with its feet hobbled was
+moving about by the brambles near the wood, and only the sentinel had
+his Circassian coat on and carried a gun and sword. The corporal, a
+tall thin Cossack with an exceptionally long back and small hands and
+feet, was sitting on the earth-bank of a hut with his _beshmet_
+unbuttoned. On his face was the lazy, bored expression of a superior,
+and having shut his eyes he dropped his head upon the palm first of one
+hand and then of the other. An elderly Cossack with a broad
+greyish-black beard was lying in his shirt, girdled with a black strap,
+close to the river and gazing lazily at the waves of the Térek as they
+monotonously foamed and swirled. Others, also overcome by the heat and
+half naked, were rinsing clothes in the Térek, plaiting a fishing line,
+or humming tunes as they lay on the hot sand of the river bank. One
+Cossack, with a thin face much burnt by the sun, lay near the hut
+evidently dead drunk, by a wall which though it had been in shadow some
+two hours previously was now exposed to the sun’s fierce slanting rays.
+
+Lukáshka, who stood on the watch-tower, was a tall handsome lad about
+twenty years old and very like his mother. His face and whole build, in
+spite of the angularity of youth, indicated great strength, both
+physical and moral. Though he had only lately joined the Cossacks at
+the front, it was evident from the expression of his face and the calm
+assurance of his attitude that he had already acquired the somewhat
+proud and warlike bearing peculiar to Cossacks and to men generally who
+continually carry arms, and that he felt he was a Cossack and fully
+knew his own value. His ample Circassian coat was torn in some places,
+his cap was on the back of his head Chéchen fashion, and his leggings
+had slipped below his knees. His clothing was not rich, but he wore it
+with that peculiar Cossack foppishness which consists in imitating the
+Chéchen brave. Everything on a real brave is ample, ragged, and
+neglected, only his weapons are costly. But these ragged clothes and
+these weapons are belted and worn with a certain air and matched in a
+certain manner, neither of which can be acquired by everybody and which
+at once strike the eye of a Cossack or a hillsman. Lukáshka had this
+resemblance to a brave. With his hands folded under his sword, and his
+eyes nearly closed, he kept looking at the distant Tartar village.
+Taken separately his features were not beautiful, but anyone who saw
+his stately carriage and his dark-browed intelligent face would
+involuntarily say, “What a fine fellow!”
+
+“Look at the women, what a lot of them are walking about in the
+village,” said he in a sharp voice, languidly showing his brilliant
+white teeth and not addressing anyone in particular.
+
+Nazárka who was lying below immediately lifted his head and remarked:
+
+“They must be going for water.”
+
+“Supposing one scared them with a gun?” said Lukáshka, laughing,
+“Wouldn’t they be frightened?”
+
+“It wouldn’t reach.”
+
+“What! Mine would carry beyond. Just wait a bit, and when their feast
+comes round I’ll go and visit Giréy Khan and drink _buza_ there,” said
+Lukáshka, angrily swishing away the mosquitoes which attached
+themselves to him.
+
+A rustling in the thicket drew the Cossack’s attention. A pied mongrel
+half-setter, searching for a scent and violently wagging its scantily
+furred tail, came running to the cordon. Lukáshka recognized the dog as
+one belonging to his neighbour, Uncle Eróshka, a hunter, and saw,
+following it through the thicket, the approaching figure of the hunter
+himself.
+
+Uncle Eróshka was a gigantic Cossack with a broad, snow-white beard and
+such broad shoulders and chest that in the wood, where there was no one
+to compare him with, he did not look particularly tall, so well
+proportioned were his powerful limbs. He wore a tattered coat and, over
+the bands with which his legs were swathed, sandals made of undressed
+deer’s hide tied on with strings; while on his head he had a rough
+little white cap. He carried over one shoulder a screen to hide behind
+when shooting pheasants, and a bag containing a hen for luring hawks,
+and a small falcon; over the other shoulder, attached by a strap, was a
+wild cat he had killed; and stuck in his belt behind were some little
+bags containing bullets, gunpowder, and bread, a horse’s tail to swish
+away the mosquitoes, a large dagger in a torn scabbard smeared with old
+bloodstains, and two dead pheasants. Having glanced at the cordon he
+stopped.
+
+“Hy, Lyam!” he called to the dog in such a ringing bass that it awoke
+an echo far away in the wood; and throwing over his shoulder his big
+gun, of the kind the Cossacks call a “flint”, he raised his cap.
+
+“Had a good day, good people, eh?” he said, addressing the Cossacks in
+the same strong and cheerful voice, quite without effort, but as loudly
+as if he were shouting to someone on the other bank of the river.
+
+“Yes, yes, Uncle!” answered from all sides the voices of the young
+Cossacks.
+
+“What have you seen? Tell us!” shouted Uncle Eróshka, wiping the sweat
+from his broad red face with the sleeve of his coat.
+
+“Ah, there’s a vulture living in the plane tree here, Uncle. As soon as
+night comes he begins hovering round,” said Nazárka, winking and
+jerking his shoulder and leg.
+
+“Come, come!” said the old man incredulously.
+
+“Really, Uncle! You must keep watch,” replied Nazárka with a laugh.
+
+The other Cossacks began laughing.
+
+The wag had not seen any vulture at all, but it had long been the
+custom of the young Cossacks in the cordon to tease and mislead Uncle
+Eróshka every time he came to them.
+
+“Eh, you fool, always lying!” exclaimed Lukáshka from the tower to
+Nazárka.
+
+Nazárka was immediately silenced.
+
+“It must be watched. I’ll watch,” answered the old man to the great
+delight of all the Cossacks. “But have you seen any boars?”
+
+“Watching for boars, are you?” said the corporal, bending forward and
+scratching his back with both hands, very pleased at the chance of some
+distraction. “It’s _abreks_ one has to hunt here and not boars! You’ve
+not heard anything, Uncle, have you?” he added, needlessly screwing up
+his eyes and showing his close-set white teeth.
+
+“_Abreks_,” said the old man. “No, I haven’t. I say, have you any
+_chikhir?_ Let me have a drink, there’s a good man. I’m really quite
+done up. When the time comes I’ll bring you some fresh meat, I really
+will. Give me a drink!” he added.
+
+“Well, and are you going to watch?” inquired the corporal, as though he
+had not heard what the other said.
+
+“I did mean to watch tonight,” replied Uncle Eróshka. “Maybe, with
+God’s help, I shall kill something for the holiday. Then you shall have
+a share, you shall indeed!”
+
+“Uncle! Hallo, Uncle!” called out Lukáshka sharply from above,
+attracting everybody’s attention. All the Cossacks looked up at him.
+“Just go to the upper water-course, there’s a fine herd of boars there.
+I’m not inventing, really! The other day one of our Cossacks shot one
+there. I’m telling you the truth,” added he, readjusting the musket at
+his back and in a tone that showed he was not joking.
+
+“Ah! Lukáshka the Snatcher is here!” said the old man, looking up.
+“Where has he been shooting?”
+
+“Haven’t you seen? I suppose you’re too young!” said Lukáshka. “Close
+by the ditch,” he went on seriously with a shake of the head. “We were
+just going along the ditch when all at once we heard something
+crackling, but my gun was in its case. Elias fired suddenly ... But
+I’ll show you the place, it’s not far. You just wait a bit. I know
+every one of their footpaths ... Daddy Mósev,” said he, turning
+resolutely and almost commandingly to the corporal, “it’s time to
+relieve guard!” and holding aloft his gun he began to descend from the
+watch-tower without waiting for the order.
+
+“Come down!” said the corporal, after Lukáshka had started, and glanced
+round. “Is it your turn, Gúrka? Then go ... True enough your Lukáshka
+has become very skilful,” he went on, addressing the old man. “He keeps
+going about just like you, he doesn’t stay at home. The other day he
+killed a boar.”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter VII
+
+
+The sun had already set and the shades of night were rapidly spreading
+from the edge of the wood. The Cossacks finished their task round the
+cordon and gathered in the hut for supper. Only the old man still
+stayed under the plane tree watching for the vulture and pulling the
+string tied to the falcon’s leg, but though a vulture was really
+perching on the plane tree it declined to swoop down on the lure.
+Lukáshka, singing one song after another, was leisurely placing nets
+among the very thickest brambles to trap pheasants. In spite of his
+tall stature and big hands every kind of work, both rough and delicate,
+prospered under Lukáshka’s fingers.
+
+“Hallo, Luke!” came Nazárka’s shrill, sharp voice calling him from the
+thicket close by. “The Cossacks have gone in to supper.”
+
+Nazárka, with a live pheasant under his arm, forced his way through the
+brambles and emerged on the footpath.
+
+“Oh!” said Lukáshka, breaking off in his song, “where did you get that
+cock pheasant? I suppose it was in my trap?”
+
+Nazárka was of the same age as Lukáshka and had also only been at the
+front since the previous spring.
+
+He was plain, thin and puny, with a shrill voice that rang in one’s
+ears. They were neighbours and comrades. Lukáshka was sitting on the
+grass cross-legged like a Tartar, adjusting his nets.
+
+“I don’t know whose it was—yours, I expect.”
+
+“Was it beyond the pit by the plane tree? Then it is mine! I set the
+nets last night.”
+
+Lukáshka rose and examined the captured pheasant. After stroking the
+dark burnished head of the bird, which rolled its eyes and stretched
+out its neck in terror, Lukáshka took the pheasant in his hands.
+
+“We’ll have it in a pilau tonight. You go and kill and pluck it.”
+
+“And shall we eat it ourselves or give it to the corporal?”
+
+“He has plenty!”
+
+“I don’t like killing them,” said Nazárka.
+
+“Give it here!”
+
+Lukáshka drew a little knife from under his dagger and gave it a swift
+jerk. The bird fluttered, but before it could spread its wings the
+bleeding head bent and quivered.
+
+“That’s how one should do it!” said Lukáshka, throwing down the
+pheasant. “It will make a fat pilau.”
+
+Nazárka shuddered as he looked at the bird.
+
+“I say, Lukáshka, that fiend will be sending us to the ambush again
+tonight,” he said, taking up the bird. (He was alluding to the
+corporal.) “He has sent Fómushkin to get wine, and it ought to be his
+turn. He always puts it on us.”
+
+Lukáshka went whistling along the cordon.
+
+“Take the string with you,” he shouted.
+
+Nazirka obeyed.
+
+“I’ll give him a bit of my mind today, I really will,” continued
+Nazárka. “Let’s say we won’t go; we’re tired out and there’s an end of
+it! No, really, you tell him, he’ll listen to you. It’s too bad!”
+
+“Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!” said Lukáshka,
+evidently thinking of something else. “What bosh! If he made us turn
+out of the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can
+have some fun, but here what is there? It’s all one whether we’re in
+the cordon or in ambush. What a fellow you are!”
+
+“And are you going to the village?”
+
+“I’ll go for the holidays.”
+
+“Gúrka says your Dunáyka is carrying on with Fómushkin,” said Nazárka
+suddenly.
+
+“Well, let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, showing his regular
+white teeth, though he did not laugh. “As if I couldn’t find another!”
+
+“Gúrka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was
+Fómushkin sitting and eating pie. Gúrka stopped awhile and then went
+away, and passing by the window he heard her say, ‘He’s gone, the
+fiend.... Why don’t you eat your pie, my own? You needn’t go home for
+the night,’ she says. And Gúrka under the window says to himself,
+‘That’s fine!’”
+
+“You’re making it up.”
+
+“No, quite true, by Heaven!”
+
+“Well, if she’s found another let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka,
+after a pause. “There’s no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.”
+
+“Well, see what a devil you are!” said Nazárka. “You should make up to
+the cornet’s girl, Maryánka. Why doesn’t she walk out with any one?”
+
+Lukáshka frowned. “What of Maryánka? They’re all alike,” said he.
+
+“Well, you just try...”
+
+“What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?”
+
+And Lukáshka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon pulling
+leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching
+sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his
+dagger and cut it down. “What a ramrod it will make,” he said, swinging
+the sapling till it whistled through the air.
+
+The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor
+of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose
+turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. “Who is to go tonight?”
+shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in
+the next room.
+
+“Who is to go?” the corporal shouted back. “Uncle Burlák has been and
+Fómushkin too,” said he, not quite confidently. “You two had better go,
+you and Nazárka,” he went on, addressing Lukáshka. “And Ergushóv must
+go too; surely he has slept it off?”
+
+“You don’t sleep it off yourself so why should he?” said Nazárka in a
+subdued voice.
+
+The Cossacks laughed.
+
+Ergushóv was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near the
+hut. He had only that moment staggered into the room rubbing his eyes.
+
+Lukáshka had already risen and was getting his gun ready.
+
+“Be quick and go! Finish your supper and go!” said the corporal; and
+without waiting for an expression of consent he shut the door,
+evidently not expecting the Cossack to obey. “Of course,” thought he,
+“if I hadn’t been ordered to I wouldn’t send anyone, but an officer
+might turn up at any moment. As it is, they say eight _abreks_ have
+crossed over.”
+
+“Well, I suppose I must go,” remarked Ergushóv, “it’s the regulation.
+Can’t be helped! The times are such. I say, we must go.”
+
+Meanwhile Lukáshka, holding a big piece of pheasant to his mouth with
+both hands and glancing now at Nazárka, now at Ergushóv, seemed quite
+indifferent to what passed and only laughed at them both. Before the
+Cossacks were ready to go into ambush. Uncle Eróshka, who had been
+vainly waiting under the plane tree till night fell, entered the dark
+outer room.
+
+“Well, lads,” his loud bass resounded through the low-roofed room
+drowning all the other voices, “I’m going with you. You’ll watch for
+Chéchens and I for boars!”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter VIII
+
+
+It was quite dark when Uncle Eróshka and the three Cossacks, in their
+cloaks and shouldering their guns, left the cordon and went towards the
+place on the Térek where they were to lie in ambush. Nazárka did not
+want to go at all, but Lukáshka shouted at him and they soon started.
+After they had gone a few steps in silence the Cossacks turned aside
+from the ditch and went along a path almost hidden by reeds till they
+reached the river. On its bank lay a thick black log cast up by the
+water. The reeds around it had been recently beaten down.
+
+“Shall we lie here?” asked Nazárka.
+
+“Why not?” answered Lukáshka. “Sit down here and I’ll be back in a
+minute. I’ll only show Daddy where to go.”
+
+“This is the best place; here we can see and not be seen,” said
+Ergushóv, “so it’s here we’ll lie. It’s a first-rate place!”
+
+Nazárka and Ergushóv spread out their cloaks and settled down behind
+the log, while Lukáshka went on with Uncle Eróshka.
+
+“It’s not far from here. Daddy,” said Lukáshka, stepping softly in
+front of the old man; “I’ll show you where they’ve been—I’m the only
+one that knows, Daddy.”
+
+“Show me! You’re a fine fellow, a regular Snatcher!” replied the old
+man, also whispering.
+
+Having gone a few steps Lukáshka stopped, stooped down over a puddle,
+and whistled. “That’s where they come to drink, d’you see?” He spoke in
+a scarcely audible voice, pointing to fresh hoof-prints.
+
+“Christ bless you,” answered the old man. “The boar will be in the
+hollow beyond the ditch,” he added. “I’ll watch, and you can go.”
+
+Lukáshka pulled his cloak up higher and walked back alone, throwing
+swift glances now to the left at the wall of reeds, now to the Térek
+rushing by below the bank. “I daresay he’s watching or creeping along
+somewhere,” thought he of a possible Chéchen hillsman. Suddenly a loud
+rustling and a splash in the water made him start and seize his musket.
+From under the bank a boar leapt up—his dark outline showing for a
+moment against the glassy surface of the water and then disappearing
+among the reeds. Lukáshka pulled out his gun and aimed, but before he
+could fire the boar had disappeared in the thicket. Lukáshka spat with
+vexation and went on. On approaching the ambuscade he halted again and
+whistled softly. His whistle was answered and he stepped up to his
+comrades.
+
+Nazárka, all curled up, was already asleep. Ergushóv sat with his legs
+crossed and moved slightly to make room for Lukáshka.
+
+“How jolly it is to sit here! It’s really a good place,” said he. “Did
+you take him there?”
+
+“Showed him where,” answered Lukáshka, spreading out his cloak. “But
+what a big boar I roused just now close to the water! I expect it was
+the very one! You must have heard the crash?”
+
+“I did hear a beast crashing through. I knew at once it was a beast. I
+thought to myself: ‘Lukáshka has roused a beast,’” Ergushóv said,
+wrapping himself up in his cloak. “Now I’ll go to sleep,” he added.
+“Wake me when the cocks crow. We must have discipline. I’ll lie down
+and have a nap, and then you will have a nap and I’ll watch—that’s the
+way.”
+
+“Luckily I don’t want to sleep,” answered Lukáshka.
+
+The night was dark, warm, and still. Only on one side of the sky the
+stars were shining, the other and greater part was overcast by one huge
+cloud stretching from the mountaintops. The black cloud, blending in
+the absence of any wind with the mountains, moved slowly onwards, its
+curved edges sharply defined against the deep starry sky. Only in front
+of him could the Cossack discern the Térek and the distance beyond.
+Behind and on both sides he was surrounded by a wall of reeds.
+Occasionally the reeds would sway and rustle against one another
+apparently without cause. Seen from down below, against the clear part
+of the sky, their waving tufts looked like the feathery branches of
+trees. Close in front at his very feet was the bank, and at its base
+the rushing torrent. A little farther on was the moving mass of glassy
+brown water which eddied rhythmically along the bank and round the
+shallows. Farther still, water, banks, and cloud all merged together in
+impenetrable gloom. Along the surface of the water floated black
+shadows, in which the experienced eyes of the Cossack detected trees
+carried down by the current. Only very rarely sheet-lightning, mirrored
+in the water as in a black glass, disclosed the sloping bank opposite.
+The rhythmic sounds of night—the rustling of the reeds, the snoring of
+the Cossacks, the hum of mosquitoes, and the rushing water, were every
+now and then broken by a shot fired in the distance, or by the gurgling
+of water when a piece of bank slipped down, the splash of a big fish,
+or the crashing of an animal breaking through the thick undergrowth in
+the wood. Once an owl flew past along the Térek, flapping one wing
+against the other rhythmically at every second beat. Just above the
+Cossack’s head it turned towards the wood and then, striking its wings
+no longer after every other flap but at every flap, it flew to an old
+plane tree where it rustled about for a long time before settling down
+among the branches. At every one of these unexpected sounds the
+watching Cossack listened intently, straining his hearing, and screwing
+up his eyes while he deliberately felt for his musket.
+
+The greater part of the night was past. The black cloud that had moved
+westward revealed the clear starry sky from under its torn edge, and
+the golden upturned crescent of the moon shone above the mountains with
+a reddish light. The cold began to be penetrating. Nazárka awoke, spoke
+a little, and fell asleep again. Lukáshka feeling bored got up, drew
+the knife from his dagger-handle and began to fashion his stick into a
+ramrod. His head was full of the Chéchens who lived over there in the
+mountains, and of how their brave lads came across and were not afraid
+of the Cossacks, and might even now be crossing the river at some other
+spot. He thrust himself out of his hiding-place and looked along the
+river but could see nothing. And as he continued looking out at
+intervals upon the river and at the opposite bank, now dimly
+distinguishable from the water in the faint moonlight, he no longer
+thought about the Chéchens but only of when it would be time to wake
+his comrades, and of going home to the village. In the village he
+imagined Dunáyka, his “little soul”, as the Cossacks call a man’s
+mistress, and thought of her with vexation. Silvery mists, a sign of
+coming morning, glittered white above the water, and not far from him
+young eagles were whistling and flapping their wings. At last the
+crowing of a cock reached him from the distant village, followed by the
+long-sustained note of another, which was again answered by yet other
+voices.
+
+“Time to wake them,” thought Lukáshka, who had finished his ramrod and
+felt his eyes growing heavy. Turning to his comrades he managed to make
+out which pair of legs belonged to whom, when it suddenly seemed to him
+that he heard something splash on the other side of the Térek. He
+turned again towards the horizon beyond the hills, where day was
+breaking under the upturned crescent, glanced at the outline of the
+opposite bank, at the Térek, and at the now distinctly visible
+driftwood upon it. For one instant it seemed to him that he was moving
+and that the Térek with the drifting wood remained stationary. Again he
+peered out. One large black log with a branch particularly attracted
+his attention. The tree was floating in a strange way right down the
+middle of the stream, neither rocking nor whirling. It even appeared
+not to be floating altogether with the current, but to be crossing it
+in the direction of the shallows. Lukáshka stretching out his neck
+watched it intently. The tree floated to the shallows, stopped, and
+shifted in a peculiar manner. Lukáshka thought he saw an arm stretched
+out from beneath the tree.
+
+“Supposing I killed an _abrek_ all by myself!” he thought, and seized
+his gun with a swift, unhurried movement, putting up his gun-rest,
+placing the gun upon it, and holding it noiselessly in position.
+Cocking the trigger, with bated breath he took aim, still peering out
+intently.
+
+“I won’t wake them,” he thought. But his heart began beating so fast
+that he remained motionless, listening. Suddenly the trunk gave a
+plunge and again began to float across the stream towards our bank.
+
+“Suppose I miss?...” thought he, and now by the faint light of the moon
+he caught a glimpse of a Tartar’s head in front of the floating wood.
+He aimed straight at the head which appeared to be quite near—just at
+the end of his rifle’s barrel. He glanced cross. “Right enough it is an
+_abrek!_” he thought joyfully, and suddenly rising to his knees he
+again took aim. Having found the sight, barely visible at the end of
+the long gun, he said: “In the name of the Father and of the Son,” in
+the Cossack way learnt in his childhood, and pulled the trigger. A
+flash of lightning lit up for an instant the reeds and the water, and
+the sharp, abrupt report of the shot was carried across the river,
+changing into a prolonged roll somewhere in the far distance. The piece
+of driftwood now floated not across, but with the current, rocking and
+whirling.
+
+“Stop, I say!” exclaimed Ergushóv, seizing his musket and raising
+himself behind the log near which he was lying.
+
+“Shut up, you devil!” whispered Lukáshka, grinding his teeth.
+“_Abreks!_”
+
+“Whom have you shot?” asked Nazárka. “Who was it, Lukáshka?”
+
+Lukáshka did not answer. He was reloading his gun and watching the
+floating wood. A little way off it stopped on a sand-bank, and from
+behind it something large that rocked in the water came into view.
+
+“What did you shoot? Why don’t you speak?” insisted the Cossacks.
+
+“_Abreks_, I tell you!” said Lukáshka.
+
+“Don’t humbug! Did the gun go off? ...”
+
+“I’ve killed an _abrek_, that’s what I fired at,” muttered Lukáshka in
+a voice choked by emotion, as he jumped to his feet. “A man was
+swimming...” he said, pointing to the sandbank. “I killed him. Just
+look there.”
+
+“Have done with your humbugging!” said Ergushóv again, rubbing his
+eyes.
+
+“Have done with what? Look there,” said Lukáshka, seizing him by the
+shoulders and pulling him with such force that Ergushóv groaned.
+
+He looked in the direction in which Lukáshka pointed, and discerning a
+body immediately changed his tone.
+
+“O Lord! But I say, more will come! I tell you the truth,” said he
+softly, and began examining his musket. “That was a scout swimming
+across: either the others are here already or are not far off on the
+other side—I tell you for sure!” Lukáshka was unfastening his belt and
+taking off his Circassian coat.
+
+“What are you up to, you idiot?” exclaimed Ergushóv. “Only show
+yourself and you’ve lost all for nothing, I tell you true! If you’ve
+killed him he won’t escape. Let me have a little powder for my
+musket-pan—you have some? Nazárka, you go back to the cordon and look
+alive; but don’t go along the bank or you’ll be killed—I tell you
+true.”
+
+“Catch me going alone! Go yourself!” said Nazárka angrily.
+
+Having taken off his coat, Lukáshka went down to the bank.
+
+“Don’t go in, I tell you!” said Ergushóv, putting some powder on the
+pan. “Look, he’s not moving. I can see. It’s nearly morning; wait till
+they come from the cordon. You go, Nazárka. You’re afraid! Don’t be
+afraid, I tell you.”
+
+“Luke, I say, Lukáshka! Tell us how you did it!” said Nazárka.
+
+Lukáshka changed his mind about going into the water just then. “Go
+quick to the cordon and I will watch. Tell the Cossacks to send out the
+patrol. If the _abreks_ are on this side they must be caught,” said he.
+
+“That’s what I say. They’ll get off,” said Ergushóv, rising. “True,
+they must be caught!”
+
+Ergushóv and Nazárka rose and, crossing themselves, started off for the
+cordon—not along the riverbank but breaking their way through the
+brambles to reach a path in the wood.
+
+“Now mind, Lukáshka—they may cut you down here, so you’d best keep a
+sharp look-out, I tell you!”
+
+“Go along; I know,” muttered Lukáshka; and having examined his gun
+again he sat down behind the log.
+
+He remained alone and sat gazing at the shallows and listening for the
+Cossacks; but it was some distance to the cordon and he was tormented
+by impatience. He kept thinking that the other _abreks_ who were with
+the one he had killed would escape. He was vexed with the _abreks_ who
+were going to escape just as he had been with the boar that had escaped
+the evening before. He glanced round and at the opposite bank,
+expecting every moment to see a man, and having arranged his gun-rest
+he was ready to fire. The idea that he might himself be killed never
+entered his head.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter IX
+
+
+It was growing light. The Chéchen’s body which was gently rocking in
+the shallow water was now clearly visible. Suddenly the reeds rustled
+not far from Luke and he heard steps and saw the feathery tops of the
+reeds moving. He set his gun at full cock and muttered: “In the name of
+the Father and of the Son,” but when the cock clicked the sound of
+steps ceased.
+
+“Hallo, Cossacks! Don’t kill your Daddy!” said a deep bass voice
+calmly; and moving the reeds apart Daddy Eróshka came up close to Luke.
+
+“I very nearly killed you, by God I did!” said Lukáshka.
+
+“What have you shot?” asked the old man.
+
+His sonorous voice resounded through the wood and downward along the
+river, suddenly dispelling the mysterious quiet of night around the
+Cossack. It was as if everything had suddenly become lighter and more
+distinct.
+
+“There now. Uncle, you have not seen anything, but I’ve killed a
+beast,” said Lukáshka, uncocking his gun and getting up with unnatural
+calmness.
+
+The old man was staring intently at the white back, now clearly
+visible, against which the Térek rippled.
+
+“He was swimming with a log on his back. I spied him out! ... Look
+there. There! He’s got blue trousers, and a gun I think.... Do you
+see?” inquired Luke.
+
+“How can one help seeing?” said the old man angrily, and a serious and
+stern expression appeared on his face. “You’ve killed a brave,” he
+said, apparently with regret.
+
+“Well, I sat here and suddenly saw something dark on the other side. I
+spied him when he was still over there. It was as if a man had come
+there and fallen in. Strange! And a piece of driftwood, a good-sized
+piece, comes floating, not with the stream but across it; and what do I
+see but a head appearing from under it! Strange! I stretched out of the
+reeds but could see nothing; then I rose and he must have heard, the
+beast, and crept out into the shallow and looked about. ‘No, you
+don’t!’ I said, as soon as he landed and looked round, ‘you won’t get
+away!’ Oh, there was something choking me! I got my gun ready but did
+not stir, and looked out. He waited a little and then swam out again;
+and when he came into the moonlight I could see his whole back. ‘In the
+name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost’... and through
+the smoke I see him struggling. He moaned, or so it seemed to me. ‘Ah,’
+I thought, ‘the Lord be thanked, I’ve killed him!’ And when he drifted
+onto the sand-bank I could see him distinctly: he tried to get up but
+couldn’t. He struggled a bit and then lay down. Everything could be
+seen. Look, he does not move—he must be dead! The Cossacks have gone
+back to the cordon in case there should be any more of them.”
+
+“And so you got him!” said the old man. “He is far away now, my lad!
+...” And again he shook his head sadly.
+
+Just then the sound reached them of breaking bushes and the loud voices
+of Cossacks approaching along the bank on horseback and on foot. “Are
+you bringing the skiff?” shouted Lukáshka.
+
+“You’re a trump, Luke! Lug it to the bank!” shouted one of the
+Cossacks.
+
+Without waiting for the skiff Lukáshka began to undress, keeping an eye
+all the while on his prey.
+
+“Wait a bit, Nazárka is bringing the skiff,” shouted the corporal.
+
+“You fool! Maybe he is alive and only pretending! Take your dagger with
+you!” shouted another Cossack.
+
+“Get along,” cried Luke, pulling off his trousers. He quickly undressed
+and, crossing himself, jumped, plunging with a splash into the river.
+Then with long strokes of his white arms, lifting his back high out of
+the water and breathing deeply, he swam across the current of the Térek
+towards the shallows. A crowd of Cossacks stood on the bank talking
+loudly. Three horsemen rode off to patrol. The skiff appeared round a
+bend. Lukáshka stood up on the sandbank, leaned over the body, and gave
+it a couple of shakes.
+
+“Quite dead!” he shouted in a shrill voice.
+
+The Chéchen had been shot in the head. He had on a pair of blue
+trousers, a shirt, and a Circassian coat, and a gun and dagger were
+tied to his back. Above all these a large branch was tied, and it was
+this which at first had misled Lukáshka.
+
+“What a carp you’ve landed!” cried one of the Cossacks who had
+assembled in a circle, as the body, lifted out of the skiff, was laid
+on the bank, pressing down the grass.
+
+“How yellow he is!” said another.
+
+“Where have our fellows gone to search? I expect the rest of them are
+on the other bank. If this one had not been a scout he would not have
+swum that way. Why else should he swim alone?” said a third.
+
+“Must have been a smart one to offer himself before the others; a
+regular brave!” said Lukáshka mockingly, shivering as he wrung out his
+clothes that had got wet on the bank.
+
+“His beard is dyed and cropped.”
+
+“And he has tied a bag with a coat in it to his back.”
+
+“That would make it easier for him to swim,” said some one.
+
+“I say, Lukáshka,” said the corporal, who was holding the dagger and
+gun taken from the dead man. “Keep the dagger for yourself and the coat
+too; but I’ll give you three rubles for the gun. You see it has a hole
+in it,” said he, blowing into the muzzle. “I want it just for a
+souvenir.”
+
+Lukáshka did not answer. Evidently this sort of begging vexed him but
+he knew it could not be avoided.
+
+“See, what a devil!” said he, frowning and throwing down the Chéchen’s
+coat. “If at least it were a good coat, but it’s a mere rag.”
+
+“It’ll do to fetch firewood in,” said one of the Cossacks.
+
+“Mósev, I’ll go home,” said Lukáshka, evidently forgetting his vexation
+and wishing to get some advantage out of having to give a present to
+his superior.
+
+“All right, you may go!”
+
+“Take the body beyond the cordon, lads,” said the corporal, still
+examining the gun, “and put a shelter over him from the sun. Perhaps
+they’ll send from the mountains to ransom it.”
+
+“It isn’t hot yet,” said someone.
+
+“And supposing a jackal tears him? Would that be well?” remarked
+another Cossack.
+
+“We’ll set a watch; if they should come to ransom him it won’t do for
+him to have been torn.”
+
+“Well, Lukáshka, whatever you do you must stand a pail of vodka for the
+lads,” said the corporal gaily.
+
+“Of course! That’s the custom,” chimed in the Cossacks. “See what luck
+God has sent you! Without ever having seen anything of the kind before,
+you’ve killed a brave!”
+
+“Buy the dagger and coat and don’t be stingy, and I’ll let you have the
+trousers too,” said Lukáshka. “They’re too tight for me; he was a thin
+devil.”
+
+One Cossack bought the coat for a ruble and another gave the price of
+two pails of vodka for the dagger.
+
+“Drink, lads! I’ll stand you a pail!” said Luke. “I’ll bring it myself
+from the village.”
+
+“And cut up the trousers into kerchiefs for the girls!” said Nazárka.
+
+The Cossacks burst out laughing.
+
+“Have done laughing!” said the corporal. “And take the body away. Why
+have you put the nasty thing by the hut?”
+
+“What are you standing there for? Haul him along, lads!” shouted
+Lukáshka in a commanding voice to the Cossacks, who reluctantly took
+hold of the body, obeying him as though he were their chief. After
+dragging the body along for a few steps the Cossacks let fall the legs,
+which dropped with a lifeless jerk, and stepping apart they then stood
+silent for a few moments. Nazárka came up and straightened the head,
+which was turned to one side so that the round wound above the temple
+and the whole of the dead man’s face were visible. “See what a mark he
+has made right in the brain,” he said. “He won’t get lost. His owners
+will always know him!” No one answered, and again the Angel of Silence
+flew over the Cossacks.
+
+The sun had risen high and its diverging beams were lighting up the
+dewy grass. Near by, the Térek murmured in the awakened wood and,
+greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another. The Cossacks
+stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at him. The brown
+body, with nothing on but the wet blue trousers held by a girdle over
+the sunken stomach, was well shaped and handsome. The muscular arms lay
+stretched straight out by his sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round
+head with the clotted wound on one side of it was thrown back. The
+smooth tanned forehead contrasted sharply with the shaven part of the
+head. The open glassy eyes with lowered pupils stared upwards, seeming
+to gaze past everything. Under the red trimmed moustache the fine lips,
+drawn at the corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-natured
+subtle raillery. The fingers of the small hands covered with red hairs
+were bent inward, and the nails were dyed red.
+
+Lukáshka had not yet dressed. He was wet. His neck was redder and his
+eyes brighter than usual, his broad jaws twitched, and from his healthy
+body a hardly perceptible steam rose in the fresh morning air.
+
+“He too was a man!” he muttered, evidently admiring the corpse.
+
+“Yes, if you had fallen into his hands you would have had short
+shrift,” said one of the Cossacks.
+
+The Angel of Silence had taken wing. The Cossacks began bustling about
+and talking. Two of them went to cut brushwood for a shelter, others
+strolled towards the cordon. Luke and Nazárka ran to get ready to go to
+the village.
+
+Half an hour later they were both on their way homewards, talking
+incessantly and almost running through the dense woods which separated
+the Térek from the village.
+
+“Mind, don’t tell her I sent you, but just go and find out if her
+husband is at home,” Luke was saying in his shrill voice.
+
+“And I’ll go round to Yámka too,” said the devoted Nazárka. “We’ll have
+a spree, shall we?”
+
+“When should we have one if not today?” replied Luke.
+
+When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to
+sleep till evening.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter X
+
+
+On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a
+Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of
+Novomlínsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies’ wagons
+were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs
+gathered from various yards (where they had not been sufficiently
+securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were
+settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service Corps men were driving
+piles in the ground to which to tie the horses, and the quartermasters
+were going about the streets just as if they were at home, showing
+officers and men to their quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in
+a line, the company’s carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat
+porridge was being cooked.
+
+Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the sergeant-major, Onisim
+Mikháylovich, and all this was in the Cossack village where it was
+reported that the companies were ordered to take up their quarters:
+therefore they were at home here.
+
+But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether
+they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they were Old Believers
+or not—was all quite immaterial. Having received their pay and been
+dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in
+disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares
+and streets.
+
+Quite regardless of the Cossacks’ ill will, chattering merrily and with
+their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and
+hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the
+women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large
+group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between their teeth
+they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming
+visible when it thickened into white clouds as it rose, and now at the
+camp fires which were quivering in the pure air like molten glass, and
+bantered and made fun of the Cossack men and women because they do not
+live at all like Russians. In all the yards one could see soldiers and
+hear their laughter and the exasperated and shrill cries of Cossack
+women defending their houses and refusing to give the soldiers water or
+cooking utensils. Little boys and girls, clinging to their mothers and
+to each other, followed all the movements of the troopers (never before
+seen by them) with frightened curiosity, or ran after them at a
+respectful distance.
+
+The old Cossacks came out silently and dismally and sat on the earthen
+embankments of their huts, and watched the soldiers’ activity with an
+air of leaving it all to the will of God without understanding what
+would come of it.
+
+Olénin, who had joined the Caucasian Army as a cadet three months
+before, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village, the
+house of the cornet, Elias Vasílich—that is to say at Granny Ulítka’s.
+
+“Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmítri Andréich,” said the
+panting Vanyúsha to Olénin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and
+mounted on a Kabardá horse which he had bought in Gróznoe, was after a
+five-hours’ march gaily entering the yard of the quarters assigned to
+him.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked, caressing his horse and looking
+merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried Vanyúsha, who had
+arrived with the baggage wagons and was unpacking.
+
+Olénin looked quite a different man. In place of his clean-shaven lips
+and chin he had a youthful moustache and a small beard. Instead of a
+sallow complexion, the result of nights turned into day, his cheeks,
+his forehead, and the skin behind his ears were now red with healthy
+sunburn. In place of a clean new black suit he wore a dirty white
+Circassian coat with a deeply pleated skirt, and he bore arms. Instead
+of a freshly starched collar, his neck was tightly clasped by the red
+band of his silk _beshmet_. He wore Circassian dress but did not wear
+it well, and anyone would have known him for a Russian and not a Tartar
+brave. It was the thing—but not the real thing. But for all that, his
+whole person breathed health, joy, and satisfaction.
+
+“Yes, it seems funny to you,” said Vanyúsha, “but just try to talk to
+these people yourself: they set themselves against one and there’s an
+end of it. You can’t get as much as a word out of them.” Vanyúsha
+angrily threw down a pail on the threshold. “Somehow they don’t seem
+like Russians.”
+
+“You should speak to the Chief of the Village!”
+
+“But I don’t know where he lives,” said Vanyúsha in an offended tone.
+
+“Who has upset you so?” asked Olénin, looking round.
+
+“The devil only knows. Faugh! There is no real master here. They say he
+has gone to some kind of _kriga_, and the old woman is a real devil.
+God preserve us!” answered Vanyúsha, putting his hands to his head.
+“How we shall live here I don’t know. They are worse than Tartars, I do
+declare—though they consider themselves Christians! A Tartar is bad
+enough, but all the same he is more noble. Gone to the _kriga_ indeed!
+What this _kriga_ they have invented is, I don’t know!” concluded
+Vanyúsha, and turned aside.
+
+“It’s not as it is in the serfs’ quarters at home, eh?” chaffed Olénin
+without dismounting.
+
+“Please sir, may I have your horse?” said Vanyúsha, evidently perplexed
+by this new order of things but resigning himself to his fate.
+
+“So a Tartar is more noble, eh, Vanyúsha?” repeated Olénin, dismounting
+and slapping the saddle.
+
+“Yes, you’re laughing! You think it funny,” muttered Vanyúsha angrily.
+
+“Come, don’t be angry, Vanyúsha,” replied Olénin, still smiling. “Wait
+a minute, I’ll go and speak to the people of the house; you’ll see I
+shall arrange everything. You don’t know what a jolly life we shall
+have here. Only don’t get upset.”
+
+Vanyúsha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked contemptuously
+after his master, and shook his head. Vanyúsha regarded Olénin as only
+his master, and Olénin regarded Vanyúsha as only his servant; and they
+would both have been much surprised if anyone had told them that they
+were friends, as they really were without knowing it themselves.
+Vanyúsha had been taken into his proprietor’s house when he was only
+eleven and when Olénin was the same age. When Olénin was fifteen he
+gave Vanyúsha lessons for a time and taught him to read French, of
+which the latter was inordinately proud; and when in specially good
+spirits he still let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he
+did so.
+
+Olénin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the
+hut. Maryánka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women
+do in the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing
+herself against the wall covered the lower part of her face with the
+broad sleeve of her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olénin
+in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure
+of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth
+he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine
+print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike
+terror and wild curiosity.
+
+“This is _she_,” thought Olénin. “But there will be many others like
+her” came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door.
+
+Old Granny Ulítka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her
+back turned to him, sweeping the floor.
+
+
+“Good-day to you. Mother! I’ve come about my lodgings,” he began.
+
+The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still
+handsome face towards him.
+
+“What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I’ll teach you to
+mock; may the black plague seize you!” she shouted, looking askance
+from under her frowning brow at the new-comer.
+
+Olénin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian Army
+(of which he was a member) would be everywhere received joyfully, and
+especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore
+felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing presence of mind
+however he tried to explain that he meant to pay for his lodgings, but
+the old woman would not give him a hearing.
+
+“What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your scraped
+face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he’ll show you your
+place. I don’t want your dirty money! A likely thing—just as if we had
+never seen any! You’ll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco
+and want to put it right with money! Think we’ve never seen a pest! May
+you be shot in your bowels and your heart!” shrieked the old woman in a
+piercing voice, interrupting Olénin.
+
+“It seems Vanyúsha was right!” thought Olénin. “‘A Tartar would be
+nobler’,” and followed by Granny Ulítka’s abuse he went out of the hut.
+As he was leaving, Maryánka, still wearing only her pink smock, but
+with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief,
+suddenly slipped out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidly down
+the steps with her bare feet she ran from the porch, stopped, and
+looking round hastily with laughing eyes at the young man, vanished
+round the corner of the hut.
+
+Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening from
+under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the young
+beauty, struck Olénin even more powerfully than before. “Yes, it must
+be _she_,” he thought, and troubling his head still less about the
+lodgings, he kept looking round at Maryánka as he approached Vanyúsha.
+
+“There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild filly!”
+said Vanyúsha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now
+cheered up a bit. “_La fame!_” he added in a loud triumphant voice and
+burst out laughing.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XI
+
+
+Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing, and
+having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging, pacified the
+old woman and satisfied Vanyúsha’s demands.
+
+Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved into the
+winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for three rubles a
+month. Olénin had something to eat and went to sleep. Towards evening
+he woke up, washed and made himself tidy, dined, and having lit a
+cigarette sat down by the window that looked onto the street. It was
+cooler. The slanting shadow of the hut with its ornamental gables fell
+across the dusty road and even bent upwards at the base of the wall of
+the house opposite. The steep reed-thatched roof of that house shone in
+the rays of the setting sun. The air grew fresher. Everything was
+peaceful in the village. The soldiers had settled down and become
+quiet. The herds had not yet been driven home and the people had not
+returned from their work.
+
+Olénin’s lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At rare
+intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Térek in those parts whence
+Olénin had just come (the Chéchen or the Kumýtsk plain), came muffled
+sounds of firing. Olénin was feeling very well contented after three
+months of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his
+powerful body clean (an unaccustomed sensation after the campaign) and
+in all his rested limbs he was conscious of a feeling of tranquillity
+and strength. His mind, too, felt fresh and clear. He thought of the
+campaign and of past dangers. He remembered that he had faced them no
+worse than other men, and that he was accepted as a comrade among
+valiant Caucasians. His Moscow recollections were left behind Heaven
+knows how far! The old life was wiped out and a quite new life had
+begun in which there were as yet no mistakes. Here as a new man among
+new men he could gain a new and good reputation. He was conscious of a
+youthful and unreasoning joy of life. Looking now out of the window at
+the boys spinning their tops in the shadow of the house, now round his
+neat new lodging, he thought how pleasantly he would settle down to
+this new Cossack village life. Now and then he glanced at the mountains
+and the blue sky, and an appreciation of the solemn grandeur of nature
+mingled with his reminiscences and dreams. His new life had begun, not
+as he imagined it would when he left Moscow, but unexpectedly well.
+“The mountains, the mountains, the mountains!” they permeated all his
+thoughts and feelings.
+
+“He’s kissed his dog and licked the jug! ... Daddy Eróshka has kissed
+his dog!” suddenly the little Cossacks who had been spinning their tops
+under the window shouted, looking towards the side street. “He’s drunk
+his bitch, and his dagger!” shouted the boys, crowding together and
+stepping backwards.
+
+These shouts were addressed to Daddy Eróshka, who with his gun on his
+shoulder and some pheasants hanging at his girdle was returning from
+his shooting expedition.
+
+“I have done wrong, lads, I have!” he said, vigorously swinging his
+arms and looking up at the windows on both sides of the street. “I have
+drunk the bitch; it was wrong,” he repeated, evidently vexed but
+pretending not to care.
+
+Olénin was surprised by the boys’ behavior towards the old hunter, but
+was still more struck by the expressive, intelligent face and the
+powerful build of the man whom they called Daddy Eróshka.
+
+“Here Daddy, here Cossack!” he called. “Come here!”
+
+The old man looked into the window and stopped.
+
+“Good evening, good man,” he said, lifting his little cap off his
+cropped head.
+
+“Good evening, good man,” replied Olénin. “What is it the youngsters
+are shouting at you?”
+
+Daddy Eróshka came up to the window. “Why, they’re teasing the old man.
+No matter, I like it. Let them joke about their old daddy,” he said
+with those firm musical intonations with which old and venerable people
+speak. “Are you an army commander?” he added.
+
+“No, I am a cadet. But where did you kill those pheasants?” asked
+Olénin.
+
+“I dispatched these three hens in the forest,” answered the old man,
+turning his broad back towards the window to show the hen pheasants
+which were hanging with their heads tucked into his belt and staining
+his coat with blood. “Haven’t you seen any?” he asked. “Take a brace if
+you like! Here you are,” and he handed two of the pheasants in at the
+window. “Are you a sportsman yourself?” he asked.
+
+“I am. During the campaign I killed four myself.”
+
+“Four? What a lot!” said the old man sarcastically. “And are you a
+drinker? Do you drink _chikhir?_”
+
+“Why not? I like a drink.”
+
+“Ah, I see you are a trump! We shall be _kunaks_, you and I,” said
+Daddy Eróshka.
+
+“Step in,” said Olénin. “We’ll have a drop of _chikhir_.”
+
+“I might as well,” said the old man, “but take the pheasants.” The old
+man’s face showed that he liked the cadet. He had seen at once that he
+could get free drinks from him, and that therefore it would be all
+right to give him a brace of pheasants.
+
+Soon Daddy Eróshka’s figure appeared in the doorway of the hut, and it
+was only then that Olénin became fully conscious of the enormous size
+and sturdy build of this man, whose red-brown face with its perfectly
+white broad beard was all furrowed by deep lines produced by age and
+toil. For an old man, the muscles of his legs, arms, and shoulders were
+quite exceptionally large and prominent. There were deep scars on his
+head under the short-cropped hair. His thick sinewy neck was covered
+with deep intersecting folds like a bull’s. His horny hands were
+bruised and scratched. He stepped lightly and easily over the
+threshold, unslung his gun and placed it in a corner, and casting a
+rapid glance round the room noted the value of the goods and chattels
+deposited in the hut, and with out-turned toes stepped softly, in his
+sandals of raw hide, into the middle of the room. He brought with him a
+penetrating but not unpleasant smell of _chikhir_ wine, vodka,
+gunpowder, and congealed blood.
+
+Daddy Eróshka bowed down before the icons, smoothed his beard, and
+approaching Olénin held out his thick brown hand. “_Koshkildy_,” said
+he; “That is Tartar for ‘Good-day’—‘Peace be unto you,’ it means in
+their tongue.”
+
+“_Koshkildy_, I know,” answered Olénin, shaking hands.
+
+“Eh, but you don’t, you won’t know the right order! Fool!” said Daddy
+Eróshka, shaking his head reproachfully. “If anyone says ‘_Koshkildy_’
+to you, you must say ‘_Allah rasi bo sun_,’ that is, ‘God save you.’
+That’s the way, my dear fellow, and not ‘_Koshkildy_.’ But I’ll teach
+you all about it. We had a fellow here, Elias Mósevich, one of your
+Russians, he and I were _kunaks_. He was a trump, a drunkard, a thief,
+a sportsman—and what a sportsman! I taught him everything.”
+
+“And what will you teach me?” asked Olénin, who was becoming more and
+more interested in the old man.
+
+“I’ll take you hunting and teach you to fish. I’ll show you Chéchens
+and find a girl for you, if you like—even that! That’s the sort I am!
+I’m a wag!”—and the old man laughed. “I’ll sit down. I’m tired.
+_Karga?_” he added inquiringly.
+
+“And what does ‘_Karga_’ mean?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Why, that means ‘All right’ in Georgian. But I say it just so. It is a
+way I have, it’s my favourite word. _Karga_, _Karga_. I say it just so;
+in fun I mean. Well, lad, won’t you order the _chikhir?_ You’ve got an
+orderly, haven’t you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Hey, Iván!” shouted the old man. “All your soldiers are Iváns. Is
+yours Iván?”
+
+“True enough, his name is Iván—Vanyúsha. Here Vanyúsha! Please get some
+_chikhir_ from our landlady and bring it here.”
+
+“Iván or Vanyúsha, that’s all one. Why are all your soldiers Iváns?
+Iván, old fellow,” said the old man, “you tell them to give you some
+from the barrel they have begun. They have the best _chikhir_ in the
+village. But don’t give more than thirty kopeks for the quart, mind,
+because that witch would be only too glad.... Our people are anathema
+people; stupid people,” Daddy Eróshka continued in a confidential tone
+after Vanyúsha had gone out. “They do not look upon you as on men, you
+are worse than a Tartar in their eyes. ‘Worldly Russians’ they say. But
+as for me, though you are a soldier you are still a man, and have a
+soul in you. Isn’t that right? Elias Mósevich was a soldier, yet what a
+treasure of a man he was! Isn’t that so, my dear fellow? That’s why our
+people don’t like me; but I don’t care! I’m a merry fellow, and I like
+everybody. I’m Eróshka; yes, my dear fellow.”
+
+And the old Cossack patted the young man affectionately on the
+shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XII
+
+
+Vanyúsha, who meanwhile had finished his housekeeping arrangements and
+had even been shaved by the company’s barber and had pulled his
+trousers out of his high boots as a sign that the company was stationed
+in comfortable quarters, was in excellent spirits. He looked
+attentively but not benevolently at Eróshka, as at a wild beast he had
+never seen before, shook his head at the floor which the old man had
+dirtied and, having taken two bottles from under a bench, went to the
+landlady.
+
+“Good evening, kind people,” he said, having made up his mind to be
+very gentle. “My master has sent me to get some _chikhir_. Will you
+draw some for me, good folk?”
+
+The old woman gave no answer. The girl, who was arranging the kerchief
+on her head before a little Tartar mirror, looked round at Vanyúsha in
+silence.
+
+“I’ll pay money for it, honoured people,” said Vanyúsha, jingling the
+coppers in his pocket. “Be kind to us and we, too will be kind to you,”
+he added.
+
+“How much?” asked the old woman abruptly. “A quart.”
+
+“Go, my own, draw some for them,” said Granny Ulítka to her daughter.
+“Take it from the cask that’s begun, my precious.”
+
+The girl took the keys and a decanter and went out of the hut with
+Vanyúsha.
+
+“Tell me, who is that young woman?” asked Olénin, pointing to Maryánka,
+who was passing the window. The old man winked and nudged the young man
+with his elbow.
+
+“Wait a bit,” said he and reached out of the window. “Khm,” he coughed,
+and bellowed, “Maryánka dear. Hallo, Maryánka, my girlie, won’t you
+love me, darling? I’m a wag,” he added in a whisper to Olénin. The
+girl, not turning her head and swinging her arms regularly and
+vigorously, passed the window with the peculiarly smart and bold gait
+of a Cossack woman and only turned her dark shaded eyes slowly towards
+the old man.
+
+“Love me and you’ll be happy,” shouted Eróshka, winking, and he looked
+questioningly at the cadet.
+
+“I’m a fine fellow, I’m a wag!” he added. “She’s a regular queen, that
+girl. Eh?”
+
+“She is lovely,” said Olénin. “Call her here!”
+
+“No, no,” said the old man. “For that one a match is being arranged
+with Lukáshka, Luke, a fine Cossack, a brave, who killed an _abrek_ the
+other day. I’ll find you a better one. I’ll find you one that will be
+all dressed up in silk and silver. Once I’ve said it I’ll do it. I’ll
+get you a regular beauty!”
+
+“You, an old man—and say such things,” replied Olénin. “Why, it’s a
+sin!”
+
+“A sin? Where’s the sin?” said the old man emphatically. “A sin to look
+at a nice girl? A sin to have some fun with her? Or is it a sin to love
+her? Is that so in your parts? ... No, my dear fellow, it’s not a sin,
+it’s salvation! God made you and God made the girl too. He made it all;
+so it is no sin to look at a nice girl. That’s what she was made for;
+to be loved and to give joy. That’s how I judge it, my good fellow.”
+
+Having crossed the yard and entered a cool dark storeroom filled with
+barrels, Maryánka went up to one of them and repeating the usual prayer
+plunged a dipper into it. Vanyúsha standing in the doorway smiled as he
+looked at her. He thought it very funny that she had only a smock on,
+close-fitting behind and tucked up in front, and still funnier that she
+wore a necklace of silver coins. He thought this quite un-Russian and
+that they would all laugh in the serfs’ quarters at home if they saw a
+girl like that. “_La fille comme c’est tres bien_, for a change,” he
+thought. “I’ll tell that to my master.”
+
+“What are you standing in the light for, you devil!” the girl suddenly
+shouted. “Why don’t you pass me the decanter!”
+
+Having filled the decanter with cool red wine, Maryánka handed it to
+Vanyúsha.
+
+“Give the money to Mother,” she said, pushing away the hand in which he
+held the money.
+
+Vanyúsha laughed.
+
+“Why are you so cross, little dear?” he said good-naturedly,
+irresolutely shuffling with his feet while the girl was covering the
+barrel.
+
+She began to laugh.
+
+“And you! Are you kind?”
+
+“We, my master and I, are very kind,” Vanyúsha answered decidedly. “We
+are so kind that wherever we have stayed our hosts were always very
+grateful. It’s because he’s generous.”
+
+The girl stood listening.
+
+“And is your master married?” she asked.
+
+“No. The master is young and unmarried, because noble gentlemen can
+never marry young,” said Vanyúsha didactically.
+
+“A likely thing! See what a fed-up buffalo he is—and too young to
+marry! Is he the chief of you all?” she asked.
+
+“My master is a cadet; that means he’s not yet an officer, but he’s
+more important than a general—he’s an important man! Because not only
+our colonel, but the Tsar himself, knows him,” proudly explained
+Vanyúsha. “We are not like those other beggars in the line regiment,
+and our papa himself was a Senator. He had more than a thousand serfs,
+all his own, and they send us a thousand rubles at a time. That’s why
+everyone likes us. Another may be a captain but have no money. What’s
+the use of that?”
+
+“Go away. I’ll lock up,” said the girl, interrupting him.
+
+Vanyúsha brought Olénin the wine and announced that “_La fille c’est
+tres joulie_,” and, laughing stupidly, at once went out.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XIII
+
+
+Meanwhile the tattoo had sounded in the village square. The people had
+returned from their work. The herd lowed as in clouds of golden dust it
+crowded at the village gate. The girls and the women hurried through
+the streets and yards, turning in their cattle. The sun had quite
+hidden itself behind the distant snowy peaks. One pale bluish shadow
+spread over land and sky. Above the darkened gardens stars just
+discernible were kindling, and the sounds were gradually hushed in the
+village. The cattle having been attended to and left for the night, the
+women came out and gathered at the corners of the streets and, cracking
+sunflower seeds with their teeth, settled down on the earthen
+embankments of the houses. Later on Maryánka, having finished milking
+the buffalo and the other two cows, also joined one of these groups.
+
+The group consisted of several women and girls and one old Cossack man.
+
+They were talking about the _abrek_ who had been killed.
+
+The Cossack was narrating and the women questioning him.
+
+“I expect he’ll get a handsome reward,” said one of the women.
+
+“Of course. It’s said that they’ll send him a cross.”
+
+“Mósev did try to wrong him. Took the gun away from him, but the
+authorities at Kizlyár heard of it.”
+
+“A mean creature that Mósev is!”
+
+“They say Lukáshka has come home,” remarked one of the girls.
+
+“He and Nazárka are merry-making at Yámka’s.” (Yámka was an unmarried,
+disreputable Cossack woman who kept an illicit pot-house.) “I heard say
+they had drunk half a pailful.”
+
+“What luck that Snatcher has,” somebody remarked. “A real snatcher. But
+there’s no denying he’s a fine lad, smart enough for anything, a
+right-minded lad! His father was just such another. Daddy Kiryák was:
+he takes after his father. When he was killed the whole village howled.
+Look, there they are,” added the speaker, pointing to the Cossacks who
+were coming down the street towards them.
+
+“And Ergushóv has managed to come along with them too! The drunkard!”
+
+Lukáshka, Nazárka, and Ergushóv, having emptied half a pail of vodka,
+were coming towards the girls. The faces of all three, but especially
+that of the old Cossack, were redder than usual. Ergushóv was reeling
+and kept laughing and nudging Nazárka in the ribs.
+
+“Why are you not singing?” he shouted to the girls. “Sing to our
+merry-making, I tell you!”
+
+They were welcomed with the words, “Had a good day? Had a good day?”
+
+“Why sing? It’s not a holiday,” said one of the women. “You’re tight,
+so you go and sing.”
+
+Ergushóv roared with laughter and nudged Nazárka. “You’d better sing.
+And I’ll begin too. I’m clever, I tell you.”
+
+“Are you asleep, fair ones?” said Nazárka. “We’ve come from the cordon
+to drink your health. We’ve already drunk Lukáshka’s health.”
+
+Lukáshka, when he reached the group, slowly raised his cap and stopped
+in front of the girls. His broad cheekbones and neck were red. He stood
+and spoke softly and sedately, but in his tranquillity and sedateness
+there was more of animation and strength than in all Nazárka’s
+loquacity and bustle. He reminded one of a playful colt that with a
+snort and a flourish of its tail suddenly stops short and stands as
+though nailed to the ground with all four feet. Lukáshka stood quietly
+in front of the girls, his eyes laughed, and he spoke but little as he
+glanced now at his drunken companions and now at the girls. When
+Maryánka joined the group he raised his cap with a firm deliberate
+movement, moved out of her way and then stepped in front of her with
+one foot a little forward and with his thumbs in his belt, fingering
+his dagger. Maryánka answered his greeting with a leisurely bow of her
+head, settled down on the earth-bank, and took some seeds out of the
+bosom of her smock. Lukáshka, keeping his eyes fixed on Maryánka,
+slowly cracked seeds and spat out the shells. All were quiet when
+Maryánka joined the group.
+
+“Have you come for long?” asked a woman, breaking the silence.
+
+“Till tomorrow morning,” quietly replied Lukáshka.
+
+“Well, God grant you get something good,” said the Cossack; “I’m glad
+of it, as I’ve just been saying.”
+
+“And I say so too,” put in the tipsy Ergushóv, laughing. “What a lot of
+visitors have come,” he added, pointing to a soldier who was passing
+by. “The soldiers’ vodka is good—I like it.”
+
+“They’ve sent three of the devils to us,” said one of the women.
+“Grandad went to the village Elders, but they say nothing can be done.”
+
+“Ah, ha! Have you met with trouble?” said Ergushóv.
+
+“I expect they have smoked you out with their tobacco?” asked another
+woman. “Smoke as much as you like in the yard, I say, but we won’t
+allow it inside the hut. Not if the Elder himself comes, I won’t allow
+it. Besides, they may rob you. He’s not quartered any of them on
+himself, no fear, that devil’s son of an Elder.”
+
+“You don’t like it?” Ergushóv began again.
+
+“And I’ve also heard say that the girls will have to make the soldiers’
+beds and offer them _chikhir_ and honey,” said Nazárka, putting one
+foot forward and tilting his cap like Lukáshka.
+
+Ergushóv burst into a roar of laughter, and seizing the girl nearest to
+him, he embraced her. “I tell you true.”
+
+“Now then, you black pitch!” squealed the girl, “I’ll tell your old
+woman.”
+
+“Tell her,” shouted he. “That’s quite right what Nazárka says; a
+circular has been sent round. He can read, you know. Quite true!” And
+he began embracing the next girl.
+
+“What are you up to, you beast?” squealed the rosy, round-faced
+Ústenka, laughing and lifting her arm to hit him.
+
+The Cossack stepped aside and nearly fell.
+
+“There, they say girls have no strength, and you nearly killed me.”
+
+“Get away, you black pitch, what devil has brought you from the
+cordon?” said Ústenka, and turning away from him she again burst out
+laughing. “You were asleep and missed the _abrek_, didn’t you? Suppose
+he had done for you it would have been all the better.”
+
+“You’d have howled, I expect,” said Nazárka, laughing.
+
+“Howled! A likely thing.”
+
+“Just look, she doesn’t care. She’d howl, Nazárka, eh? Would she?” said
+Ergushóv.
+
+Lukáshka all this time had stood silently looking at Maryánka. His gaze
+evidently confused the girl.
+
+“Well, Maryánka! I hear they’ve quartered one of the chiefs on you?” he
+said, drawing nearer.
+
+Maryánka, as was her wont, waited before she replied, and slowly
+raising her eyes looked at the Cossack. Lukáshka’s eyes were laughing
+as if something special, apart from what was said, was taking place
+between himself and the girl.
+
+“Yes, it’s all right for them as they have two huts,” replied an old
+woman on Maryánka’s behalf, “but at Fómushkin’s now they also have one
+of the chiefs quartered on them and they say one whole corner is packed
+full with his things, and the family have no room left. Was such a
+thing ever heard of as that they should turn a whole horde loose in the
+village?” she said. “And what the plague are they going to do here?”
+
+“I’ve heard say they’ll build a bridge across the Térek,” said one of
+the girls.
+
+“And I’ve been told that they will dig a pit to put the girls in
+because they don’t love the lads,” said Nazárka, approaching Ústenka;
+and he again made a whimsical gesture which set everybody laughing, and
+Ergushóv, passing by Maryánka, who was next in turn, began to embrace
+an old woman.
+
+“Why don’t you hug Maryánka? You should do it to each in turn,” said
+Nazárka.
+
+“No, my old one is sweeter,” shouted the Cossack, kissing the
+struggling old woman.
+
+“You’ll throttle me,” she screamed, laughing.
+
+The tramp of regular footsteps at the other end of the street
+interrupted their laughter. Three soldiers in their cloaks, with their
+muskets on their shoulders, were marching in step to relieve guard by
+the ammunition wagon.
+
+The corporal, an old cavalry man, looked angrily at the Cossacks and
+led his men straight along the road where Lukáshka and Nazárka were
+standing, so that they should have to get out of the way. Nazárka
+moved, but Lukáshka only screwed up his eyes and turned his broad back
+without moving from his place.
+
+“People are standing here, so you go round,” he muttered, half turning
+his head and tossing it contemptuously in the direction of the
+soldiers.
+
+The soldiers passed by in silence, keeping step regularly along the
+dusty road.
+
+Maryánka began laughing and all the other girls chimed in.
+
+“What swells!” said Nazárka, “Just like long-skirted choristers,” and
+he walked a few steps down the road imitating the soldiers.
+
+Again everyone broke into peals of laughter.
+
+Lukáshka came slowly up to Maryánka.
+
+“And where have you put up the chief?” he asked.
+
+Maryánka thought for a moment.
+
+“We’ve let him have the new hut,” she said.
+
+“And is he old or young,” asked Lukáshka, sitting down beside her.
+
+“Do you think I’ve asked?” answered the girl. “I went to get him some
+_chikhir_ and saw him sitting at the window with Daddy Eróshka.
+Red-headed he seemed. They’ve brought a whole cartload of things.”
+
+And she dropped her eyes.
+
+“Oh, how glad I am that I got leave from the cordon!” said Lukáshka,
+moving closer to the girl and looking straight in her eyes all the
+time.
+
+“And have you come for long?” asked Maryánka, smiling slightly.
+
+“Till the morning. Give me some sunflower seeds,” he said, holding out
+his hand.
+
+Maryánka now smiled outright and unfastened the neckband of her smock.
+
+“Don’t take them all,” she said.
+
+“Really I felt so dull all the time without you, I swear I did,” he
+said in a calm, restrained whisper, helping himself to some seeds out
+of the bosom of the girl’s smock, and stooping still closer over her he
+continued with laughing eyes to talk to her in low tones.
+
+“I won’t come, I tell you,” Maryánka suddenly said aloud, leaning away
+from him.
+
+“No really ... what I wanted to say to you, ...” whispered Lukáshka.
+“By the Heavens! Do come!”
+
+Maryánka shook her head, but did so with a smile.
+
+“Nursey Maryánka! Hallo Nursey! Mammy is calling! Supper time!” shouted
+Maryánka’s little brother, running towards the group.
+
+“I’m coming,” replied the girl. “Go, my dear, go alone—I’ll come in a
+minute.”
+
+Lukáshka rose and raised his cap.
+
+“I expect I had better go home too, that will be best,” he said, trying
+to appear unconcerned but hardly able to repress a smile, and he
+disappeared behind the corner of the house.
+
+Meanwhile night had entirely enveloped the village. Bright stars were
+scattered over the dark sky. The streets became dark and empty. Nazárka
+remained with the women on the earth-bank and their laughter was still
+heard, but Lukáshka, having slowly moved away from the girls, crouched
+down like a cat and then suddenly started running lightly, holding his
+dagger to steady it: not homeward, however, but towards the cornet’s
+house. Having passed two streets he turned into a lane and lifting the
+skirt of his coat sat down on the ground in the shadow of a fence. “A
+regular cornet’s daughter!” he thought about Maryánka. “Won’t even have
+a lark—the devil! But just wait a bit.”
+
+The approaching footsteps of a woman attracted his attention. He began
+listening, and laughed all by himself. Maryánka with bowed head,
+striking the pales of the fences with a switch, was walking with rapid
+regular strides straight towards him. Lukáshka rose. Maryánka started
+and stopped.
+
+“What an accursed devil! You frightened me! So you have not gone home?”
+she said, and laughed aloud.
+
+Lukáshka put one arm round her and with the other hand raised her face.
+“What I wanted to tell you, by Heaven!” his voice trembled and broke.
+
+“What are you talking of, at night time!” answered Maryánka. “Mother is
+waiting for me, and you’d better go to your sweetheart.”
+
+And freeing herself from his arms she ran away a few steps. When she
+had reached the wattle fence of her home she stopped and turned to the
+Cossack who was running beside her and still trying to persuade her to
+stay a while with him.
+
+“Well, what do you want to say, midnight-gadabout?” and she again began
+laughing.
+
+“Don’t laugh at me, Maryánka! By the Heaven! Well, what if I have a
+sweetheart? May the devil take her! Only say the word and now I’ll love
+you—I’ll do anything you wish. Here they are!” and he jingled the money
+in his pocket. “Now we can live splendidly. Others have pleasures, and
+I? I get no pleasure from you, Maryánka dear!”
+
+The girl did not answer. She stood before him breaking her switch into
+little bits with a rapid movement of her fingers.
+
+Lukáshka suddenly clenched his teeth and fists.
+
+“And why keep waiting and waiting? Don’t I love you, darling? You can
+do what you like with me,” said he suddenly, frowning angrily and
+seizing both her hands.
+
+The calm expression of Maryánka’s face and voice did not change.
+
+“Don’t bluster, Lukáshka, but listen to me,” she answered, not pulling
+away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm’s length. “It’s true I am
+a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love
+me I’ll tell you this. Let go my hands, I’ll tell you without.—I’ll
+marry you, but you’ll never get any nonsense from me,” said Maryánka
+without turning her face.
+
+“What, you’ll marry me? Marriage does not depend on us. Love me
+yourself, Maryánka dear,” said Lukáshka, from sullen and furious
+becoming again gentle, submissive, and tender, and smiling as he looked
+closely into her eyes.
+
+Maryánka clung to him and kissed him firmly on the lips.
+
+“Brother dear!” she whispered, pressing him convulsively to her. Then,
+suddenly tearing herself away, she ran into the gate of her house
+without looking round.
+
+In spite of the Cossack’s entreaties to wait another minute to hear
+what he had to say, Maryánka did not stop.
+
+“Go,” she cried, “you’ll be seen! I do believe that devil, our lodger,
+is walking about the yard.”
+
+“Cornet’s daughter,” thought Lukáshka. “She will marry me. Marriage is
+all very well, but you just love me!”
+
+He found Nazárka at Yámka’s house, and after having a spree with him
+went to Dunáyka’s house, where, in spite of her not being faithful to
+him, he spent the night.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XIV
+
+
+It was quite true that Olénin had been walking about the yard when
+Maryánka entered the gate, and had heard her say, “That devil, our
+lodger, is walking about.” He had spent that evening with Daddy Eróshka
+in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a samovar, wine,
+and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and a cigar he listened
+to the tales the old man told seated on the threshold at his feet.
+Though the air was still, the candle dripped and flickered: now
+lighting up the post of the porch, now the table and crockery, now the
+cropped white head of the old man. Moths circled round the flame and,
+shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on the table and in the
+glasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in the black space
+beyond. Olénin and Eróshka had emptied five bottles of _chikhir_.
+Eróshka filled the glasses every time, offering one to Olénin, drinking
+his health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old
+days: of his father, “The Broad”, who alone had carried on his back a
+boar’s carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two pails of
+_chikhir_ at one sitting. He told of his own days and his chum Gírchik,
+with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt cloaks across the
+Térek. He told how one morning he had killed two deer, and about his
+“little soul” who used to run to him at the cordon at night. He told
+all this so eloquently and picturesquely that Olénin did not notice how
+time passed. “Ah yes, my dear fellow, you did not know me in my golden
+days; then I’d have shown you things. Today it’s ‘Eróshka licks the
+jug’, but then Eróshka was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was the
+finest horse? Who had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get a
+drink? With whom go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountains
+to kill Ahmet Khan? Why, always Eróshka! Whom did the girls love?
+Always Eróshka had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: a
+drinker, a thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), a
+singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like that
+nowadays. It’s disgusting to look at them. When they’re that high
+(Eróshka held his hand three feet from the ground) they put on idiotic
+boots and keep looking at them—that’s all the pleasure they know. Or
+they’ll drink themselves foolish, not like men but all wrong. And who
+was I? I was Eróshka, the thief; they knew me not only in this village
+but up in the mountains. Tartar princes, my _kunaks_, used to come to
+see me! I used to be everybody’s _kunak_. If he was a Tartar—with a
+Tartar; an Armenian—with an Armenian; a soldier—with a soldier; an
+officer—with an officer! I didn’t care as long as he was a drinker. He
+says you should cleanse yourself from intercourse with the world, not
+drink with soldiers, not eat with a Tartar.”
+
+“Who says all that?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Why, our teacher! But listen to a Mullah or a Tartar Cadi. He says,
+‘You unbelieving Giaours, why do you eat pig?’ That shows that everyone
+has his own law. But I think it’s all one. God has made everything for
+the joy of man. There is no sin in any of it. Take example from an
+animal. It lives in the Tartar’s reeds or in ours. Wherever it happens
+to go, there is its home! Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But our
+people say we have to lick red-hot plates in hell for that. And I think
+it’s all a fraud,” he added after a pause.
+
+“What is a fraud?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Why, what the preachers say. We had an army captain in Chervlëna who
+was my _kunak:_ a fine fellow just like me. He was killed in Chéchnya.
+Well, he used to say that the preachers invent all that out of their
+own heads. ‘When you die the grass will grow on your grave and that’s
+all!’” The old man laughed. “He was a desperate fellow.”
+
+“And how old are you?” asked Olénin.
+
+“The Lord only knows! I must be about seventy. When a Tsaritsa reigned
+in Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it out. I must
+be seventy.”
+
+“Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.”
+
+“Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a woman, a
+witch, has harmed me....”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Oh, just harmed me.”
+
+“And so when you die the grass will grow?” repeated Olénin.
+
+Eróshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He was
+silent for a while.
+
+“And what did you think? Drink!” he shouted suddenly, smiling and
+handing Olénin some wine.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XV
+
+
+“Well, what was I saying?” he continued, trying to remember. “Yes,
+that’s the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to equal
+me in the whole army. I will find and show you any animal and any bird,
+and what and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and two guns, and nets,
+and a screen and a hawk. I have everything, thank the Lord! If you are
+not bragging but are a real sportsman, I’ll show you everything. Do you
+know what a man I am? When I have found a track—I know the animal. I
+know where he will lie down and where he’ll drink or wallow. I make
+myself a perch and sit there all night watching. What’s the good of
+staying at home? One only gets into mischief, gets drunk. And here
+women come and chatter, and boys shout at me—enough to drive one mad
+
+“It’s a different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself
+a place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a
+jolly fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One looks
+up at the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out from them
+how the time goes. One looks round—the wood is rustling; one goes on
+waiting, now there comes a crackling—a boar comes to rub himself; one
+listens to hear the young eaglets screech and then the cocks give voice
+in the village, or the geese. When you hear the geese you know it is
+not yet midnight. And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired
+somewhere far away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that
+firing? Is it another Cossack like myself who has been watching for
+some animal? And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the
+poor thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for
+nothing? I don’t like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a beast?
+You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, ‘Maybe an _abrek_ has killed some
+silly little Cossack.’ All this passes through one’s mind. And once as
+I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was sound
+except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that
+time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a
+Tartar village and seized the Chéchen women, and one of the devils has
+killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a
+wall. Don’t they do such things? Sh! Men have no souls! And thoughts
+came to me that filled me with pity. I thought: they’ve thrown away the
+cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun and
+come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And when one
+hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something begins to knock
+inside one. Dear one, come this way! ‘They’ll scent me,’ one thinks;
+and one sits and does not stir while one’s heart goes dun! dun! dun!
+and simply lifts you. Once this spring a fine litter came near me, I
+saw something black. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son,’ and I
+was just about to fire when she grunts to her pigs: ‘Danger, children,’
+she says, ‘there’s a man here,’ and off they all ran, breaking through
+the bushes. And she had been so close I could almost have bitten her.”
+
+“How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?” asked Olénin.
+
+“What do you think? You think the beast’s a fool? No, he is wiser than
+a man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take this for
+instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice it; but a pig
+as soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at once: that shows
+there is wisdom in him, since he scents your smell and you don’t. And
+there is this to be said too: you wish to kill it and it wishes to go
+about the woods alive. You have one law and it has another. It is a
+pig, but it is no worse than you—it too is God’s creature. Ah, dear!
+Man is foolish, foolish, foolish!” The old man repeated this several
+times and then, letting his head drop, he sat thinking.
+
+Olénin also became thoughtful, and descending from the porch with his
+hands behind his back began pacing up and down the yard.
+
+Eróshka, rousing himself, raised his head and began gazing intently at
+the moths circling round the flickering flame of the candle and burning
+themselves in it.
+
+“Fool, fool!” he said. “Where are you flying to? Fool, fool!” He rose
+and with his thick fingers began to drive away the moths.
+
+“You’ll burn, little fool! Fly this way, there’s plenty of room.” He
+spoke tenderly, trying to catch them delicately by their wings with his
+thick fingers and then letting them fly again. “You are killing
+yourself and I am sorry for you!”
+
+He sat a long time chattering and sipping out of the bottle. Olénin
+paced up and down the yard. Suddenly he was struck by the sound of
+whispering outside the gate. Involuntarily holding his breath, he heard
+a woman’s laughter, a man’s voice, and the sound of a kiss.
+Intentionally rustling the grass under his feet he crossed to the
+opposite side of the yard, but after a while the wattle fence creaked.
+A Cossack in a dark Circassian coat and a white sheepskin cap passed
+along the other side of the fence (it was Luke), and a tall woman with
+a white kerchief on her head went past Olénin. “You and I have nothing
+to do with one another” was what Maryánka’s firm step gave him to
+understand. He followed her with his eyes to the porch of the hut, and
+he even saw her through the window take off her kerchief and sit down.
+And suddenly a feeling of lonely depression and some vague longings and
+hopes, and envy of someone or other, overcame the young man’s soul.
+
+The last lights had been put out in the huts. The last sounds had died
+away in the village. The wattle fences and the cattle gleaming white in
+the yards, the roofs of the houses and the stately poplars, all seemed
+to be sleeping the labourers’ healthy peaceful sleep. Only the
+incessant ringing voices of frogs from the damp distance reached the
+young man. In the east the stars were growing fewer and fewer and
+seemed to be melting in the increasing light, but overhead they were
+denser and deeper than before. The old man was dozing with his head on
+his hand. A cock crowed in the yard opposite, but Olénin still paced up
+and down thinking of something. The sound of a song sung by several
+voices reached him and he stepped up to the fence and listened. The
+voices of several young Cossacks carolled a merry song, and one voice
+was distinguishable among them all by its firm strength.
+
+“Do you know who is singing there?” said the old man, rousing himself.
+“It is the Brave, Lukáshka. He has killed a Chéchen and now he
+rejoices. And what is there to rejoice at? ... The fool, the fool!”
+
+“And have you ever killed people?” asked Olénin.
+
+“You devil!” shouted the old man. “What are you asking? One must not
+talk so. It is a serious thing to destroy a human being ... Ah, a very
+serious thing! Good-bye, my dear fellow. I’ve eaten my fill and am
+drunk,” he said rising. “Shall I come tomorrow to go shooting?”
+
+“Yes, come!”
+
+“Mind, get up early; if you oversleep you will be fined!”
+
+“Never fear, I’ll be up before you,” answered Olénin.
+
+The old man left. The song ceased, but one could hear footsteps and
+merry talk. A little later the singing broke out again but farther
+away, and Eróshka’s loud voice chimed in with the other. “What people,
+what a life!” thought Olénin with a sigh as he returned alone to his
+hut.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XVI
+
+
+Daddy Eróshka was a superannuated and solitary Cossack: twenty years
+ago his wife had gone over to the Orthodox Church and run away from him
+and married a Russian sergeant-major, and he had no children. He was
+not bragging when he spoke of himself as having been the boldest
+dare-devil in the village when he was young. Everybody in the regiment
+knew of his old-time prowess. The death of more than one Russian, as
+well as Chéchen, lay on his conscience. He used to go plundering in the
+mountains, and robbed the Russians too; and he had twice been in
+prison. The greater part of his life was spent in the forests, hunting.
+There he lived for days on a crust of bread and drank nothing but
+water. But on the other hand, when he was in the village he made merry
+from morning to night. After leaving Olénin he slept for a couple of
+hours and awoke before it was light. He lay on his bed thinking of the
+man he had become acquainted with the evening before. Olénin’s
+“simplicity” (simplicity in the sense of not grudging him a drink)
+pleased him very much, and so did Olénin himself. He wondered why the
+Russians were all “simple” and so rich, and why they were educated, and
+yet knew nothing. He pondered on these questions and also considered
+what he might get out of Olénin.
+
+Daddy Eróshka’s hut was of a good size and not old, but the absence of
+a woman was very noticeable in it. Contrary to the usual cleanliness of
+the Cossacks, the whole of this hut was filthy and exceedingly untidy.
+A blood-stained coat had been thrown on the table, half a dough-cake
+lay beside a plucked and mangled crow with which to feed the hawk.
+Sandals of raw hide, a gun, a dagger, a little bag, wet clothes, and
+sundry rags lay scattered on the benches. In a corner stood a tub with
+stinking water, in which another pair of sandals were being steeped,
+and near by was a gun and a hunting-screen. On the floor a net had been
+thrown down and several dead pheasants lay there, while a hen tied by
+its leg was walking about near the table pecking among the dirt. In the
+unheated oven stood a broken pot with some kind of milky liquid. On the
+top of the oven a falcon was screeching and trying to break the cord by
+which it was tied, and a moulting hawk sat quietly on the edge of the
+oven, looking askance at the hen and occasionally bowing its head to
+right and left. Daddy Eróshka himself, in his shirt, lay on his back on
+a short bed rigged up between the wall and the oven, with his strong
+legs raised and his feet on the oven. He was picking with his thick
+fingers at the scratches left on his hands by the hawk, which he was
+accustomed to carry without wearing gloves. The whole room, especially
+near the old man, was filled with that strong but not unpleasant
+mixture of smells that he always carried about with him.
+
+“_Uyde-ma_, Daddy?” (Is Daddy in?) came through the window in a sharp
+voice, which he at once recognized as Lukáshka’s.
+
+“_Uyde, Uyde, Uyde_. I am in!” shouted the old man. “Come in, neighbour
+Mark, Luke Mark. Come to see Daddy? On your way to the cordon?”
+
+At the sound of his master’s shout the hawk flapped his wings and
+pulled at his cord.
+
+The old man was fond of Lukáshka, who was the only man he excepted from
+his general contempt for the younger generation of Cossacks. Besides
+that, Lukáshka and his mother, as near neighbours, often gave the old
+man wine, clotted cream, and other home produce which Eróshka did not
+possess. Daddy Eróshka, who all his life had allowed himself to get
+carried away, always explained his infatuations from a practical point
+of view. “Well, why not?” he used to say to himself. “I’ll give them
+some fresh meat, or a bird, and they won’t forget Daddy: they’ll
+sometimes bring a cake or a piece of pie.”
+
+“Good morning, Mark! I am glad to see you,” shouted the old man
+cheerfully, and quickly putting down his bare feet he jumped off his
+bed and walked a step or two along the creaking floor, looked down at
+his out-turned toes, and suddenly, amused by the appearance of his
+feet, smiled, stamped with his bare heel on the ground, stamped again,
+and then performed a funny dance-step. “That’s clever, eh?” he asked,
+his small eyes glistening. Lukáshka smiled faintly. “Going back to the
+cordon?” asked the old man.
+
+“I have brought the _chikhir_ I promised you when we were at the
+cordon.”
+
+“May Christ save you!” said the old man, and he took up the extremely
+wide trousers that were lying on the floor, and his _beshmet_, put them
+on, fastened a strap round his waist, poured some water from an
+earthenware pot over his hands, wiped them on the old trousers,
+smoothed his beard with a bit of comb, and stopped in front of
+Lukáshka. “Ready,” he said.
+
+Lukáshka fetched a cup, wiped it and filled it with wine, and then
+handed it to the old man.
+
+“Your health! To the Father and the Son!” said the old man, accepting
+the wine with solemnity. “May you have what you desire, may you always
+be a hero, and obtain a cross.”
+
+Lukáshka also drank a little after repeating a prayer, and then put the
+wine on the table. The old man rose and brought out some dried fish
+which he laid on the threshold, where he beat it with a stick to make
+it tender; then, having put it with his horny hands on a blue plate
+(his only one), he placed it on the table.
+
+“I have all I want. I have victuals, thank God!” he said proudly.
+“Well, and what of Mósev?” he added.
+
+Lukáshka, evidently wishing to know the old man’s opinion, told him how
+the officer had taken the gun from him.
+
+“Never mind the gun,” said the old man. “If you don’t give the gun you
+will get no reward.”
+
+“But they say, Daddy, it’s little reward a fellow gets when he is not
+yet a mounted Cossack; and the gun is a fine one, a Crimean, worth
+eighty rubles.”
+
+“Eh, let it go! I had a dispute like that with an officer, he wanted my
+horse. ‘Give it me and you’ll be made a cornet,’ says he. I wouldn’t,
+and I got nothing!”
+
+“Yes, Daddy, but you see I have to buy a horse; and they say you can’t
+get one the other side of the river under fifty rubles, and mother has
+not yet sold our wine.”
+
+“Eh, we didn’t bother,” said the old man; “when Daddy Eróshka was your
+age he already stole herds of horses from the Nogáy folk and drove them
+across the Térek. Sometimes we’d give a fine horse for a quart of vodka
+or a cloak.”
+
+“Why so cheap?” asked Lukáshka.
+
+“You’re a fool, a fool, Mark,” said the old man contemptuously. “Why,
+that’s what one steals for, so as not to be stingy! As for you, I
+suppose you haven’t so much as seen how one drives off a herd of
+horses? Why don’t you speak?”
+
+“What’s one to say, Daddy?” replied Lukáshka. “It seems we are not the
+same sort of men as you were.”
+
+“You’re a fool, Mark, a fool! ‘Not the same sort of men!’” retorted the
+old man, mimicking the Cossack lad. “I was not that sort of Cossack at
+your age.”
+
+“How’s that?” asked Lukáshka.
+
+The old man shook his head contemptuously.
+
+“Daddy Eróshka was _simple;_ he did not grudge anything! That’s why I
+was _kunak_ with all Chéchnya. A _kunak_ would come to visit me and I’d
+make him drunk with vodka and make him happy and put him to sleep with
+me, and when I went to see him I’d take him a present—a dagger! That’s
+the way it is done, and not as you do nowadays: the only amusement lads
+have now is to crack seeds and spit out the shells!” the old man
+finished contemptuously, imitating the present-day Cossacks cracking
+seeds and spitting out the shells.
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Lukáshka; “that’s so!”
+
+“If you wish to be a fellow of the right sort, be a brave and not a
+peasant! Because even a peasant can buy a horse—pay the money and take
+the horse.”
+
+They were silent for a while.
+
+“Well, of course it’s dull both in the village and the cordon, Daddy:
+but there’s nowhere one can go for a bit of sport. All our fellows are
+so timid. Take Nazárka. The other day when we went to the Tartar
+village, Giréy Khan asked us to come to Nogáy to take some horses, but
+no one went, and how was I to go alone?”
+
+“And what of Daddy? Do you think I am quite dried up? ... No, I’m not
+dried up. Let me have a horse and I’ll be off to Nogáy at once.”
+
+“What’s the good of talking nonsense!” said Luke. “You’d better tell me
+what to do about Giréy Khan. He says, ‘Only bring horses to the Térek,
+and then even if you bring a whole stud I’ll find a place for them.’
+You see he’s also a shaven-headed Tartar—how’s one to believe him?”
+
+“You may trust Giréy Khan, all his kin were good people. His father too
+was a faithful _kunak_. But listen to Daddy and I won’t teach you
+wrong: make him take an oath, then it will be all right. And if you go
+with him, have your pistol ready all the same, especially when it comes
+to dividing up the horses. I was nearly killed that way once by a
+Chéchen. I wanted ten rubles from him for a horse. Trusting is all
+right, but don’t go to sleep without a gun.” Lukáshka listened
+attentively to the old man.
+
+“I say, Daddy, have you any stone-break grass?” he asked after a pause.
+
+“No, I haven’t any, but I’ll teach you how to get it. You’re a good lad
+and won’t forget the old man.... Shall I tell you?”
+
+“Tell me, Daddy.”
+
+“You know a tortoise? She’s a devil, the tortoise is!”
+
+“Of course I know!”
+
+“Find her nest and fence it round so that she can’t get in. Well,
+she’ll come, go round it, and then will go off to find the stone-break
+grass and will bring some along and destroy the fence. Anyhow next
+morning come in good time, and where the fence is broken there you’ll
+find the stone-break grass lying. Take it wherever you like. No lock
+and no bar will be able to stop you.”
+
+“Have you tried it yourself, Daddy?”
+
+“As for trying, I have not tried it, but I was told of it by good
+people. I used only one charm: that was to repeat the Pilgrim rhyme
+when mounting my horse; and no one ever killed me!”
+
+“What is the Pilgrim rhyme, Daddy?”
+
+“What, don’t you know it? Oh, what people! You’re right to ask Daddy.
+Well, listen, and repeat after me:
+
+“Hail! Ye, living in Sion,
+This is your King,
+Our steeds we shall sit on,
+Sophonius is weeping.
+Zacharias is speaking,
+Father Pilgrim,
+Mankind ever loving.”
+
+
+“Kind ever loving,” the old man repeated. “Do you know it now? Try it.”
+
+Lukáshka laughed.
+
+“Come, Daddy, was it that that hindered their killing you? Maybe it
+just happened so!”
+
+“You’ve grown too clever! You learn it all, and say it. It will do you
+no harm. Well, suppose you have sung ‘Pilgrim’, it’s all right,” and
+the old man himself began laughing. “But just one thing, Luke, don’t
+you go to Nogáy!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Times have changed. You are not the same men. You’ve become rubbishy
+Cossacks! And see how many Russians have come down on us! You’d get to
+prison. Really, give it up! Just as if you could! Now Gírchik and I, we
+used...”
+
+And the old man was about to begin one of his endless tales, but
+Lukáshka glanced at the window and interrupted him.
+
+“It is quite light. Daddy. It’s time to be off. Look us up some day.”
+
+“May Christ save you! I’ll go to the officer; I promised to take him
+out shooting. He seems a good fellow.”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XVII
+
+
+From Eróshka’s hut Lukáshka went home. As he returned, the dewy mists
+were rising from the ground and enveloped the village. In various
+places the cattle, though out of sight, could be heard beginning to
+stir. The cocks called to one another with increasing frequency and
+insistence. The air was becoming more transparent, and the villagers
+were getting up. Not till he was close to it could Lukáshka discern the
+fence of his yard, all wet with dew, the porch of the hut, and the open
+shed. From the misty yard he heard the sound of an axe chopping wood.
+Lukáshka entered the hut. His mother was up, and stood at the oven
+throwing wood into it. His little sister was still lying in bed asleep.
+
+“Well, Lukáshka, had enough holiday-making?” asked his mother softly.
+“Where did you spend the night?”
+
+“I was in the village,” replied her son reluctantly, reaching for his
+musket, which he drew from its cover and examined carefully.
+
+His mother swayed her head.
+
+Lukáshka poured a little gunpowder onto the pan, took out a little bag
+from which he drew some empty cartridge cases which he began filling,
+carefully plugging each one with a ball wrapped in a rag. Then, having
+tested the loaded cartridges with his teeth and examined them, he put
+down the bag.
+
+“I say, Mother, I told you the bags wanted mending; have they been
+done?” he asked.
+
+“Oh yes, our dumb girl was mending something last night. Why, is it
+time for you to be going back to the cordon? I haven’t seen anything of
+you!”
+
+“Yes, as soon as I have got ready I shall have to go,” answered
+Lukáshka, tying up the gunpowder. “And where is our dumb one? Outside?”
+
+“Chopping wood, I expect. She kept fretting for you. ‘I shall not see
+him at all!’ she said. She puts her hand to her face like this, and
+clicks her tongue and presses her hands to her heart as much as to
+say—‘sorry.’ Shall I call her in? She understood all about the
+_abrek_.”
+
+“Call her,” said Lukáshka. “And I had some tallow there; bring it: I
+must grease my sword.”
+
+The old woman went out, and a few minutes later Lukáshka’s dumb sister
+came up the creaking steps and entered the hut. She was six years older
+than her brother and would have been extremely like him had it not been
+for the dull and coarsely changeable expression (common to all deaf and
+dumb people) of her face. She wore a coarse smock all patched; her feet
+were bare and muddy, and on her head she had an old blue kerchief. Her
+neck, arms, and face were sinewy like a peasant’s. Her clothing and her
+whole appearance indicated that she always did the hard work of a man.
+She brought in a heap of logs which she threw down by the oven. Then
+she went up to her brother, and with a joyful smile which made her
+whole face pucker up, touched him on the shoulder and began making
+rapid signs to him with her hands, her face, and whole body.
+
+“That’s right, that’s right, Stëpka is a trump!” answered the brother,
+nodding. “She’s fetched everything and mended everything, she’s a
+trump! Here, take this for it!” He brought out two pieces of
+gingerbread from his pocket and gave them to her.
+
+The dumb woman’s face flushed with pleasure, and she began making a
+weird noise for joy. Having seized the gingerbread she began to
+gesticulate still more rapidly, frequently pointing in one direction
+and passing her thick finger over her eyebrows and her face. Lukáshka
+understood her and kept nodding, while he smiled slightly. She was
+telling him to give the girls dainties, and that the girls liked him,
+and that one girl, Maryánka—the best of them all—loved him. She
+indicated Maryánka by rapidly pointing in the direction of Maryánka’s
+home and to her own eyebrows and face, and by smacking her lips and
+swaying her head. “Loves” she expressed by pressing her hands to her
+breast, kissing her hand, and pretending to embrace someone. Their
+mother returned to the hut, and seeing what her dumb daughter was
+saying, smiled and shook her head. Her daughter showed her the
+gingerbread and again made the noise which expressed joy.
+
+“I told Ulítka the other day that I’d send a matchmaker to them,” said
+the mother. “She took my words well.”
+
+Lukáshka looked silently at his mother.
+
+“But how about selling the wine, mother? I need a horse.”
+
+“I’ll cart it when I have time. I must get the barrels ready,” said the
+mother, evidently not wishing her son to meddle in domestic matters.
+“When you go out you’ll find a bag in the passage. I borrowed from the
+neighbours and got something for you to take back to the cordon; or
+shall I put it in your saddle-bag?”
+
+“All right,” answered Lukáshka. “And if Giréy Khan should come across
+the river send him to me at the cordon, for I shan’t get leave again
+for a long time now; I have some business with him.”
+
+He began to get ready to start.
+
+“I will send him on,” said the old woman. “It seems you have been
+spreeing at Yámka’s all the time. I went out in the night to see the
+cattle, and I think it was your voice I heard singing songs.”
+
+Lukáshka did not reply, but went out into the passage, threw the bags
+over his shoulder, tucked up the skirts of his coat, took his musket,
+and then stopped for a moment on the threshold.
+
+“Good-bye, mother!” he said as he closed the gate behind him. “Send me
+a small barrel with Nazárka. I promised it to the lads, and he’ll call
+for it.”
+
+“May Christ keep you, Lukáshka. God be with you! I’ll send you some,
+some from the new barrel,” said the old woman, going to the fence: “But
+listen,” she added, leaning over the fence.
+
+The Cossack stopped.
+
+“You’ve been making merry here; well, that’s all right. Why should not
+a young man amuse himself? God has sent you luck and that’s good. But
+now look out and mind, my son. Don’t you go and get into mischief.
+Above all, satisfy your superiors: one has to! And I will sell the wine
+and find money for a horse and will arrange a match with the girl for
+you.”
+
+“All right, all right!” answered her son, frowning.
+
+His deaf sister shouted to attract his attention. She pointed to her
+head and the palm of her hand, to indicate the shaved head of a
+Chéchen. Then she frowned, and pretending to aim with a gun, she
+shrieked and began rapidly humming and shaking her head. This meant
+that Lukáshka should kill another Chéchen.
+
+Lukáshka understood. He smiled, and shifting the gun at his back under
+his cloak stepped lightly and rapidly, and soon disappeared in the
+thick mist.
+
+The old woman, having stood a little while at the gate, returned
+silently to the hut and immediately began working.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XVIII
+
+
+Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eróshka
+whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to
+Olénin’s lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked
+meeting women before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olénin
+still asleep, and even Vanyúsha, though awake, was still in bed and
+looking round the room considering whether it was not time to get up,
+when Daddy Eróshka, gun on shoulder and in full hunter’s trappings,
+opened the door.
+
+“A cudgel!” he shouted in his deep voice. “An alarm! The Chéchens are
+upon us! Iván! Get the samovar ready for your master, and get up
+yourself—quick,” cried the old man. “That’s our way, my good man! Why
+even the girls are already up! Look out of the window. See, she’s going
+for water and you’re still sleeping!”
+
+Olénin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight
+of the old man and at the sound of his voice.
+
+“Quick, Vanyúsha, quick!” he cried.
+
+“Is that the way you go hunting?” said the old man. “Others are having
+their breakfast and you are asleep! Lyam! Here!” he called to his dog.
+“Is your gun ready?” he shouted, as loud as if a whole crowd were in
+the hut.
+
+“Well, it’s true I’m guilty, but it can’t be helped! The powder,
+Vanyúsha, and the wads!” said Olénin.
+
+“A fine!” shouted the old man.
+
+“_Du tay voulay vou?_” asked Vanyúsha, grinning.
+
+“You’re not one of us—your gabble is not like our speech, you devil!”
+the old man shouted at Vanyúsha, showing the stumps of his teeth.
+
+“A first offence must be forgiven,” said Olénin playfully, drawing on
+his high boots.
+
+“The first offence shall be forgiven,” answered Eróshka, “but if you
+oversleep another time you’ll be fined a pail of _chikhir_. When it
+gets warmer you won’t find the deer.”
+
+“And even if we do find him he is wiser than we are,” said Olénin,
+repeating the words spoken by the old man the evening before, “and you
+can’t deceive him!”
+
+“Yes, laugh away! You kill one first, and then you may talk. Now then,
+hurry up! Look, there’s the master himself coming to see you,” added
+Eróshka, looking out of the window. “Just see how he’s got himself up.
+He’s put on a new coat so that you should see that he’s an officer. Ah,
+these people, these people!”
+
+Sure enough Vanyúsha came in and announced that the master of the house
+wished to see Olénin.
+
+“_L’arjan!_” he remarked profoundly, to forewarn his master of the
+meaning of this visitation. Following him, the master of the house in a
+new Circassian coat with an officer’s stripes on the shoulders and with
+polished boots (quite exceptional among Cossacks) entered the room,
+swaying from side to side, and congratulated his lodger on his safe
+arrival.
+
+The cornet, Elias Vasílich, was an _educated_ Cossack. He had been to
+Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was
+noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling
+beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his
+self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just the same
+as Daddy Eróshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face
+and his hands and his red nose. Olénin asked him to sit down.
+
+“Good morning, Father Elias Vasílich,” said Eróshka, rising with (or so
+it seemed to Olénin) an ironically low bow.
+
+“Good morning. Daddy. So you’re here already,” said the cornet, with a
+careless nod.
+
+The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny
+and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come
+to see Olénin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary
+Cossack, and wanted to let Olénin feel his importance from the first.
+
+“That’s our Egyptian Nimrod,” he remarked, addressing Olénin and
+pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. “A mighty hunter
+before the Lord! He’s our foremost man on every hand. You’ve already
+been pleased to get acquainted with him.”
+
+Daddy Eróshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and
+shook his head thoughtfully at the cornet’s ability and learning, and
+muttered to himself: “Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he invents!”
+
+“Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,” answered Olénin.
+
+“Yes, sir, exactly,” said the cornet, “but I have a small business with
+you.”
+
+“What do you want?”
+
+“Seeing that you are a gentleman,” began the cornet, “and as I may
+understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and therefore we
+may always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.” (He stopped and
+looked with a smile at Olénin and at the old man.) “But if you have the
+desire with my consent, then, as my wife is a foolish woman of our
+class, she could not quite comprehend your words of yesterday’s date.
+Therefore my quarters might be let for six rubles to the Regimental
+Adjutant, without the stables; but I can always avert that from myself
+free of charge. But, as you desire, therefore I, being myself of an
+officer’s rank, can come to an agreement with you in everything
+personally, as an inhabitant of this district, not according to our
+customs, but can maintain the conditions in every way....”
+
+“Speaks clearly!” muttered the old man.
+
+The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last, not
+without difficulty, Olénin gathered that the cornet wished to let his
+rooms to him, Olénin, for six rubles a month. The latter gladly agreed
+to this, and offered his visitor a glass of tea. The cornet declined
+it.
+
+“According to our silly custom we consider it a sort of sin to drink
+out of a ‘worldly’ tumbler,” he said. “Though, of course, with my
+education I may understand, but my wife from her human weakness...”
+
+“Well then, will you have some tea?”
+
+“If you will permit me, I will bring my own particular glass,” answered
+the cornet, and stepped out into the porch.
+
+“Bring me my glass!” he cried.
+
+In a few minutes the door opened and a young sunburnt arm in a print
+sleeve thrust itself in, holding a tumbler in the hand. The cornet went
+up, took it, and whispered something to his daughter. Olénin poured tea
+for the cornet into the latter’s own “particular” glass, and for
+Eróshka into a “worldly” glass.
+
+“However, I do not desire to detain you,” said the cornet, scalding his
+lips and emptying his tumbler. “I too have a great liking for fishing,
+and I am here, so to say, only on leave of absence for recreation from
+my duties. I too have the desire to tempt fortune and see whether some
+_Gifts of the Térek_ may not fall to my share. I hope you too will come
+and see us and have a drink of our wine, according to the custom of our
+village,” he added.
+
+The cornet bowed, shook hands with Olénin, and went out. While Olénin
+was getting ready, he heard the cornet giving orders to his family in
+an authoritative and sensible tone, and a few minutes later he saw him
+pass by the window in a tattered coat with his trousers rolled up to
+his knees and a fishing net over his shoulder.
+
+“A rascal!” said Daddy Eróshka, emptying his “worldly” tumbler. “And
+will you really pay him six rubles? Was such a thing ever heard of?
+They would let you the best hut in the village for two rubles. What a
+beast! Why, I’d let you have mine for three!”
+
+“No, I’ll remain here,” said Olénin.
+
+“Six rubles!... Clearly it’s a fool’s money. Eh, eh, eh!” answered the
+old man. “Let’s have some _chikhir_, Iván!”
+
+Having had a snack and a drink of vodka to prepare themselves for the
+road, Olénin and the old man went out together before eight o’clock.
+
+At the gate they came up against a wagon to which a pair of oxen were
+harnessed. With a white kerchief tied round her head down to her eyes,
+a coat over her smock, and wearing high boots, Maryánka with a long
+switch in her hand was dragging the oxen by a cord tied to their horns.
+
+“Mammy,” said the old man, pretending that he was going to seize her.
+
+Maryánka flourished her switch at him and glanced merrily at them both
+with her beautiful eyes.
+
+Olénin felt still more light-hearted.
+
+“Now then, come on, come on,” he said, throwing his gun on his shoulder
+and conscious of the girl’s eyes upon him.
+
+“Gee up!” sounded Maryánka’s voice behind them, followed by the creak
+of the moving wagon.
+
+As long as their road lay through the pastures at the back of the
+village Eróshka went on talking. He could not forget the cornet and
+kept on abusing him.
+
+“Why are you so angry with him?” asked Olénin.
+
+“He’s stingy. I don’t like it,” answered the old man. “He’ll leave it
+all behind when he dies! Then who’s he saving up for? He’s built two
+houses, and he’s got a second garden from his brother by a law-suit.
+And in the matter of papers what a dog he is! They come to him from
+other villages to fill up documents. As he writes it out, exactly so it
+happens. He gets it quite exact. But who is he saving for? He’s only
+got one boy and the girl; when she’s married who’ll be left?”
+
+“Well then, he’s saving up for her dowry,” said Olénin.
+
+“What dowry? The girl is sought after, she’s a fine girl. But he’s such
+a devil that he must yet marry her to a rich fellow. He wants to get a
+big price for her. There’s Luke, a Cossack, a neighbour and a nephew of
+mine, a fine lad. It’s he who killed the Chéchen—he has been wooing her
+for a long time, but he hasn’t let him have her. He’s given one excuse,
+and another, and a third. ‘The girl’s too young,’ he says. But I know
+what he is thinking. He wants to keep them bowing to him. He’s been
+acting shamefully about that girl. Still, they will get her for
+Lukáshka, because he is the best Cossack in the village, a brave, who
+has killed an _abrek_ and will be rewarded with a cross.”
+
+“But how about this? When I was walking up and down the yard last
+night, I saw my landlord’s daughter and some Cossack kissing,” said
+Olénin.
+
+“You’re pretending!” cried the old man, stopping.
+
+“On my word,” said Olénin.
+
+“Women are the devil,” said Eróshka pondering. “But what Cossack was
+it?”
+
+“I couldn’t see.”
+
+“Well, what sort of a cap had he, a white one?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And a red coat? About your height?”
+
+“No, a bit taller.”
+
+“It’s he!” and Eróshka burst out laughing. “It’s himself, it’s Mark. He
+is Luke, but I call him Mark for a joke. His very self! I love him. I
+was just such a one myself. What’s the good of minding them? My
+sweetheart used to sleep with her mother and her sister-in-law, but I
+managed to get in. She used to sleep upstairs; that witch her mother
+was a regular demon; it’s awful how she hated me. Well, I used to come
+with a chum, Gírchik his name was. We’d come under her window and I’d
+climb on his shoulders, push up the window and begin groping about. She
+used to sleep just there on a bench. Once I woke her up and she nearly
+called out. She hadn’t recognized me. ‘Who is there?’ she said, and I
+could not answer. Her mother was even beginning to stir, but I took off
+my cap and shoved it over her mouth; and she at once knew it by a seam
+in it, and ran out to me. I used not to want anything then. She’d bring
+along clotted cream and grapes and everything,” added Eróshka (who
+always explained things practically), “and she wasn’t the only one. It
+was a life!”
+
+“And what now?”
+
+“Now we’ll follow the dog, get a pheasant to settle on a tree, and then
+you may fire.”
+
+“Would you have made up to Maryánka?”
+
+“Attend to the dogs. I’ll tell you tonight,” said the old man, pointing
+to his favourite dog, Lyam.
+
+After a pause they continued talking, while they went about a hundred
+paces. Then the old man stopped again and pointed to a twig that lay
+across the path.
+
+“What do you think of that?” he said. “You think it’s nothing? It’s bad
+that this stick is lying so.”
+
+“Why is it bad?”
+
+He smiled.
+
+“Ah, you don’t know anything. Just listen to me. When a stick lies like
+that don’t you step across it, but go round it or throw it off the path
+this way, and say ‘Father and Son and Holy Ghost,’ and then go on with
+God’s blessing. Nothing will happen to you. That’s what the old men
+used to teach me.”
+
+“Come, what rubbish!” said Olénin. “You’d better tell me more about
+Maryánka. Does she carry on with Lukáshka?”
+
+“Hush ... be quiet now!” the old man again interrupted in a whisper:
+“just listen, we’ll go round through the forest.”
+
+And the old man, stepping quietly in his soft shoes, led the way by a
+narrow path leading into the dense, wild, overgrown forest. Now and
+again with a frown he turned to look at Olénin, who rustled and
+clattered with his heavy boots and, carrying his gun carelessly,
+several times caught the twigs of trees that grew across the path.
+
+“Don’t make a noise. Step softly, soldier!” the old man whispered
+angrily.
+
+There was a feeling in the air that the sun had risen. The mist was
+dissolving but it still enveloped the tops of the trees. The forest
+looked terribly high. At every step the aspect changed: what had
+appeared like a tree proved to be a bush, and a reed looked like a
+tree.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XIX
+
+
+The mist had partly lifted, showing the wet reed thatches, and was now
+turning into dew that moistened the road and the grass beside the
+fence. Smoke rose everywhere in clouds from the chimneys. The people
+were going out of the village, some to their work, some to the river,
+and some to the cordon. The hunters walked together along the damp,
+grass-grown path. The dogs, wagging their tails and looking at their
+masters, ran on both sides of them. Myriads of gnats hovered in the air
+and pursued the hunters, covering their backs, eyes, and hands. The air
+was fragrant with the grass and with the dampness of the forest. Olénin
+continually looked round at the ox-cart in which Maryánka sat urging on
+the oxen with a long switch.
+
+It was calm. The sounds from the village, audible at first, now no
+longer reached the sportsmen. Only the brambles cracked as the dogs ran
+under them, and now and then birds called to one another. Olénin knew
+that danger lurked in the forest, that _abreks_ always hid in such
+places. But he knew too that in the forest, for a man on foot, a gun is
+a great protection. Not that he was afraid, but he felt that another in
+his place might be; and looking into the damp misty forest and
+listening to the rare and faint sounds with strained attention, he
+changed his hold on his gun and experienced a pleasant feeling that was
+new to him. Daddy Eróshka went in front, stopping and carefully
+scanning every puddle where an animal had left a double track, and
+pointing it out to Olénin. He hardly spoke at all and only occasionally
+made remarks in a whisper. The track they were following had once been
+made by wagons, but the grass had long overgrown it. The elm and
+plane-tree forest on both sides of them was so dense and overgrown with
+creepers that it was impossible to see anything through it. Nearly
+every tree was enveloped from top to bottom with wild grape vines, and
+dark bramble bushes covered the ground thickly. Every little glade was
+overgrown with blackberry bushes and grey feathery reeds. In places,
+large hoof-prints and small funnel-shaped pheasant-trails led from the
+path into the thicket. The vigour of the growth of this forest,
+untrampled by cattle, struck Olénin at every turn, for he had never
+seen anything like it. This forest, the danger, the old man and his
+mysterious whispering, Maryánka with her virile upright bearing, and
+the mountains—all this seemed to him like a dream.
+
+“A pheasant has settled,” whispered the old man, looking round and
+pulling his cap over his face—“Cover your mug! A pheasant!” he waved
+his arm angrily at Olénin and pushed forward almost on all fours. “He
+don’t like a man’s mug.”
+
+Olénin was still behind him when the old man stopped and began
+examining a tree. A cock-pheasant on the tree clucked at the dog that
+was barking at it, and Olénin saw the pheasant; but at that moment a
+report, as of a cannon, came from Eróshka’s enormous gun, the bird
+fluttered up and, losing some feathers, fell to the ground. Coming up
+to the old man Olénin disturbed another, and raising his gun he aimed
+and fired. The pheasant flew swiftly up and then, catching at the
+branches as he fell, dropped like a stone to the ground.
+
+“Good man!” the old man (who could not hit a flying bird) shouted,
+laughing.
+
+Having picked up the pheasants they went on. Olénin, excited by the
+exercise and the praise, kept addressing remarks to the old man.
+
+“Stop! Come this way,” the old man interrupted. “I noticed the track of
+deer here yesterday.”
+
+After they had turned into the thicket and gone some three hundred
+paces they scrambled through into a glade overgrown with reeds and
+partly under water. Olénin failed to keep up with the old huntsman and
+presently Daddy Eróshka, some twenty paces in front, stooped down,
+nodding and beckoning with his arm. On coming up with him Olénin saw a
+man’s footprint to which the old man was pointing.
+
+“D’you see?”
+
+“Yes, well?” said Olénin, trying to speak as calmly as he could. “A
+man’s footstep!”
+
+Involuntarily a thought of Cooper’s _Pathfinder_ and of _abreks_
+flashed through Olénin’s mind, but noticing the mysterious manner with
+which the old man moved on, he hesitated to question him and remained
+in doubt whether this mysteriousness was caused by fear of danger or by
+the sport.
+
+“No, it’s my own footprint,” the old man said quietly, and pointed to
+some grass under which the track of an animal was just perceptible.
+
+The old man went on, and Olénin kept up with him. Descending to lower
+ground some twenty paces farther on they came upon a spreading
+pear-tree, under which, on the black earth, lay the fresh dung of some
+animal.
+
+The spot, all covered over with wild vines, was like a cosy arbour,
+dark and cool.
+
+“He’s been here this morning,” said the old man with a sigh; “the lair
+is still damp, quite fresh.”
+
+Suddenly they heard a terrible crash in the forest some ten paces from
+where they stood. They both started and seized their guns, but they
+could see nothing and only heard the branches breaking. The rhythmical
+rapid thud of galloping was heard for a moment and then changed into a
+hollow rumble which resounded farther and farther off, re-echoing in
+wider and wider circles through the forest. Olénin felt as though
+something had snapped in his heart. He peered carefully but vainly into
+the green thicket and then turned to the old man. Daddy Eróshka with
+his gun pressed to his breast stood motionless; his cap was thrust
+backwards, his eyes gleamed with an unwonted glow, and his open mouth,
+with its worn yellow teeth, seemed to have stiffened in that position.
+
+“A horned stag!” he muttered, and throwing down his gun in despair he
+began pulling at his grey beard, “Here it stood. We should have come
+round by the path.... Fool! fool!” and he gave his beard an angry tug.
+“Fool! Pig!” he repeated, pulling painfully at his own beard. Through
+the forest something seemed to fly away in the mist, and ever farther
+and farther off was heard the sound of the flight of the stag.
+
+It was already dusk when, hungry, tired, but full of vigour, Olénin
+returned with the old man. Dinner was ready. He ate and drank with the
+old man till he felt warm and merry. Olénin then went out into the
+porch. Again, to the west, the mountains rose before his eyes. Again
+the old man told his endless stories of hunting, of _abreks_, of
+sweethearts, and of all that free and reckless life. Again the fair
+Maryánka went in and out and across the yard, her beautiful powerful
+form outlined by her smock.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XX
+
+
+The next day Olénin went alone to the spot where he and the old man
+startled the stag. Instead of passing round through the gate he climbed
+over the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and before he had had
+time to pull out the thorns that had caught in his coat, his dog, which
+had run on in front, started two pheasants. He had hardly stepped among
+the briers when the pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man
+had not shown him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for
+shooting from behind the screen). Olénin fired twelve times and killed
+five pheasants, but clambering after them through the briers he got so
+fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration. He called off his dog,
+uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above the small shot, and brushing
+away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his Circassian coat he went
+slowly to the spot where they had been the day before. It was however
+impossible to keep back the dog, who found trails on the very path, and
+Olénin killed two more pheasants, so that after being detained by this
+it was getting towards noon before he began to find the place he was
+looking for.
+
+The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture had
+dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes literally
+covered his face, his back, and his arms. His dog had turned from black
+to grey, its back being covered with mosquitoes, and so had Olénin’s
+coat through which the insects thrust their stings. Olénin was ready to
+run away from them and it seemed to him that it was impossible to live
+in this country in the summer. He was about to go home, but remembering
+that other people managed to endure such pain he resolved to bear it
+and gave himself up to be devoured. And strange to say, by noontime the
+feeling became actually pleasant. He even felt that without this
+mosquito-filled atmosphere around him, and that mosquito-paste mingled
+with perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that
+unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for him
+some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were so well
+suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these multitudes of
+birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark foliage, this hot
+scented air, these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere
+soaked through from the Térek and gurgled here and there under the
+overhanging leaves, that the very thing which had at first seemed to
+him dreadful and intolerable now seemed pleasant. After going round the
+place where yesterday they had found the animal and not finding
+anything, he felt inclined to rest. The sun stood right above the
+forest and poured its perpendicular rays down on his back and head
+whenever he came out into a glade or onto the road. The seven heavy
+pheasants dragged painfully at his waist. Having found the traces of
+yesterday’s stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the
+stag had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the dark foliage
+around him, the place marked by the stag’s perspiration and yesterday’s
+dung, the imprint of the stag’s knees, the bit of black earth it had
+kicked up, and his own footprints of the day before. He felt cool and
+comfortable and did not think of or wish for anything. And suddenly he
+was overcome by such a strange feeling of causeless joy and of love for
+everything, that from an old habit of his childhood he began crossing
+himself and thanking someone. Suddenly, with extraordinary clearness,
+he thought: “Here am I, Dmítri Olénin, a being quite distinct from
+every other being, now lying all alone Heaven only knows where—where a
+stag used to live—an old stag, a beautiful stag who perhaps had never
+seen a man, and in a place where no human being has ever sat or thought
+these thoughts. Here I sit, and around me stand old and young trees,
+one of them festooned with wild grape vines, and pheasants are
+fluttering, driving one another about and perhaps scenting their
+murdered brothers.” He felt his pheasants, examined them, and wiped the
+warm blood off his hand onto his coat. “Perhaps the jackals scent them
+and with dissatisfied faces go off in another direction: above me,
+flying in among the leaves which to them seem enormous islands,
+mosquitoes hang in the air and buzz: one, two, three, four, a hundred,
+a thousand, a million mosquitoes, and all of them buzz something or
+other and each one of them is separate from all else and is just such a
+separate Dmítri Olénin as I am myself.” He vividly imagined what the
+mosquitoes buzzed: “This way, this way, lads! Here’s some one we can
+eat!” They buzzed and stuck to him. And it was clear to him that he was
+not a Russian nobleman, a member of Moscow society, the friend and
+relation of so-and-so and so-and-so, but just such a mosquito, or
+pheasant, or deer, as those that were now living all around him. “Just
+as they, just as Daddy Eróshka, I shall live awhile and die, and as he
+says truly: ‘grass will grow and nothing more’.”
+
+“But what though the grass does grow?” he continued thinking. “Still I
+must live and be happy, because happiness is all I desire. Never mind
+what I am—an animal like all the rest, above whom the grass will grow
+and nothing more; or a frame in which a bit of the one God has been
+set,—still I must live in the very best way. How then must I live to be
+happy, and why was I not happy before?” And he began to recall his
+former life and he felt disgusted with himself. He appeared to himself
+to have been terribly exacting and selfish, though he now saw that all
+the while he really needed nothing for himself. And he looked round at
+the foliage with the light shining through it, at the setting sun and
+the clear sky, and he felt just as happy as before. “Why am I happy,
+and what used I to live for?” thought he. “How much I exacted for
+myself; how I schemed and did not manage to gain anything but shame and
+sorrow! and, there now, I require nothing to be happy;” and suddenly a
+new light seemed to reveal itself to him. “Happiness is this!” he said
+to himself. “Happiness lies in living for others. That is evident. The
+desire for happiness is innate in every man; therefore it is
+legitimate. When trying to satisfy it selfishly—that is, by seeking for
+oneself riches, fame, comforts, or love—it may happen that
+circumstances arise which make it impossible to satisfy these desires.
+It follows that it is these desires that are illegitimate, but not the
+need for happiness. But what desires can always be satisfied despite
+external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.” He was so
+glad and excited when he had discovered this, as it seemed to him, new
+truth, that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking some one to
+sacrifice himself for, to do good to and to love. “Since one wants
+nothing for oneself,” he kept thinking, “why not live for others?” He
+took up his gun with the intention of returning home quickly to think
+this out and to find an opportunity of doing good. He made his way out
+of the thicket. When he had come out into the glade he looked around
+him; the sun was no longer visible above the tree-tops. It had grown
+cooler and the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the
+country round the village. Everything seemed changed—the weather and
+the character of the forest; the sky was wrapped in clouds, the wind
+was rustling in the tree-tops, and all around nothing was visible but
+reeds and dying broken-down trees. He called to his dog who had run
+away to follow some animal, and his voice came back as in a desert. And
+suddenly he was seized with a terrible sense of weirdness. He grew
+frightened. He remembered the _abreks_ and the murders he had been told
+about, and he expected every moment that an _abrek_ would spring from
+behind every bush and he would have to defend his life and die, or be a
+coward. He thought of God and of the future life as for long he had not
+thought about them. And all around was that same gloomy stern wild
+nature. “And is it worth while living for oneself,” thought he, “when
+at any moment you may die, and die without having done any good, and so
+that no one will know of it?” He went in the direction where he fancied
+the village lay. Of his shooting he had no further thought; but he felt
+tired to death and peered round at every bush and tree with particular
+attention and almost with terror, expecting every moment to be called
+to account for his life. After having wandered about for a considerable
+time he came upon a ditch down which was flowing cold sandy water from
+the Térek, and, not to go astray any longer, he decided to follow it.
+He went on without knowing where the ditch would lead him. Suddenly the
+reeds behind him crackled. He shuddered and seized his gun, and then
+felt ashamed of himself: the over-excited dog, panting hard, had thrown
+itself into the cold water of the ditch and was lapping it!
+
+He too had a drink, and then followed the dog in the direction it
+wished to go, thinking it would lead him to the village. But despite
+the dog’s company everything around him seemed still more dreary. The
+forest grew darker and the wind grew stronger and stronger in the tops
+of the broken old trees. Some large birds circled screeching round
+their nests in those trees. The vegetation grew poorer and he came
+oftener and oftener upon rustling reeds and bare sandy spaces covered
+with animal footprints. To the howling of the wind was added another
+kind of cheerless monotonous roar. Altogether his spirits became
+gloomy. Putting his hand behind him he felt his pheasants, and found
+one missing. It had broken off and was lost, and only the bleeding head
+and beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more frightened than he
+had ever done before. He began to pray to God, and feared above all
+that he might die without having done anything good or kind; and he so
+wanted to live, and to live so as to perform a feat of self-sacrifice.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXI
+
+
+Suddenly it was as though the sun had shone into his soul. He heard
+Russian being spoken, and also heard the rapid smooth flow of the
+Térek, and a few steps farther in front of him saw the brown moving
+surface of the river, with the dim-coloured wet sand of its banks and
+shallows, the distant steppe, the cordon watch-tower outlined above the
+water, a saddled and hobbled horse among the brambles, and then the
+mountains opening out before him. The red sun appeared for an instant
+from under a cloud and its last rays glittered brightly along the river
+over the reeds, on the watch-tower, and on a group of Cossacks, among
+whom Lukáshka’s vigorous figure attracted Olénin’s involuntary
+attention.
+
+Olénin felt that he was again, without any apparent cause, perfectly
+happy. He had come upon the Nízhni-Protótsk post on the Térek, opposite
+a pro-Russian Tartar village on the other side of the river. He
+accosted the Cossacks, but not finding as yet any excuse for doing
+anyone a kindness, he entered the hut; nor in the hut did he find any
+such opportunity. The Cossacks received him coldly. On entering the mud
+hut he lit a cigarette. The Cossacks paid little attention to him,
+first because he was smoking a cigarette, and secondly because they had
+something else to divert them that evening. Some hostile Chéchens,
+relatives of the _abrek_ who had been killed, had come from the hills
+with a scout to ransom the body; and the Cossacks were waiting for
+their Commanding Officer’s arrival from the village. The dead man’s
+brother, tall and well shaped with a short cropped beard which was dyed
+red, despite his very tattered coat and cap was calm and majestic as a
+king. His face was very like that of the dead _abrek_. He did not deign
+to look at anyone, and never once glanced at the dead body, but sitting
+on his heels in the shade he spat as he smoked his short pipe, and
+occasionally uttered some few guttural sounds of command, which were
+respectfully listened to by his companion. He was evidently a brave who
+had met Russians more than once before in quite other circumstances,
+and nothing about them could astonish or even interest him. Olénin was
+about to approach the dead body and had begun to look at it when the
+brother, looking up at him from under his brows with calm contempt,
+said something sharply and angrily. The scout hastened to cover the
+dead man’s face with his coat. Olénin was struck by the dignified and
+stern expression of the brave’s face. He began to speak to him, asking
+from what village he came, but the Chéchen, scarcely giving him a
+glance, spat contemptuously and turned away. Olénin was so surprised at
+the Chéchen not being interested in him that he could only put it down
+to the man’s stupidity or ignorance of Russian; so he turned to the
+scout, who also acted as interpreter. The scout was as ragged as the
+other, but instead of being red-haired he was black-haired, restless,
+with extremely white gleaming teeth and sparkling black eyes. The scout
+willingly entered into conversation and asked for a cigarette.
+
+“There were five brothers,” began the scout in his broken Russian.
+“This is the third brother the Russians have killed, only two are left.
+He is a brave, a great brave!” he said, pointing to the Chéchen. “When
+they killed Ahmet Khan (the dead brave) this one was sitting on the
+opposite bank among the reeds. He saw it all. Saw him laid in the skiff
+and brought to the bank. He sat there till the night and wished to kill
+the old man, but the others would not let him.”
+
+Lukáshka went up to the speaker, and sat down. “Of what village?” asked
+he.
+
+“From there in the hills,” replied the scout, pointing to the misty
+bluish gorge beyond the Térek. “Do you know Suuk-su? It is about eight
+miles beyond that.”
+
+“Do you know Giréy Khan in Suuk-su?” asked Lukáshka, evidently proud of
+the acquaintance. “He is my _kunak_.”
+
+“He is my neighbour,” answered the scout.
+
+“He’s a trump!” and Lukáshka, evidently much interested, began talking
+to the scout in Tartar.
+
+Presently a Cossack captain, with the head of the village, arrived on
+horseback with a suite of two Cossacks. The captain—one of the new type
+of Cossack officers—wished the Cossacks “Good health,” but no one
+shouted in reply, “Hail! Good health to your honour,” as is customary
+in the Russian Army, and only a few replied with a bow. Some, and among
+them Lukáshka, rose and stood erect. The corporal replied that all was
+well at the outposts. All this seemed ridiculous: it was as if these
+Cossacks were playing at being soldiers. But these formalities soon
+gave place to ordinary ways of behaviour, and the captain, who was a
+smart Cossack just like the others, began speaking fluently in Tartar
+to the interpreter. They filled in some document, gave it to the scout,
+and received from him some money. Then they approached the body.
+
+“Which of you is Luke Gavrílov?” asked the captain.
+
+Lukáshka took off his cap and came forward.
+
+“I have reported your exploit to the Commander. I don’t know what will
+come of it. I have recommended you for a cross; you’re too young to be
+made a sergeant. Can you read?”
+
+“I can’t.”
+
+“But what a fine fellow to look at!” said the captain, again playing
+the commander. “Put on your cap. Which of the Gavrílovs does he come
+of? ... the Broad, eh?”
+
+“His nephew,” replied the corporal.
+
+“I know, I know. Well, lend a hand, help them,” he said, turning to the
+Cossacks.
+
+Lukáshka’s face shone with joy and seemed handsomer than usual. He
+moved away from the corporal, and having put on his cap sat down beside
+Olénin.
+
+When the body had been carried to the skiff the brother Chéchen
+descended to the bank. The Cossacks involuntarily stepped aside to let
+him pass. He jumped into the boat and pushed off from the bank with his
+powerful leg, and now, as Olénin noticed, for the first time threw a
+rapid glance at all the Cossacks and then abruptly asked his companion
+a question. The latter answered something and pointed to Lukáshka. The
+Chéchen looked at him and, turning slowly away, gazed at the opposite
+bank. That look expressed not hatred but cold contempt. He again made
+some remark.
+
+“What is he saying?” Olénin asked of the fidgety scout.
+
+“Yours kill ours, ours slay yours. It’s always the same,” replied the
+scout, evidently inventing, and he smiled, showing his white teeth, as
+he jumped into the skiff.
+
+The dead man’s brother sat motionless, gazing at the opposite bank. He
+was so full of hatred and contempt that there was nothing on this side
+of the river that moved his curiosity. The scout, standing up at one
+end of the skiff and dipping his paddle now on one side now on the
+other, steered skilfully while talking incessantly. The skiff became
+smaller and smaller as it moved obliquely across the stream, the voices
+became scarcely audible, and at last, still within sight, they landed
+on the opposite bank where their horses stood waiting. There they
+lifted out the corpse and (though the horse shied) laid it across one
+of the saddles, mounted, and rode at a foot-pace along the road past a
+Tartar village from which a crowd came out to look at them. The
+Cossacks on the Russian side of the river were highly satisfied and
+jovial. Laughter and jokes were heard on all sides. The captain and the
+head of the village entered the mud hut to regale themselves. Lukáshka,
+vainly striving to impart a sedate expression to his merry face, sat
+down with his elbows on his knees beside Olénin and whittled away at a
+stick.
+
+“Why do you smoke?” he said with assumed curiosity. “Is it good?”
+
+He evidently spoke because he noticed Olénin felt ill at ease and
+isolated among the Cossacks.
+
+“It’s just a habit,” answered Olénin. “Why?”
+
+“H’m, if one of us were to smoke there would be a row! Look there now,
+the mountains are not far off,” continued Lukáshka, “yet you can’t get
+there! How will you get back alone? It’s getting dark. I’ll take you,
+if you like. You ask the corporal to give me leave.”
+
+“What a fine fellow!” thought Olénin, looking at the Cossack’s bright
+face. He remembered Maryánka and the kiss he had heard by the gate, and
+he was sorry for Lukáshka and his want of culture. “What confusion it
+is,” he thought. “A man kills another and is happy and satisfied with
+himself as if he had done something excellent. Can it be that nothing
+tells him that it is not a reason for any rejoicing, and that happiness
+lies not in killing, but in sacrificing oneself?”
+
+“Well, you had better not meet him again now, mate!” said one of the
+Cossacks who had seen the skiff off, addressing Lukáshka. “Did you hear
+him asking about you?”
+
+Lukáshka raised his head.
+
+“My godson?” said Lukáshka, meaning by that word the dead Chéchen.
+
+“Your godson won’t rise, but the red one is the godson’s brother!”
+
+“Let him thank God that he got off whole himself,” replied Lukáshka.
+
+“What are you glad about?” asked Olénin. “Supposing your brother had
+been killed; would you be glad?”
+
+The Cossack looked at Olénin with laughing eyes. He seemed to have
+understood all that Olénin wished to say to him, but to be above such
+considerations.
+
+“Well, that happens too! Don’t our fellows get killed sometimes?”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXII
+
+
+The Captain and the head of the village rode away, and Olénin, to
+please Lukáshka as well as to avoid going back alone through the dark
+forest, asked the corporal to give Lukáshka leave, and the corporal did
+so. Olénin thought that Lukáshka wanted to see Maryánka and he was also
+glad of the companionship of such a pleasant-looking and sociable
+Cossack. Lukáshka and Maryánka he involuntarily united in his mind, and
+he found pleasure in thinking about them. “He loves Maryánka,” thought
+Olénin, “and I could love her,” and a new and powerful emotion of
+tenderness overcame him as they walked homewards together through the
+dark forest. Lukáshka too felt happy; something akin to love made
+itself felt between these two very different young men. Every time they
+glanced at one another they wanted to laugh.
+
+“By which gate do you enter?” asked Olénin.
+
+“By the middle one. But I’ll see you as far as the marsh. After that
+you have nothing to fear.”
+
+Olénin laughed.
+
+“Do you think I am afraid? Go back, and thank you. I can get on alone.”
+
+“It’s all right! What have I to do? And how can you help being afraid?
+Even we are afraid,” said Lukáshka to set Olénin’s self-esteem at rest,
+and he laughed too.
+
+“Then come in with me. We’ll have a talk and a drink and in the morning
+you can go back.”
+
+“Couldn’t I find a place to spend the night?” laughed Lukáshka. “But
+the corporal asked me to go back.”
+
+“I heard you singing last night, and also saw you.”
+
+“Every one...” and Luke swayed his head.
+
+“Is it true you are getting married?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Mother wants me to marry. But I have not got a horse yet.”
+
+“Aren’t you in the regular service?”
+
+“Oh dear no! I’ve only just joined, and have not got a horse yet, and
+don’t know how to get one. That’s why the marriage does not come off.”
+
+“And what would a horse cost?”
+
+“We were bargaining for one beyond the river the other day and they
+would not take sixty rubles for it, though it is a Nogáy horse.”
+
+“Will you come and be my drabánt?” (A drabánt was a kind of orderly
+attached to an officer when campaigning.) “I’ll get it arranged and
+will give you a horse,” said Olénin suddenly. “Really now, I have two
+and I don’t want both.”
+
+“How—don’t want it?” Lukáshka said, laughing. “Why should you make me a
+present? We’ll get on by ourselves by God’s help.”
+
+“No, really! Or don’t you want to be a drabánt?” said Olénin, glad that
+it had entered his head to give a horse to Lukáshka, though, without
+knowing why, he felt uncomfortable and confused and did not know what
+to say when he tried to speak.
+
+Lukáshka was the first to break the silence.
+
+“Have you a house of your own in Russia?” he asked.
+
+Olénin could not refrain from replying that he had not only one, but
+several houses.
+
+“A good house? Bigger than ours?” asked Lukáshka good-naturedly.
+
+“Much bigger; ten times as big and three storeys high,” replied Olénin.
+
+“And have you horses such as ours?”
+
+“I have a hundred horses, worth three or four hundred rubles each, but
+they are not like yours. They are trotters, you know.... But still, I
+like the horses here best.”
+
+“Well, and did you come here of your own free will, or were you sent?”
+said Lukáshka, laughing at him. “Look! that’s where you lost your way,”
+he added, “you should have turned to the right.”
+
+“I came by my own wish,” replied Olénin. “I wanted to see your parts
+and to join some expeditions.”
+
+“I would go on an expedition any day,” said Lukáshka. “D’you hear the
+jackals howling?” he added, listening.
+
+“I say, don’t you feel any horror at having killed a man?” asked
+Olénin.
+
+“What’s there to be frightened about? But I should like to join an
+expedition,” Lukáshka repeated. “How I want to! How I want to!”
+
+“Perhaps we may be going together. Our company is going before the
+holidays, and your ‘hundred’ too.”
+
+“And what did you want to come here for? You’ve a house and horses and
+serfs. In your place I’d do nothing but make merry! And what is your
+rank?”
+
+“I am a cadet, but have been recommended for a commission.”
+
+“Well, if you’re not bragging about your home, if I were you I’d never
+have left it! Yes, I’d never have gone away anywhere. Do you find it
+pleasant living among us?”
+
+“Yes, very pleasant,” answered Olénin.
+
+It had grown quite dark before, talking in this way, they approached
+the village. They were still surrounded by the deep gloom of the
+forest. The wind howled through the tree-tops. The jackals suddenly
+seemed to be crying close beside them, howling, chuckling, and sobbing;
+but ahead of them in the village the sounds of women’s voices and the
+barking of dogs could already be heard; the outlines of the huts were
+clearly to be seen; lights gleamed and the air was filled with the
+peculiar smell of _kisyak_ smoke. Olénin felt keenly, that night
+especially, that here in this village was his home, his family, all his
+happiness, and that he never had and never would live so happily
+anywhere as he did in this Cossack village. He was so fond of everybody
+and especially of Lukáshka that night. On reaching home, to Lukáshka’s
+great surprise, Olénin with his own hands led out of the shed a horse
+he had bought in Gróznoe—it was not the one he usually rode but
+another—not a bad horse though no longer young, and gave it to
+Lukáshka.
+
+“Why should you give me a present?” said Lukáshka, “I have not yet done
+anything for you.”
+
+“Really it is nothing,” answered Olénin. “Take it, and you will give me
+a present, and we’ll go on an expedition against the enemy together.”
+
+Lukáshka became confused.
+
+“But what d’you mean by it? As if a horse were of little value,” he
+said without looking at the horse.
+
+“Take it, take it! If you don’t you will offend me. Vanyúsha! Take the
+grey horse to his house.”
+
+Lukáshka took hold of the halter.
+
+“Well then, thank you! This is something unexpected, undreamt of.”
+
+Olénin was as happy as a boy of twelve.
+
+“Tie it up here. It’s a good horse. I bought it in Gróznoe; it gallops
+splendidly! Vanyúsha, bring us some _chikhir_. Come into the hut.”
+
+The wine was brought. Lukáshka sat down and took the wine-bowl.
+
+“God willing I’ll find a way to repay you,” he said, finishing his
+wine. “How are you called?”
+
+“Dmítri Andréich.”
+
+“Well, ’Mitry Andréich, God bless you. We will be _kunaks_. Now you
+must come to see us. Though we are not rich people still we can treat a
+_kunak_, and I will tell mother in case you need anything—clotted cream
+or grapes—and if you come to the cordon I’m your servant to go hunting
+or to go across the river, anywhere you like! There now, only the other
+day, what a boar I killed, and I divided it among the Cossacks, but if
+I had only known, I’d have given it to you.”
+
+“That’s all right, thank you! But don’t harness the horse, it has never
+been in harness.”
+
+“Why harness the horse? And there is something else I’ll tell you if
+you like,” said Lukáshka, bending his head. “I have a _kunak_, Giréy
+Khan. He asked me to lie in ambush by the road where they come down
+from the mountains. Shall we go together? I’ll not betray you. I’ll be
+your _murid_.”
+
+“Yes, we’ll go; we’ll go some day.”
+
+Lukáshka seemed quite to have quieted down and to have understood
+Olénin’s attitude towards him. His calmness and the ease of his
+behaviour surprised Olénin, and he did not even quite like it. They
+talked long, and it was late when Lukáshka, not tipsy (he never was
+tipsy) but having drunk a good deal, left Olénin after shaking hands.
+
+Olénin looked out of the window to see what he would do. Lukáshka went
+out, hanging his head. Then, having led the horse out of the gate, he
+suddenly shook his head, threw the reins of the halter over its head,
+sprang onto its back like a cat, gave a wild shout, and galloped down
+the street. Olénin expected that Lukáshka would go to share his joy
+with Maryánka, but though he did not do so Olénin still felt his soul
+more at ease than ever before in his life. He was as delighted as a
+boy, and could not refrain from telling Vanyúsha not only that he had
+given Lukáshka the horse, but also why he had done it, as well as his
+new theory of happiness.
+
+Vanyúsha did not approve of his theory, and announced that “_l’argent
+il n’y a pas!_” and that therefore it was all nonsense.
+
+Lukáshka rode home, jumped off the horse, and handed it over to his
+mother, telling her to let it out with the communal Cossack herd. He
+himself had to return to the cordon that same night. His deaf sister
+undertook to take the horse, and explained by signs that when she saw
+the man who had given the horse, she would bow down at his feet. The
+old woman only shook her head at her son’s story, and decided in her
+own mind that he had stolen it. She therefore told the deaf girl to
+take it to the herd before daybreak.
+
+Lukáshka went back alone to the cordon pondering over Olénin’s action.
+Though he did not consider the horse a good one, yet it was worth at
+least forty rubles and Lukáshka was very glad to have the present. But
+why it had been given him he could not at all understand, and therefore
+he did not experience the least feeling of gratitude. On the contrary,
+vague suspicions that the cadet had some evil intentions filled his
+mind. What those intentions were he could not decide, but neither could
+he admit the idea that a stranger would give him a horse worth forty
+rubles for nothing, just out of kindness; it seemed impossible. Had he
+been drunk one might understand it! He might have wished to show off.
+But the cadet had been sober, and therefore must have wished to bribe
+him to do something wrong. “Eh, humbug!” thought Lukáshka. “Haven’t I
+got the horse and we’ll see later on. I’m not a fool myself and we
+shall see who’ll get the better of the other,” he thought, feeling the
+necessity of being on his guard, and therefore arousing in himself
+unfriendly feelings towards Olénin. He told no one how he had got the
+horse. To some he said he had bought it, to others he replied
+evasively. However, the truth soon got about in the village, and
+Lukáshka’s mother and Maryánka, as well as Elias Vasílich and other
+Cossacks, when they heard of Olénin’s unnecessary gift, were perplexed,
+and began to be on their guard against the cadet. But despite their
+fears his action aroused in them a great respect for his simplicity and
+wealth.
+
+“Have you heard,” said one, “that the cadet quartered on Elias Vasílich
+has thrown a fifty-ruble horse at Lukáshka? He’s rich! ...”
+
+“Yes, I heard of it,” replied another profoundly, “he must have done
+him some great service. We shall see what will come of this cadet. Eh!
+what luck that Snatcher has!”
+
+“Those cadets are crafty, awfully crafty,” said a third. “See if he
+don’t go setting fire to a building, or doing something!”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXIII
+
+
+Olénin’s life went on with monotonous regularity. He had little
+intercourse with the commanding officers or with his equals. The
+position of a rich cadet in the Caucasus was peculiarly advantageous in
+this respect. He was not sent out to work, or for training. As a reward
+for going on an expedition he was recommended for a commission, and
+meanwhile he was left in peace. The officers regarded him as an
+aristocrat and behaved towards him with dignity. Cardplaying and the
+officers’ carousals accompanied by the soldier-singers, of which he had
+had experience when he was with the detachment, did not seem to him
+attractive, and he also avoided the society and life of the officers in
+the village. The life of officers stationed in a Cossack village has
+long had its own definite form. Just as every cadet or officer when in
+a fort regularly drinks porter, plays cards, and discusses the rewards
+given for taking part in the expeditions, so in the Cossack villages he
+regularly drinks _chikhir_ with his hosts, treats the girls to
+sweet-meats and honey, dangles after the Cossack women, and falls in
+love, and occasionally marries there. Olénin always took his own path
+and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks. And here, too,
+he did not follow the ruts of a Caucasian officer’s life.
+
+It came quite naturally to him to wake up at daybreak. After drinking
+tea and admiring from his porch the mountains, the morning, and
+Maryánka, he would put on a tattered ox-hide coat, sandals of soaked
+raw hide, buckle on a dagger, take a gun, put cigarettes and some lunch
+in a little bag, call his dog, and soon after five o’clock would start
+for the forest beyond the village. Towards seven in the evening he
+would return tired and hungry with five or six pheasants hanging from
+his belt (sometimes with some other animal) and with his bag of food
+and cigarettes untouched. If the thoughts in his head had lain like the
+lunch and cigarettes in the bag, one might have seen that during all
+those fourteen hours not a single thought had moved in it. He returned
+morally fresh, strong, and perfectly happy, and he could not tell what
+he had been thinking about all the time. Were they ideas, memories, or
+dreams that had been flitting through his mind? They were frequently
+all three. He would rouse himself and ask what he had been thinking
+about; and would see himself as a Cossack working in a vineyard with
+his Cossack wife, or an _abrek_ in the mountains, or a boar running
+away from himself. And all the time he kept peering and watching for a
+pheasant, a boar, or a deer.
+
+In the evening Daddy Eróshka would be sure to be sitting with him.
+Vanyúsha would bring a jug of _chikhir_, and they would converse
+quietly, drink, and separate to go quite contentedly to bed. The next
+day he would again go shooting, again be healthily weary, again they
+would sit conversing and drink their fill, and again be happy.
+Sometimes on a holiday or day of rest Olénin spent the whole day at
+home. Then his chief occupation was watching Maryánka, whose every
+movement, without realizing it himself, he followed greedily from his
+window or his porch. He regarded Maryánka and loved her (so he thought)
+just as he loved the beauty of the mountains and the sky, and he had no
+thought of entering into any relations with her. It seemed to him that
+between him and her such relations as there were between her and the
+Cossack Lukáshka could not exist, and still less such as often existed
+between rich officers and other Cossack girls. It seemed to him that if
+he tried to do as his fellow officers did, he would exchange his
+complete enjoyment of contemplation for an abyss of suffering,
+disillusionment, and remorse. Besides, he had already achieved a
+triumph of self-sacrifice in connexion with her which had given him
+great pleasure, and above all he was in a way afraid of Maryánka and
+would not for anything have ventured to utter a word of love to her
+lightly.
+
+Once during the summer, when Olénin had not gone out shooting but was
+sitting at home, quite unexpectedly a Moscow acquaintance, a very young
+man whom he had met in society, came in.
+
+“Ah, _mon cher_, my dear fellow, how glad I was when I heard that you
+were here!” he began in his Moscow French, and he went on intermingling
+French words in his remarks. “They said, ‘Olénin’. What Olénin? and I
+was so pleased.... Fancy fate bringing us together here! Well, and how
+are you? How? Why?” and Prince Belétski told his whole story: how he
+had temporarily entered the regiment, how the Commander-in-Chief had
+offered to take him as an adjutant, and how he would take up the post
+after this campaign although personally he felt quite indifferent about
+it.
+
+“Living here in this hole one must at least make a career—get a
+cross—or a rank—be transferred to the Guards. That is quite
+indispensable, not for myself but for the sake of my relations and
+friends. The prince received me very well; he is a very decent fellow,”
+said Belétski, and went on unceasingly. “I have been recommended for
+the St. Anna Cross for the expedition. Now I shall stay here a bit
+until we start on the campaign. It’s capital here. What women! Well,
+and how are you getting on? I was told by our captain, Stártsev you
+know, a kind-hearted stupid creature.... Well, he said you were living
+like an awful savage, seeing no one! I quite understand you don’t want
+to be mixed up with the set of officers we have here. I am so glad now
+you and I will be able to see something of one another. I have put up
+at the Cossack corporal’s house. There is such a girl there. Ústenka! I
+tell you she’s just charming.”
+
+And more and more French and Russian words came pouring forth from that
+world which Olénin thought he had left for ever. The general opinion
+about Belétski was that he was a nice, good-natured fellow. Perhaps he
+really was; but in spite of his pretty, good-natured face, Olénin
+thought him extremely unpleasant. He seemed just to exhale that
+filthiness which Olénin had forsworn. What vexed him most was that he
+could not—had not the strength—abruptly to repulse this man who came
+from that world: as if that old world he used to belong to had an
+irresistible claim on him. Olénin felt angry with Belétski and with
+himself, yet against his wish he introduced French phrases into his own
+conversation, was interested in the Commander-in-Chief and in their
+Moscow acquaintances, and because in this Cossack village he and
+Belétski both spoke French, he spoke contemptuously of their fellow
+officers and of the Cossacks, and was friendly with Belétski, promising
+to visit him and inviting him to drop in to see him. Olénin however did
+not himself go to see Belétski. Vanyúsha for his part approved of
+Belétski, remarking that he was a real gentleman.
+
+Belétski at once adopted the customary life of a rich officer in a
+Cossack village. Before Olénin’s eyes, in one month he came to be like
+an old resident of the village; he made the old men drunk, arranged
+evening parties, and himself went to parties arranged by the
+girls—bragged of his conquests, and even got so far that, for some
+unknown reason, the women and girls began calling him grandad, and the
+Cossacks, to whom a man who loved wine and women was clearly
+understandable, got used to him and even liked him better than they did
+Olénin, who was a puzzle to them.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXIV
+
+
+It was five in the morning. Vanyúsha was in the porch heating the
+samovar, and using the leg of a long boot instead of bellows. Olénin
+had already ridden off to bathe in the Térek. (He had recently invented
+a new amusement: to swim his horse in the river.) His landlady was in
+her outhouse, and the dense smoke of the kindling fire rose from the
+chimney. The girl was milking the buffalo cow in the shed. “Can’t keep
+quiet, the damned thing!” came her impatient voice, followed by the
+rhythmical sound of milking.
+
+From the street in front of the house horses’ hoofs were heard
+clattering briskly, and Olénin, riding bareback on a handsome dark-grey
+horse which was still wet and shining, rode up to the gate. Maryánka’s
+handsome head, tied round with a red kerchief, appeared from the shed
+and again disappeared. Olénin was wearing a red silk shirt, a white
+Circassian coat girdled with a strap which carried a dagger, and a tall
+cap. He sat his well-fed wet horse with a slightly conscious elegance
+and, holding his gun at his back, stooped to open the gate. His hair
+was still wet, and his face shone with youth and health. He thought
+himself handsome, agile, and like a brave; but he was mistaken. To any
+experienced Caucasian he was still only a soldier. When he noticed that
+the girl had put out her head he stooped with particular smartness,
+threw open the gate and, tightening the reins, swished his whip and
+entered the yard. “Is tea ready, Vanyúsha?” he cried gaily, not looking
+at the door of the shed. He felt with pleasure how his fine horse,
+pressing down its flanks, pulling at the bridle and with every muscle
+quivering and with each foot ready to leap over the fence, pranced on
+the hard clay of the yard. _“C’est prêt_,” answered Vanyúsha. Olénin
+felt as if Maryánka’s beautiful head was still looking out of the shed
+but he did not turn to look at her. As he jumped down from his horse he
+made an awkward movement and caught his gun against the porch, and
+turned a frightened look towards the shed, where there was no one to be
+seen and whence the sound of milking could still be heard.
+
+Soon after he had entered the hut he came out again and sat down with
+his pipe and a book on the side of the porch which was not yet exposed
+to the rays of the sun. He meant not to go anywhere before dinner that
+day, and to write some long-postponed letters; but somehow he felt
+disinclined to leave his place in the porch, and he was as reluctant to
+go back into the hut as if it had been a prison. The housewife had
+heated her oven, and the girl, having driven the cattle, had come back
+and was collecting _kisyak_ and heaping it up along the fence. Olénin
+went on reading, but did not understand a word of what was written in
+the book that lay open before him. He kept lifting his eyes from it and
+looking at the powerful young woman who was moving about. Whether she
+stepped into the moist morning shadow thrown by the house, or went out
+into the middle of the yard lit up by the joyous young light, so that
+the whole of her stately figure in its bright coloured garment gleamed
+in the sunshine and cast a black shadow—he always feared to lose any
+one of her movements. It delighted him to see how freely and gracefully
+her figure bent: into what folds her only garment, a pink smock, draped
+itself on her bosom and along her shapely legs; how she drew herself up
+and her tight-drawn smock showed the outline of her heaving bosom, how
+the soles of her narrow feet in her worn red slippers rested on the
+ground without altering their shape; how her strong arms with the
+sleeves rolled up, exerting the muscles, used the spade almost as if in
+anger, and how her deep dark eyes sometimes glanced at him. Though the
+delicate brows frowned, yet her eyes expressed pleasure and a knowledge
+of her own beauty.
+
+“I say, Olénin, have you been up long?” said Belétski as he entered the
+yard dressed in the coat of a Caucasian officer.
+
+“Ah, Belétski,” replied Olénin, holding out his hand. “How is it you
+are out so early?”
+
+“I had to. I was driven out; we are having a ball tonight. Maryánka, of
+course you’ll come to Ústenka’s?” he added, turning to the girl.
+
+Olénin felt surprised that Belétski could address this woman so easily.
+But Maryánka, as though she had not heard him, bent her head, and
+throwing the spade across her shoulder went with her firm masculine
+tread towards the outhouse.
+
+“She’s shy, the wench is shy,” Belétski called after her. “Shy of you,”
+he added as, smiling gaily, he ran up the steps of the porch.
+
+“How is it you are having a ball and have been driven out?”
+
+“It’s at Ústenka’s, at my landlady’s, that the ball is, and you two are
+invited. A ball consists of a pie and a gathering of girls.”
+
+“What should we do there?”
+
+Belétski smiled knowingly and winked, jerking his head in the direction
+of the outhouse into which Maryánka had disappeared.
+
+Olénin shrugged his shoulders and blushed.
+
+“Well, really you are a strange fellow!” said he.
+
+“Come now, don’t pretend”
+
+Olénin frowned, and Belétski noticing this smiled insinuatingly. “Oh,
+come, what do you mean?” he said, “living in the same house—and such a
+fine girl, a splendid girl, a perfect beauty—”
+
+“Wonderfully beautiful! I never saw such a woman before,” replied
+Olénin.
+
+“Well then?” said Belétski, quite unable to understand the situation.
+
+“It may be strange,” replied Olénin, “but why should I not say what is
+true? Since I have lived here women don’t seem to exist for me. And it
+is so good, really! Now what can there be in common between us and
+women like these? Eróshka—that’s a different matter! He and I have a
+passion in common—sport.”
+
+“There now! In common! And what have I in common with Amália Ivánovna?
+It’s the same thing! You may say they’re not very clean—that’s another
+matter... _À la guerre, comme à la guerre!_...”
+
+“But I have never known any Amália Ivánovas, and have never known how
+to behave with women of that sort,” replied Olénin. “One cannot respect
+them, but these I do respect.”
+
+“Well go on respecting them! Who wants to prevent you?”
+
+Olénin did not reply. He evidently wanted to complete what he had begun
+to say. It was very near his heart.
+
+“I know I am an exception...” He was visibly confused. “But my life has
+so shaped itself that I not only see no necessity to renounce my rules,
+but I could not live here, let alone live as happily as I am doing,
+were I to live as you do. Therefore I look for something quite
+different from what you look for.”
+
+Belétski raised his eyebrows incredulously. “Anyhow, come to me this
+evening; Maryánka will be there and I will make you acquainted. Do
+come, please! If you feel dull you can go away. Will you come?”
+
+“I would come, but to speak frankly I am afraid of being seriously
+carried away.”
+
+“Oh, oh, oh!” shouted Belétski. “Only come, and I’ll see that you
+aren’t. Will you? On your word?”
+
+“I would come, but really I don’t understand what we shall do; what
+part we shall play!”
+
+“Please, I beg of you. You will come?”
+
+“Yes, perhaps I’ll come,” said Olénin.
+
+“Really now! Charming women such as one sees nowhere else, and to live
+like a monk! What an idea! Why spoil your life and not make use of what
+is at hand? Have you heard that our company is ordered to
+Vozdvízhensk?”
+
+“Hardly. I was told the 8th Company would be sent there,” said Olénin.
+
+“No. I have had a letter from the adjutant there. He writes that the
+Prince himself will take part in the campaign. I am very glad I shall
+see something of him. I’m beginning to get tired of this place.”
+
+“I hear we shall start on a raid soon.”
+
+“I have not heard of it; but I have heard that Krinovítsin has received
+the Order of St. Anna for a raid. He expected a lieutenancy,” said
+Belétski laughing. “He was let in! He has set off for headquarters.”
+
+It was growing dusk and Olénin began thinking about the party. The
+invitation he had received worried him. He felt inclined to go, but
+what might take place there seemed strange, absurd, and even rather
+alarming. He knew that neither Cossack men nor older women, nor anyone
+besides the girls, were to be there. What was going to happen? How was
+he to behave? What would they talk about? What connexion was there
+between him and those wild Cossack girls? Belétski had told him of such
+curious, cynical, and yet rigid relations. It seemed strange to think
+that he would be there in the same hut with Maryánka and perhaps might
+have to talk to her. It seemed to him impossible when he remembered her
+majestic bearing. But Belétski spoke of it as if it were all perfectly
+simple. “Is it possible that Belétski will treat Maryánka in the same
+way? That is interesting,” thought he. “No, better not go. It’s all so
+horrid, so vulgar, and above all—it leads to nothing!” But again he was
+worried by the question of what would take place; and besides he felt
+as if bound by a promise. He went out without having made up his mind
+one way or the other, but he walked as far as Belétski’s, and went in
+there.
+
+The hut in which Belétski lived was like Olénin’s. It was raised nearly
+five feet from the ground on wooden piles, and had two rooms. In the
+first (which Olénin entered by the steep flight of steps) feather beds,
+rugs, blankets, and cushions were tastefully and handsomely arranged,
+Cossack fashion, along the main wall. On the side wall hung brass
+basins and weapons, while on the floor, under a bench, lay watermelons
+and pumpkins. In the second room there was a big brick oven, a table,
+and sectarian icons. It was here that Belétski was quartered, with his
+camp-bed and his pack and trunks. His weapons hung on the wall with a
+little rug behind them, and on the table were his toilet appliances and
+some portraits. A silk dressing-gown had been thrown on the bench.
+Belétski himself, clean and good-looking, lay on the bed in his
+underclothing, reading _Les Trois Mousquetaires_.
+
+He jumped up.
+
+“There, you see how I have arranged things. Fine! Well, it’s good that
+you have come. They are working furiously. Do you know what the pie is
+made of? Dough with a stuffing of pork and grapes. But that’s not the
+point. You just look at the commotion out there!”
+
+And really, on looking out of the window they saw an unusual bustle
+going on in the hut. Girls ran in and out, now for one thing and now
+for another.
+
+“Will it soon be ready?” cried Belétski.
+
+“Very soon! Why? Is Grandad hungry?” and from the hut came the sound of
+ringing laughter.
+
+Ústenka, plump, small, rosy, and pretty, with her sleeves turned up,
+ran into Belétski’s hut to fetch some plates.
+
+“Get away or I shall smash the plates!” she squeaked, escaping from
+Belétski. “You’d better come and help,” she shouted to Olénin,
+laughing. “And don’t forget to get some refreshments for the girls.”
+(“Refreshments” meaning spicebread and sweets.)
+
+“And has Maryánka come?”
+
+“Of course! She brought some dough.”
+
+“Do you know,” said Belétski, “if one were to dress Ústenka up and
+clean and polish her up a bit, she’d be better than all our beauties.
+Have you ever seen that Cossack woman who married a colonel; she was
+charming! Bórsheva? What dignity! Where do they get it...”
+
+“I have not seen Bórsheva, but I think nothing could be better than the
+costume they wear here.”
+
+“Ah, I’m first-rate at fitting into any kind of life,” said Belétski
+with a sigh of pleasure. “I’ll go and see what they are up to.”
+
+He threw his dressing-gown over his shoulders and ran out, shouting,
+“And you look after the ‘refreshments’.”
+
+Olénin sent Belétski’s orderly to buy spice-bread and honey; but it
+suddenly seemed to him so disgusting to give money (as if he were
+bribing someone) that he gave no definite reply to the orderly’s
+question: “How much spice-bread with peppermint, and how much with
+honey?”
+
+“Just as you please.”
+
+“Shall I spend all the money,” asked the old soldier impressively. “The
+peppermint is dearer. It’s sixteen kopeks.”
+
+“Yes, yes, spend it all,” answered Olénin and sat down by the window,
+surprised that his heart was thumping as if he were preparing himself
+for something serious and wicked.
+
+He heard screaming and shrieking in the girls’ hut when Belétski went
+there, and a few moments later saw how he jumped out and ran down the
+steps, accompanied by shrieks, bustle, and laughter.
+
+“Turned out,” he said.
+
+A little later Ústenka entered and solemnly invited her visitors to
+come in: announcing that all was ready.
+
+When they came into the room they saw that everything was really ready.
+Ústenka was rearranging the cushions along the wall. On the table,
+which was covered by a disproportionately small cloth, was a decanter
+of _chikhir_ and some dried fish. The room smelt of dough and grapes.
+Some half dozen girls in smart tunics, with their heads not covered as
+usual with kerchiefs, were huddled together in a corner behind the
+oven, whispering, giggling, and spluttering with laughter.
+
+“I humbly beg you to do honour to my patron saint,” said Ústenka,
+inviting her guests to the table.
+
+Olénin noticed Maryánka among the group of girls, who without exception
+were all handsome, and he felt vexed and hurt that he met her in such
+vulgar and awkward circumstances. He felt stupid and awkward, and made
+up his mind to do what Belétski did. Belétski stepped to the table
+somewhat solemnly yet with confidence and ease, drank a glass of wine
+to Ústenka’s health, and invited the others to do the same. Ústenka
+announced that girls don’t drink.
+
+“We might with a little honey,” exclaimed a voice from among the group
+of girls.
+
+The orderly, who had just returned with the honey and spice-cakes, was
+called in. He looked askance (whether with envy or with contempt) at
+the gentlemen, who in his opinion were on the spree; and carefully and
+conscientiously handed over to them a piece of honeycomb and the cakes
+wrapped up in a piece of greyish paper, and began explaining
+circumstantially all about the price and the change, but Belétski sent
+him away.
+
+Having mixed honey with wine in the glasses, and having lavishly
+scattered the three pounds of spice-cakes on the table, Belétski
+dragged the girls from their corners by force, made them sit down at
+the table, and began distributing the cakes among them. Olénin
+involuntarily noticed how Maryánka’s sunburnt but small hand closed on
+two round peppermint nuts and one brown one, and that she did not know
+what to do with them. The conversation was halting and constrained, in
+spite of Ústenka’s and Belétski’s free and easy manner and their wish
+to enliven the company. Olénin faltered, and tried to think of
+something to say, feeling that he was exciting curiosity and perhaps
+provoking ridicule and infecting the others with his shyness. He
+blushed, and it seemed to him that Maryánka in particular was feeling
+uncomfortable. “Most likely they are expecting us to give them some
+money,” thought he. “How are we to do it? And how can we manage
+quickest to give it and get away?”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXV
+
+
+“How is it you don’t know your own lodger?” said Belétski, addressing
+Maryánka.
+
+“How is one to know him if he never comes to see us?” answered
+Maryánka, with a look at Olénin.
+
+Olénin felt frightened, he did not know of what. He flushed and, hardly
+knowing what he was saying, remarked: “I’m afraid of your mother. She
+gave me such a scolding the first time I went in.”
+
+Maryánka burst out laughing. “And so you were frightened?” she said,
+and glanced at him and turned away.
+
+It was the first time Olénin had seen the whole of her beautiful face.
+Till then he had seen her with her kerchief covering her to the eyes.
+It was not for nothing that she was reckoned the beauty of the village.
+Ústenka was a pretty girl, small, plump, rosy, with merry brown eyes,
+and red lips which were perpetually smiling and chattering. Maryánka on
+the contrary was certainly not pretty but beautiful. Her features might
+have been considered too masculine and almost harsh had it not been for
+her tall stately figure, her powerful chest and shoulders, and
+especially the severe yet tender expression of her long dark eyes which
+were darkly shadowed beneath their black brows, and for the gentle
+expression of her mouth and smile. She rarely smiled, but her smile was
+always striking. She seemed to radiate virginal strength and health.
+All the girls were good-looking, but they themselves and Belétski, and
+the orderly when he brought in the spice-cakes, all involuntarily gazed
+at Maryánka, and anyone addressing the girls was sure to address her.
+She seemed a proud and happy queen among them.
+
+Belétski, trying to keep up the spirit of the party, chattered
+incessantly, made the girls hand round _chikhir_, fooled about with
+them, and kept making improper remarks in French about Maryánka’s
+beauty to Olénin, calling her “yours” (_la vôtre_), and advising him to
+behave as he did himself. Olénin felt more and more uncomfortable. He
+was devising an excuse to get out and run away when Belétski announced
+that Ústenka, whose saint’s day it was, must offer _chikhir_ to
+everybody with a kiss. She consented on condition that they should put
+money on her plate, as is the custom at weddings.
+
+“What fiend brought me to this disgusting feast?” thought Olénin,
+rising to go away.
+
+“Where are you off to?”
+
+“I’ll fetch some tobacco,” he said, meaning to escape, but Belétski
+seized his hand.
+
+“I have some money,” he said to him in French.
+
+“One can’t go away, one has to pay here,” thought Olénin bitterly,
+vexed at his own awkwardness. “Can’t I really behave like Belétski? I
+ought not to have come, but once I am here I must not spoil their fun.
+I must drink like a Cossack,” and taking the wooden bowl (holding about
+eight tumblers) he almost filled it with _chikhir_ and drank it almost
+all. The girls looked at him, surprised and almost frightened, as he
+drank. It seemed to them strange and not right. Ústenka brought them
+another glass each, and kissed them both. “There girls, now we’ll have
+some fun,” she said, clinking on the plate the four rubles the men had
+put there.
+
+Olénin no longer felt awkward, but became talkative.
+
+“Now, Maryánka, it’s your turn to offer us wine and a kiss,” said
+Belétski, seizing her hand.
+
+“Yes, I’ll give you such a kiss!” she said playfully, preparing to
+strike at him.
+
+“One can kiss Grandad without payment,” said another girl.
+
+“There’s a sensible girl,” said Belétski, kissing the struggling girl.
+“No, you must offer it,” he insisted, addressing Maryánka. “Offer a
+glass to your lodger.”
+
+And taking her by the hand he led her to the bench and sat her down
+beside Olénin.
+
+“What a beauty,” he said, turning her head to see it in profile.
+
+Maryánka did not resist but proudly smiling turned her long eyes
+towards Olénin.
+
+“A beautiful girl,” repeated Belétski.
+
+“Yes, see what a beauty I am,” Maryánka’s look seemed to endorse.
+Without considering what he was doing Olénin embraced Maryánka and was
+going to kiss her, but she suddenly extricated herself, upsetting
+Belétski and pushing the top off the table, and sprang away towards the
+oven. There was much shouting and laughter. Then Belétski whispered
+something to the girls and suddenly they all ran out into the passage
+and locked the door behind them.
+
+“Why did you kiss Belétski and won’t kiss me?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Oh, just so. I don’t want to, that’s all!” she answered, pouting and
+frowning. “He’s Grandad,” she added with a smile. She went to the door
+and began to bang at it. “Why have you locked the door, you devils?”
+
+“Well, let them be there and us here,” said Olénin, drawing closer to
+her.
+
+She frowned, and sternly pushed him away with her hand. And again she
+appeared so majestically handsome to Olénin that he came to his senses
+and felt ashamed of what he was doing. He went to the door and began
+pulling at it himself.
+
+“Belétski! Open the door! What a stupid joke!”
+
+Maryánka again gave a bright happy laugh. “Ah, you’re afraid of me?”
+she said.
+
+“Yes, you know you’re as cross as your mother.”
+
+“Spend more of your time with Eróshka; that will make the girls love
+you!” And she smiled, looking straight and close into his eyes.
+
+He did not know what to reply. “And if I were to come to see you—” he
+let fall.
+
+“That would be a different matter,” she replied, tossing her head.
+
+At that moment Belétski pushed the door open, and Maryánka sprang away
+from Olénin and in doing so her thigh struck his leg.
+
+“It’s all nonsense what I have been thinking about—love and
+self-sacrifice and Lukáshka. Happiness is the one thing. He who is
+happy is right,” flashed through Olénin’s mind, and with a strength
+unexpected to himself he seized and kissed the beautiful Maryánka on
+her temple and her cheek. Maryánka was not angry, but only burst into a
+loud laugh and ran out to the other girls.
+
+That was the end of the party. Ústenka’s mother, returned from her
+work, gave all the girls a scolding, and turned them all out.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXVI
+
+
+“Yes,” thought Olénin, as he walked home. “I need only slacken the
+reins a bit and I might fall desperately in love with this Cossack
+girl.” He went to bed with these thoughts, but expected it all to blow
+over and that he would continue to live as before.
+
+But the old life did not return. His relations to Maryánka were
+changed. The wall that had separated them was broken down. Olénin now
+greeted her every time they met.
+
+The master of the house having returned to collect the rent, on hearing
+of Olénin’s wealth and generosity invited him to his hut. The old woman
+received him kindly, and from the day of the party onwards Olénin often
+went in of an evening and sat with them till late at night. He seemed
+to be living in the village just as he used to, but within him
+everything had changed. He spent his days in the forest, and towards
+eight o’clock, when it began to grow dusk, he would go to see his
+hosts, alone or with Daddy Eróshka. They grew so used to him that they
+were surprised when he stayed away. He paid well for his wine and was a
+quiet fellow. Vanyúsha would bring him his tea and he would sit down in
+a corner near the oven. The old woman did not mind him but went on with
+her work, and over their tea or their _chikhir_ they talked about
+Cossack affairs, about the neighbours, or about Russia: Olénin relating
+and the others inquiring. Sometimes he brought a book and read to
+himself. Maryánka crouched like a wild goat with her feet drawn up
+under her, sometimes on the top of the oven, sometimes in a dark
+corner. She did not take part in the conversations, but Olénin saw her
+eyes and face and heard her moving or cracking sunflower seeds, and he
+felt that she listened with her whole being when he spoke, and was
+aware of his presence while he silently read to himself. Sometimes he
+thought her eyes were fixed on him, and meeting their radiance he
+involuntarily became silent and gazed at her. Then she would instantly
+hide her face and he would pretend to be deep in conversation with the
+old woman, while he listened all the time to her breathing and to her
+every movement and waited for her to look at him again. In the presence
+of others she was generally bright and friendly with him, but when they
+were alone together she was shy and rough. Sometimes he came in before
+Maryánka had returned home. Suddenly he would hear her firm footsteps
+and catch a glimmer of her blue cotton smock at the open door. Then she
+would step into the middle of the hut, catch sight of him, and her eyes
+would give a scarcely perceptible kindly smile, and he would feel happy
+and frightened.
+
+He neither sought for nor wished for anything from her, but every day
+her presence became more and more necessary to him.
+
+Olénin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully that
+his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future, especially a
+future outside the world in which he was now living, it did not
+interest him at all. When he received letters from home, from relatives
+and friends, he was offended by the evident distress with which they
+regarded him as a lost man, while he in his village considered those as
+lost who did not live as he was living. He felt sure he would never
+repent of having broken away from his former surroundings and of having
+settled down in this village to such a solitary and original life. When
+out on expeditions, and when quartered at one of the forts, he felt
+happy too; but it was here, from under Daddy Eróshka’s wing, from the
+forest and from his hut at the end of the village, and especially when
+he thought of Maryánka and Lukáshka, that he seemed to see the
+falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his
+indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and
+ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and more of
+a man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to what his
+imagination had painted it. He had found nothing at all like his
+dreams, nor like the descriptions of the Caucasus he had heard and
+read. “There are none of all those chestnut steeds, precipices, Amalet
+Beks, heroes or villains,” thought he. “The people live as nature
+lives: they die, are born, unite, and more are born—they fight, eat and
+drink, rejoice and die, without any restrictions but those that nature
+imposes on sun and grass, on animal and tree. They have no other laws.”
+Therefore these people, compared to himself, appeared to him beautiful,
+strong, and free, and the sight of them made him feel ashamed and sorry
+for himself. Often it seriously occurred to him to throw up everything,
+to get registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and marry a
+Cossack woman (only not Maryánka, whom he conceded to Lukáshka), and to
+live with Daddy Eróshka and go shooting and fishing with him, and go
+with the Cossacks on their expeditions. “Why ever don’t I do it? What
+am I waiting for?” he asked himself, and he egged himself on and shamed
+himself. “Am I afraid of doing what I hold to be reasonable and right?
+Is the wish to be a simple Cossack, to live close to nature, not to
+injure anyone but even to do good to others, more stupid than my former
+dreams, such as those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?”
+but a voice seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any
+decision. He was held back by a dim consciousness that he could not
+live altogether like Eróshka and Lukáshka because he had a different
+idea of happiness—he was held back by the thought that happiness lies
+in self-sacrifice. What he had done for Lukáshka continued to give him
+joy. He kept looking for occasions to sacrifice himself for others, but
+did not meet with them. Sometimes he forgot this newly discovered
+recipe for happiness and considered himself capable of identifying his
+life with Daddy Eróshka’s, but then he quickly bethought himself and
+promptly clutched at the idea of conscious self-sacrifice, and from
+that basis looked calmly and proudly at all men and at their happiness.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXVII
+
+
+Just before the vintage Lukáshka came on horseback to see Olénin. He
+looked more dashing than ever.
+
+“Well? Are you getting married?” asked Olénin, greeting him merrily.
+
+Lukáshka gave no direct reply.
+
+“There, I’ve exchanged your horse across the river. This _is_ a horse!
+A Kabardá horse from the Lov stud. I know horses.”
+
+They examined the new horse and made him caracole about the yard. The
+horse really was an exceptionally fine one, a broad and long gelding,
+with glossy coat, thick silky tail, and the soft fine mane and crest of
+a thoroughbred. He was so well fed that “you might go to sleep on his
+back” as Lukáshka expressed it. His hoofs, eyes, teeth, were
+exquisitely shaped and sharply outlined, as one only finds them in very
+pure-bred horses. Olénin could not help admiring the horse, he had not
+yet met with such a beauty in the Caucasus.
+
+“And how it goes!” said Lukáshka, patting its neck. “What a step! And
+so clever—he simply runs after his master.”
+
+“Did you have to add much to make the exchange?” asked Olénin.
+
+“I did not count it,” answered Lukáshka with a smile. “I got him from a
+_kunak_.”
+
+“A wonderfully beautiful horse! What would you take for it?” asked
+Olénin.
+
+“I have been offered a hundred and fifty rubles for it, but I’ll give
+it you for nothing,” said Lukáshka, merrily. “Only say the word and
+it’s yours. I’ll unsaddle it and you may take it. Only give me some
+sort of a horse for my duties.”
+
+“No, on no account.”
+
+“Well then, here is a dagger I’ve brought you,” said Lukáshka,
+unfastening his girdle and taking out one of the two daggers which hung
+from it. “I got it from across the river.”
+
+“Oh, thank you!”
+
+“And mother has promised to bring you some grapes herself.”
+
+“That’s quite unnecessary. We’ll balance up some day. You see I don’t
+offer you any money for the dagger!”
+
+“How could you? We are _kunaks_. It’s just the same as when Giréy Khan
+across the river took me into his home and said, ‘Choose what you
+like!’ So I took this sword. It’s our custom.”
+
+They went into the hut and had a drink.
+
+“Are you staying here awhile?” asked Olénin.
+
+“No, I have come to say good-bye. They are sending me from the cordon
+to a company beyond the Térek. I am going tonight with my comrade
+Nazárka.”
+
+“And when is the wedding to be?”
+
+“I shall be coming back for the betrothal, and then I shall return to
+the company again,” Lukáshka replied reluctantly.
+
+“What, and see nothing of your betrothed?”
+
+“Just so—what is the good of looking at her? When you go on campaign
+ask in our company for Lukáshka the Broad. But what a lot of boars
+there are in our parts! I’ve killed two. I’ll take you.”
+
+“Well, good-bye! Christ save you.”
+
+Lukáshka mounted his horse, and without calling on Maryánka, rode
+caracoling down the street, where Nazárka was already awaiting him.
+
+“I say, shan’t we call round?” asked Nazárka, winking in the direction
+of Yámka’s house.
+
+“That’s a good one!” said Lukáshka. “Here, take my horse to her and if
+I don’t come soon give him some hay. I shall reach the company by the
+morning anyway.”
+
+“Hasn’t the cadet given you anything more?”
+
+“I am thankful to have paid him back with a dagger—he was going to ask
+for the horse,” said Lukáshka, dismounting and handing over the horse
+to Nazárka.
+
+He darted into the yard past Olénin’s very window, and came up to the
+window of the cornet’s hut. It was already quite dark. Maryánka,
+wearing only her smock, was combing her hair preparing for bed.
+
+“It’s I—” whispered the Cossack.
+
+Maryánka’s look was severely indifferent, but her face suddenly
+brightened up when she heard her name. She opened the window and leant
+out, frightened and joyous.
+
+“What—what do you want?” she said.
+
+“Open!” uttered Lukáshka. “Let me in for a minute. I am so sick of
+waiting! It’s awful!”
+
+He took hold of her head through the window and kissed her.
+
+“Really, do open!”
+
+“Why do you talk nonsense? I’ve told you I won’t! Have you come for
+long?”
+
+He did not answer but went on kissing her, and she did not ask again.
+
+“There, through the window one can’t even hug you properly,” said
+Lukáshka.
+
+“Maryánka dear!” came the voice of her mother, “who is that with you?”
+
+Lukáshka took off his cap, which might have been seen, and crouched
+down by the window.
+
+“Go, be quick!” whispered Maryánka.
+
+“Lukáshka called round,” she answered; “he was asking for Daddy.”
+
+“Well then send him here!”
+
+“He’s gone; said he was in a hurry.”
+
+In fact, Lukáshka, stooping, as with big strides he passed under the
+windows, ran out through the yard and towards Yámka’s house unseen by
+anyone but Olénin. After drinking two bowls of _chikhir_ he and Nazárka
+rode away to the outpost. The night was warm, dark, and calm. They rode
+in silence, only the footfall of their horses was heard. Lukáshka
+started a song about the Cossack, Mingál, but stopped before he had
+finished the first verse, and after a pause, turning to Nazárka, said:
+
+“I say, she wouldn’t let me in!”
+
+“Oh?” rejoined Nazárka. “I knew she wouldn’t. D’you know what Yámka
+told me? The cadet has begun going to their house. Daddy Eróshka brags
+that he got a gun from the cadet for getting him Maryánka.”
+
+“He lies, the old devil!” said Lukáshka, angrily. “She’s not such a
+girl. If he does not look out I’ll wallop that old devil’s sides,” and
+he began his favourite song:
+
+“From the village of Izmáylov,
+From the master’s favourite garden,
+Once escaped a keen-eyed falcon.
+Soon after him a huntsman came a-riding,
+And he beckoned to the falcon that had strayed,
+But the bright-eyed bird thus answered:
+‘In gold cage you could not keep me,
+On your hand you could not hold me,
+So now I fly to blue seas far away.
+There a white swan I will kill,
+Of sweet swan-flesh have my fill.’”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+The betrothal was taking place in the cornet’s hut. Lukáshka had
+returned to the village, but had not been to see Olénin, and Olénin had
+not gone to the betrothal though he had been invited. He was sad as he
+had never been since he settled in this Cossack village. He had seen
+Lukáshka earlier in the evening and was worried by the question why
+Lukáshka was so cold towards him. Olénin shut himself up in his hut and
+began writing in his diary as follows:
+
+“Many things have I pondered over lately and much have I changed,”
+wrote he, “and I have come back to the copybook maxim: The one way to
+be happy is to love, to love self-denyingly, to love everybody and
+everything; to spread a web of love on all sides and to take all who
+come into it. In this way I caught Vanyúsha, Daddy Eróshka, Lukáshka,
+and Maryánka.”
+
+As Olénin was finishing this sentence Daddy Eróshka entered the room.
+
+Eróshka was in the happiest frame of mind. A few evenings before this,
+Olénin had gone to see him and had found him with a proud and happy
+face deftly skinning the carcass of a boar with a small knife in the
+yard. The dogs (Lyam his pet among them) were lying close by watching
+what he was doing and gently wagging their tails. The little boys were
+respectfully looking at him through the fence and not even teasing him
+as was their wont. His women neighbours, who were as a rule not too
+gracious towards him, greeted him and brought him, one a jug of
+_chikhir_, another some clotted cream, and a third a little flour. The
+next day Eróshka sat in his store-room all covered with blood, and
+distributed pounds of boar-flesh, taking in payment money from some and
+wine from others. His face clearly expressed, “God has sent me luck. I
+have killed a boar, so now I am wanted.” Consequently, he naturally
+began to drink, and had gone on for four days never leaving the
+village. Besides which he had had something to drink at the betrothal.
+
+He came to Olénin quite drunk: his face red, his beard tangled, but
+wearing a new _beshmet_ trimmed with gold braid; and he brought with
+him a _balaláyka_ which he had obtained beyond the river. He had long
+promised Olénin this treat, and felt in the mood for it, so that he was
+sorry to find Olénin writing.
+
+“Write on, write on, my lad,” he whispered, as if he thought that a
+spirit sat between him and the paper and must not be frightened away,
+and he softly and silently sat down on the floor. When Daddy Eróshka
+was drunk his favourite position was on the floor. Olénin looked round,
+ordered some wine to be brought, and continued to write. Eróshka found
+it dull to drink by himself and he wished to talk.
+
+“I’ve been to the betrothal at the cornet’s. But there! They’re
+shwine!—Don’t want them!—Have come to you.”
+
+“And where did you get your _balaláyka?_” asked Olénin, still writing.
+
+“I’ve been beyond the river and got it there, brother mine,” he
+answered, also very quietly. “I’m a master at it. Tartar or Cossack,
+squire or soldiers’ songs, any kind you please.”
+
+Olénin looked at him again, smiled, and went on writing.
+
+That smile emboldened the old man.
+
+“Come, leave off, my lad, leave off!” he said with sudden firmness.
+
+“Well, perhaps I will.”
+
+“Come, people have injured you but leave them alone, spit at them!
+Come, what’s the use of writing and writing, what’s the good?”
+
+And he tried to mimic Olénin by tapping the floor with his thick
+fingers, and then twisted his big face to express contempt.
+
+“What’s the good of writing quibbles. Better have a spree and show
+you’re a man!”
+
+No other conception of writing found place in his head except that of
+legal chicanery.
+
+Olénin burst out laughing and so did Eróshka. Then, jumping up from the
+floor, the latter began to show off his skill on the _balaláyka_ and to
+sing Tartar songs.
+
+“Why write, my good fellow! You’d better listen to what I’ll sing to
+you. When you’re dead you won’t hear any more songs. Make merry now!”
+
+First he sang a song of his own composing accompanied by a dance:
+
+“Ah, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim,
+Say where did they last see him?
+In a booth, at the fair,
+He was selling pins, there.”
+
+
+Then he sang a song he had learnt from his former sergeant-major:
+
+“Deep I fell in love on Monday,
+Tuesday nothing did but sigh,
+Wednesday I popped the question,
+Thursday waited her reply.
+Friday, late, it came at last,
+Then all hope for me was past!
+Saturday my life to take
+I determined like a man,
+But for my salvation’s sake
+Sunday morning changed my plan!”
+
+
+Then he sang again:
+
+“Oh dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim,
+Say where did they last see him?”
+
+
+And after that, winking, twitching his shoulders, and footing it to the
+tune, he sang:
+
+“I will kiss you and embrace,
+Ribbons red twine round you;
+And I’ll call you little Grace.
+Oh, you little Grace now do
+Tell me, do you love me true?”
+
+
+And he became so excited that with a sudden dashing movement he started
+dancing around the room accompanying himself the while.
+
+Songs like “Dee, dee, dee”—“gentlemen’s songs”—he sang for Olénin’s
+benefit, but after drinking three more tumblers of _chikhir_ he
+remembered old times and began singing real Cossack and Tartar songs.
+In the midst of one of his favourite songs his voice suddenly trembled
+and he ceased singing, and only continued strumming on the _balaláyka_.
+
+“Oh, my dear friend!” he said.
+
+The peculiar sound of his voice made Olénin look round.
+
+The old man was weeping. Tears stood in his eyes and one tear was
+running down his cheek.
+
+“You are gone, my young days, and will never come back!” he said,
+blubbering and halting. “Drink, why don’t you drink!” he suddenly
+shouted with a deafening roar, without wiping away his tears.
+
+There was one Tartar song that specially moved him. It had few words,
+but its charm lay in the sad refrain. “Ay day, dalalay!” Eróshka
+translated the words of the song: “A youth drove his sheep from the
+_aoul_ to the mountains: the Russians came and burnt the _aoul_, they
+killed all the men and took all the women into bondage. The youth
+returned from the mountains. Where the _aoul_ had stood was an empty
+space; his mother not there, nor his brothers, nor his house; one tree
+alone was left standing. The youth sat beneath the tree and wept.
+‘Alone like thee, alone am I left,’” and Eróshka began singing: “Ay
+day, dalalay!” and the old man repeated several times this wailing,
+heart-rending refrain.
+
+When he had finished the refrain Eróshka suddenly seized a gun that
+hung on the wall, rushed hurriedly out into the yard and fired off both
+barrels into the air. Then again he began, more dolefully, his “Ay day,
+dalalay—ah, ah,” and ceased.
+
+Olénin followed him into the porch and looked up into the starry sky in
+the direction where the shots had flashed. In the cornet’s house there
+were lights and the sound of voices. In the yard girls were crowding
+round the porch and the windows, and running backwards and forwards
+between the hut and the outhouse. Some Cossacks rushed out of the hut
+and could not refrain from shouting, re-echoing the refrain of Daddy
+Eróshka’s song and his shots.
+
+“Why are you not at the betrothal?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Never mind them! Never mind them!” muttered the old man, who had
+evidently been offended by something there. “Don’t like them, I don’t.
+Oh, those people! Come back into the hut! Let them make merry by
+themselves and we’ll make merry by ourselves.”
+
+Olénin went in.
+
+“And Lukáshka, is he happy? Won’t he come to see me?” he asked.
+
+“What, Lukáshka? They’ve lied to him and said I am getting his girl for
+you,” whispered the old man. “But what’s the girl? She will be ours if
+we want her. Give enough money—and she’s ours. I’ll fix it up for you.
+Really!”
+
+“No, Daddy, money can do nothing if she does not love me. You’d better
+not talk like that!”
+
+“We are not loved, you and I. We are forlorn,” said Daddy Eróshka
+suddenly, and again he began to cry.
+
+Listening to the old man’s talk Olénin had drunk more than usual. “So
+now my Lukáshka is happy,” thought he; yet he felt sad. The old man had
+drunk so much that evening that he fell down on the floor and Vanyúsha
+had to call soldiers in to help, and spat as they dragged the old man
+out. He was so angry with the old man for his bad behaviour that he did
+not even say a single French word.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXIX
+
+
+It was August. For days the sky had been cloudless, the sun scorched
+unbearably and from early morning the warm wind raised a whirl of hot
+sand from the sand-drifts and from the road, and bore it in the air
+through the reeds, the trees, and the village. The grass and the leaves
+on the trees were covered with dust, the roads and dried-up salt
+marshes were baked so hard that they rang when trodden on. The water
+had long since subsided in the Térek and rapidly vanished and dried up
+in the ditches. The slimy banks of the pond near the village were
+trodden bare by the cattle and all day long you could hear the
+splashing of water and the shouting of girls and boys bathing. The
+sand-drifts and the reeds were already drying up in the steppes, and
+the cattle, lowing, ran into the fields in the day-time. The boars
+migrated into the distant reed-beds and to the hills beyond the Térek.
+Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and
+villages. The snow-peaks were hidden in grey mist. The air was rarefied
+and smoky. It was said that _abreks_ had crossed the now shallow river
+and were prowling on this side of it. Every night the sun set in a
+glowing red blaze. It was the busiest time of the year. The villagers
+all swarmed in the melon-fields and the vineyards. The vineyards
+thickly overgrown with twining verdure lay in cool, deep shade.
+Everywhere between the broad translucent leaves, ripe, heavy, black
+clusters peeped out. Along the dusty road from the vineyards the
+creaking carts moved slowly, heaped up with black grapes. Clusters of
+them, crushed by the wheels, lay in the dirt. Boys and girls in smocks
+stained with grape-juice, with grapes in their hands and mouths, ran
+after their mothers. On the road you continually came across tattered
+labourers with baskets of grapes on their powerful shoulders; Cossack
+maidens, veiled with kerchiefs to their eyes, drove bullocks harnessed
+to carts laden high with grapes. Soldiers who happened to meet these
+carts asked for grapes, and the maidens, clambering up without stopping
+their carts, would take an armful of grapes and drop them into the
+skirts of the soldiers’ coats. In some homesteads they had already
+begun pressing the grapes; and the smell of the emptied skins filled
+the air. One saw the blood-red troughs in the pent-houses in the yards
+and Nogáy labourers with their trousers rolled up and their legs
+stained with the juice. Grunting pigs gorged themselves with the empty
+skins and rolled about in them. The flat roofs of the outhouses were
+all spread over with the dark amber clusters drying in the sun. Daws
+and magpies crowded round the roofs, picking the seeds and fluttering
+from one place to another.
+
+The fruits of the year’s labour were being merrily gathered in, and
+this year the fruit was unusually fine and plentiful.
+
+In the shady green vineyards amid a sea of vines, laughter, songs,
+merriment, and the voices of women were to be heard on all sides, and
+glimpses of their bright-coloured garments could be seen.
+
+Just at noon Maryánka was sitting in their vineyard in the shade of a
+peach-tree, getting out the family dinner from under an unharnessed
+cart. Opposite her, on a spread-out horse-cloth, sat the cornet (who
+had returned from the school) washing his hands by pouring water on
+them from a little jug. Her little brother, who had just come straight
+out of the pond, stood wiping his face with his wide sleeves, and gazed
+anxiously at his sister and his mother and breathed deeply, awaiting
+his dinner. The old mother, with her sleeves rolled up over her strong
+sunburnt arms, was arranging grapes, dried fish, and clotted cream on a
+little low, circular Tartar table. The cornet wiped his hands, took off
+his cap, crossed himself, and moved nearer to the table. The boy seized
+the jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and daughter crossed
+their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in the shade it
+was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt unpleasant: the
+strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought no coolness, but
+only monotonously bent the tops of the pear, peach, and mulberry trees
+with which the vineyard was sprinkled. The cornet, having crossed
+himself once more, took a little jug of _chikhir_ that stood behind him
+covered with a vine-leaf, and having had a drink from the mouth of the
+jug passed it to the old woman. He had nothing on over his shirt, which
+was unfastened at the neck and showed his shaggy muscular chest. His
+fine-featured cunning face looked cheerful; neither in his attitude nor
+in his words was his usual wiliness to be seen; he was cheerful and
+natural.
+
+“Shall we finish the bit beyond the shed tonight?” he asked, wiping his
+wet beard.
+
+“We’ll manage it,” replied his wife, “if only the weather does not
+hinder us. The Dëmkins have not half finished yet,” she added. “Only
+Ústenka is at work there, wearing herself out.”
+
+“What can you expect of them?” said the old man proudly.
+
+“Here, have a drink, Maryánka dear!” said the old woman, passing the
+jug to the girl. “God willing we’ll have enough to pay for the wedding
+feast,” she added.
+
+“That’s not yet awhile,” said the cornet with a slight frown.
+
+The girl hung her head.
+
+“Why shouldn’t we mention it?” said the old woman. “The affair is
+settled, and the time is drawing near too.”
+
+“Don’t make plans beforehand,” said the cornet. “Now we have the
+harvest to get in.”
+
+“Have you seen Lukáshka’s new horse?” asked the old woman. “That which
+Dmítri Andréich Olénin gave him is gone — he’s exchanged it.”
+
+“No, I have not; but I spoke with the servant today,” said the cornet,
+“and he said his master has again received a thousand rubles.”
+
+“Rolling in riches, in short,” said the old woman.
+
+The whole family felt cheerful and contented.
+
+The work was progressing successfully. The grapes were more abundant
+and finer than they had expected. After dinner Maryánka threw some
+grass to the oxen, folded her _beshmet_ for a pillow, and lay down
+under the wagon on the juicy down-trodden grass. She had on only a red
+kerchief over her head and a faded blue print smock, yet she felt
+unbearably hot. Her face was burning, and she did not know where to put
+her feet, her eyes were moist with sleepiness and weariness, her lips
+parted involuntarily, and her chest heaved heavily and deeply.
+
+The busy time of year had begun a fortnight ago and the continuous
+heavy labour had filled the girl’s life. At dawn she jumped up, washed
+her face with cold water, wrapped herself in a shawl, and ran out
+barefoot to see to the cattle. Then she hurriedly put on her shoes and
+her _beshmet_ and, taking a small bundle of bread, she harnessed the
+bullocks and drove away to the vineyards for the whole day. There she
+cut the grapes and carried the baskets with only an hour’s interval for
+rest, and in the evening she returned to the village, bright and not
+tired, dragging the bullocks by a rope or driving them with a long
+stick. After attending to the cattle, she took some sunflower seeds in
+the wide sleeve of her smock and went to the corner of the street to
+crack them and have some fun with the other girls. But as soon as it
+was dusk she returned home, and after having supper with her parents
+and her brother in the dark outhouse, she went into the hut, healthy
+and free from care, and climbed onto the oven, where half drowsing she
+listened to their lodger’s conversation. As soon as he went away she
+would throw herself down on her bed and sleep soundly and quietly till
+morning. And so it went on day after day. She had not seen Lukáshka
+since the day of their betrothal, but calmly awaited the wedding. She
+had got used to their lodger and felt his intent looks with pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXX
+
+
+Although there was no escape from the heat and the mosquitoes swarmed
+in the cool shadow of the wagons, and her little brother tossing about
+beside her kept pushing her, Maryánka having drawn her kerchief over
+her head was just falling asleep, when suddenly their neighbour Ústenka
+came running towards her and, diving under the wagon, lay down beside
+her.
+
+“Sleep, girls, sleep!” said Ústenka, making herself comfortable under
+the wagon. “Wait a bit,” she exclaimed, “this won’t do!”
+
+She jumped up, plucked some green branches, and stuck them through the
+wheels on both sides of the wagon and hung her _beshmet_ over them.
+
+“Let me in,” she shouted to the little boy as she again crept under the
+wagon. “Is this the place for a Cossack—with the girls? Go away!”
+
+When alone under the wagon with her friend, Ústenka suddenly put both
+her arms round her, and clinging close to her began kissing her cheeks
+and neck.
+
+“Darling, sweetheart,” she kept repeating, between bursts of shrill,
+clear laughter.
+
+“Why, you’ve learnt it from Grandad,” said Maryánka, struggling. “Stop
+it!”
+
+And they both broke into such peals of laughter that Maryánka’s mother
+shouted to them to be quiet.
+
+“Are you jealous?” asked Ústenka in a whisper.
+
+“What humbug! Let me sleep. What have you come for?”
+
+But Ústenka kept on, “I say! But I wanted to tell you such a thing.”
+
+Maryánka raised herself on her elbow and arranged the kerchief which
+had slipped off.
+
+“Well, what is it?”
+
+“I know something about your lodger!”
+
+“There’s nothing to know,” said Maryánka.
+
+“Oh, you rogue of a girl!” said Ústenka, nudging her with her elbow and
+laughing. “Won’t tell anything. Does he come to you?”
+
+“He does. What of that?” said Maryánka with a sudden blush.
+
+“Now I’m a simple lass. I tell everybody. Why should I pretend?” said
+Ústenka, and her bright rosy face suddenly became pensive. “Whom do I
+hurt? I love him, that’s all about it.”
+
+“Grandad, do you mean?”
+
+“Well, yes!”
+
+“And the sin?”
+
+“Ah, Maryánka! When is one to have a good time if not while one’s still
+free? When I marry a Cossack I shall bear children and shall have
+cares. There now, when you get married to Lukáshka not even a thought
+of joy will enter your head: children will come, and work!”
+
+“Well? Some who are married live happily. It makes no difference!”
+Maryánka replied quietly.
+
+“Do tell me just this once what has passed between you and Lukáshka?”
+
+“What has passed? A match was proposed. Father put it off for a year,
+but now it’s been settled and they’ll marry us in autumn.”
+
+“But what did he say to you?”
+
+Maryánka smiled.
+
+“What should he say? He said he loved me. He kept asking me to come to
+the vineyards with him.”
+
+“Just see what pitch! But you didn’t go, did you? And what a dare-devil
+he has become: the first among the braves. He makes merry out there in
+the army too! The other day our Kírka came home; he says: ‘What a horse
+Lukáshka’s got in exchange!’ But all the same I expect he frets after
+you. And what else did he say?”
+
+“Must you know everything?” said Maryánka laughing. “One night he came
+to my window tipsy, and asked me to let him in.”
+
+“And you didn’t let him?”
+
+“Let him, indeed! Once I have said a thing I keep to it firm as a
+rock,” answered Maryánka seriously.
+
+“A fine fellow! If he wanted her, no girl would refuse him.”
+
+“Well, let him go to the others,” replied Maryánka proudly.
+
+“You don’t pity him?”
+
+“I do pity him, but I’ll have no nonsense. It is wrong.”
+
+Ústenka suddenly dropped her head on her friend’s breast, seized hold
+of her, and shook with smothered laughter. “You silly fool!” she
+exclaimed, quite out of breath. “You don’t want to be happy,” and she
+began tickling Maryánka.
+
+“Oh, leave off!” said Maryánka, screaming and laughing. “You’ve crushed
+Lazútka.”
+
+“Hark at those young devils! Quite frisky! Not tired yet!” came the old
+woman’s sleepy voice from the wagon.
+
+“Don’t want happiness,” repeated Ústenka in a whisper, insistently.
+“But you are lucky, that you are! How they love you! You are so crusty,
+and yet they love you. Ah, if I were in your place I’d soon turn the
+lodger’s head! I noticed him when you were at our house. He was ready
+to eat you with his eyes. What things Grandad has given me! And yours
+they say is the richest of the Russians. His orderly says they have
+serfs of their own.”
+
+Maryánka raised herself, and after thinking a moment, smiled.
+
+“Do you know what he once told me: the lodger I mean?” she said, biting
+a bit of grass. “He said, ‘I’d like to be Lukáshka the Cossack, or your
+brother Lazútka—.’ What do you think he meant?”
+
+“Oh, just chattering what came into his head,” answered Ústenka. “What
+does mine not say! Just as if he was possessed!”
+
+Maryánka dropped her hand on her folded _beshmet_, threw her arm over
+Ústenka’s shoulder, and shut her eyes.
+
+“He wanted to come and work in the vineyard today: father invited him,”
+she said, and after a short silence she fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXI
+
+
+The sun had come out from behind the pear-tree that had shaded the
+wagon, and even through the branches that Ústenka had fixed up it
+scorched the faces of the sleeping girls. Maryánka woke up and began
+arranging the kerchief on her head. Looking about her, beyond the
+pear-tree she noticed their lodger, who with his gun on his shoulder
+stood talking to her father. She nudged Ústenka and smilingly pointed
+him out to her.
+
+“I went yesterday and didn’t find a single one,” Olénin was saying as
+he looked about uneasily, not seeing Maryánka through the branches.
+
+“Ah, you should go out there in that direction, go right as by
+compasses, there in a disused vineyard denominated as the Waste, hares
+are always to be found,” said the cornet, having at once changed his
+manner of speech.
+
+“A fine thing to go looking for hares in these busy times! You had
+better come and help us, and do some work with the girls,” the old
+woman said merrily. “Now then, girls, up with you!” she cried.
+
+Maryánka and Ústenka under the cart were whispering and could hardly
+restrain their laughter.
+
+Since it had become known that Olénin had given a horse worth fifty
+rubles to Lukáshka, his hosts had become more amiable and the cornet in
+particular saw with pleasure his daughter’s growing intimacy with
+Olénin.
+
+“But I don’t know how to do the work,” replied Olénin, trying not to
+look through the green branches under the wagon where he had now
+noticed Maryánka’s blue smock and red kerchief.
+
+“Come, I’ll give you some peaches,” said the old woman.
+
+“It’s only according to the ancient Cossack hospitality. It’s her old
+woman’s silliness,” said the cornet, explaining and apparently
+correcting his wife’s words. “In Russia, I expect, it’s not so much
+peaches as pineapple jam and preserves you have been accustomed to eat
+at your pleasure.”
+
+“So you say hares are to be found in the disused vineyard?” asked
+Olénin. “I will go there,” and throwing a hasty glance through the
+green branches he raised his cap and disappeared between the regular
+rows of green vines.
+
+The sun had already sunk behind the fence of the vineyards, and its
+broken rays glittered through the translucent leaves when Olénin
+returned to his host’s vineyard. The wind was falling and a cool
+freshness was beginning to spread around. By some instinct Olénin
+recognized from afar Maryánka’s blue smock among the rows of vine, and,
+picking grapes on his way, he approached her. His highly excited dog
+also now and then seized a low-hanging cluster of grapes in his
+slobbering mouth. Maryánka, her face flushed, her sleeves rolled up,
+and her kerchief down below her chin, was rapidly cutting the heavy
+clusters and laying them in a basket. Without letting go of the vine
+she had hold of, she stopped to smile pleasantly at him and resumed her
+work. Olénin drew near and threw his gun behind his back to have his
+hands free. “Where are your people? May God aid you! Are you alone?” he
+meant to say but did not say, and only raised his cap in silence.
+
+He was ill at ease alone with Maryánka, but as if purposely to torment
+himself he went up to her.
+
+“You’ll be shooting the women with your gun like that,” said Maryánka.
+
+“No, I shan’t shoot them.”
+
+They were both silent.
+
+Then after a pause she said: “You should help me.”
+
+He took out his knife and began silently to cut off the clusters. He
+reached from under the leaves low down a thick bunch weighing about
+three pounds, the grapes of which grew so close that they flattened
+each other for want of space. He showed it to Maryánka.
+
+“Must they all be cut? Isn’t this one too green?”
+
+“Give it here.”
+
+Their hands touched. Olénin took her hand, and she looked at him
+smiling.
+
+“Are you going to be married soon?” he asked.
+
+She did not answer, but turned away with a stern look.
+
+“Do you love Lukáshka?”
+
+“What’s that to you?”
+
+“I envy him!”
+
+“Very likely!”
+
+“No really. You are so beautiful!”
+
+And he suddenly felt terribly ashamed of having said it, so commonplace
+did the words seem to him. He flushed, lost control of himself, and
+seized both her hands.
+
+“Whatever I am, I’m not for you. Why do you make fun of me?” replied
+Maryánka, but her look showed how certainly she knew he was not making
+fun.
+
+“Making fun? If you only knew how I—”
+
+The words sounded still more commonplace, they accorded still less with
+what he felt, but yet he continued, “I don’t know what I would not do
+for you—”
+
+“Leave me alone, you pitch!”
+
+But her face, her shining eyes, her swelling bosom, her shapely legs,
+said something quite different. It seemed to him that she understood
+how petty were all things he had said, but that she was superior to
+such considerations. It seemed to him she had long known all he wished
+and was not able to tell her, but wanted to hear how he would say it.
+“And how can she help knowing,” he thought, “since I only want to tell
+her all that she herself is? But she does not wish to understand, does
+not wish to reply.”
+
+“Hullo!” suddenly came Ústenka’s high voice from behind the vine at no
+great distance, followed by her shrill laugh. “Come and help me, Dmítri
+Andréich. I am all alone,” she cried, thrusting her round, naïve little
+face through the vines.
+
+Olénin did not answer nor move from his place.
+
+Maryánka went on cutting and continually looked up at Olénin. He was
+about to say something, but stopped, shrugged his shoulders and, having
+jerked up his gun, walked out of the vineyard with rapid strides.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXII
+
+
+He stopped once or twice, listening to the ringing laughter of Maryánka
+and Ústenka who, having come together, were shouting something. Olénin
+spent the whole evening hunting in the forest and returned home at dusk
+without having killed anything. When crossing the road he noticed her
+open the door of the outhouse, and her blue smock showed through it. He
+called to Vanyúsha very loud so as to let her know that he was back,
+and then sat down in the porch in his usual place. His hosts now
+returned from the vineyard; they came out of the outhouse and into
+their hut, but did not ask him in. Maryánka went twice out of the gate.
+Once in the twilight it seemed to him that she was looking at him. He
+eagerly followed her every movement, but could not make up his mind to
+approach her. When she disappeared into the hut he left the porch and
+began pacing up and down the yard, but Maryánka did not come out again.
+Olénin spent the whole sleepless night out in the yard listening to
+every sound in his hosts’ hut. He heard them talking early in the
+evening, heard them having their supper and pulling out their cushions,
+and going to bed; he heard Maryánka laughing at something, and then
+heard everything growing gradually quiet.
+
+The cornet and his wife talked a while in whispers, and someone was
+breathing. Olénin re-entered his hut. Vanyúsha lay asleep in his
+clothes. Olénin envied him, and again went out to pace the yard, always
+expecting something, but no one came, no one moved, and he only heard
+the regular breathing of three people. He knew Maryánka’s breathing and
+listened to it and to the beating of his own heart. In the village
+everything was quiet. The waning moon rose late, and the deep-breathing
+cattle in the yard became more visible as they lay down and slowly
+rose. Olénin angrily asked himself, “What is it I want?” but could not
+tear himself away from the enchantment of the night. Suddenly he
+thought he distinctly heard the floor creak and the sound of footsteps
+in his hosts’ hut. He rushed to the door, but all was silent again
+except for the sound of regular breathing, and in the yard the
+buffalo-cow, after a deep sigh, again moved, rose on her foreknees and
+then on her feet, swished her tail, and something splashed steadily on
+the dry clay ground; then she lay down again in the dim moonlight. He
+asked himself: “What am I to do?” and definitely decided to go to bed,
+but again he heard a sound, and in his imagination there arose the
+image of Maryánka coming out into this moonlit misty night, and again
+he rushed to her window and again heard the sound of footsteps. Not
+till just before dawn did he go up to her window and push at the
+shutter and then run to the door, and this time he really heard
+Maryánka’s deep breathing and her footsteps. He took hold of the latch
+and knocked. The floor hardly creaked under the bare cautious footsteps
+which approached the door. The latch clicked, the door creaked, and he
+noticed a faint smell of marjoram and pumpkin, and Maryánka’s whole
+figure appeared in the doorway. He saw her only for an instant in the
+moonlight. She slammed the door and, muttering something, ran lightly
+back again. Olénin began rapping softly but nothing responded. He ran
+to the window and listened. Suddenly he was startled by a shrill,
+squeaky man’s voice.
+
+“Fine!” exclaimed a rather small young Cossack in a white cap, coming
+across the yard close to Olénin. “I saw ... fine!”
+
+Olénin recognized Nazárka, and was silent, not knowing what to do or
+say.
+
+“Fine! I’ll go and tell them at the office, and I’ll tell her father!
+That’s a fine cornet’s daughter! One’s not enough for her.”
+
+“What do you want of me, what are you after?” uttered Olénin.
+
+“Nothing; only I’ll tell them at the office.”
+
+Nazárka spoke very loud, and evidently did so intentionally, adding:
+“Just see what a clever cadet!”
+
+Olénin trembled and grew pale.
+
+“Come here, here!” He seized the Cossack firmly by the arm and drew him
+towards his hut.
+
+“Nothing happened, she did not let me in, and I too mean no harm. She
+is an honest girl—”
+
+“Eh, discuss—”
+
+“Yes, but all the same I’ll give you something now. Wait a bit!”
+
+Nazárka said nothing. Olénin ran into his hut and brought out ten
+rubles, which he gave to the Cossack.
+
+“Nothing happened, but still I was to blame, so I give this!—Only for
+God’s sake don’t let anyone know, for nothing happened...”
+
+“I wish you joy,” said Nazárka laughing, and went away.
+
+Nazárka had come to the village that night at Lukáshka’s bidding to
+find a place to hide a stolen horse, and now, passing by on his way
+home, had heard the sound of footsteps. When he returned next morning
+to his company he bragged to his chum, and told him how cleverly he had
+got ten rubles. Next morning Olénin met his hosts and they knew nothing
+about the events of the night. He did not speak to Maryánka, and she
+only laughed a little when she looked at him. Next night he also passed
+without sleep, vainly wandering about the yard. The day after he
+purposely spent shooting, and in the evening he went to see Belétski to
+escape from his own thoughts. He was afraid of himself, and promised
+himself not to go to his hosts’ hut any more.
+
+That night he was roused by the sergeant-major. His company was ordered
+to start at once on a raid. Olénin was glad this had happened, and
+thought he would not again return to the village.
+
+The raid lasted four days. The commander, who was a relative of
+Olénin’s, wished to see him and offered to let him remain with the
+staff, but this Olénin declined. He found that he could not live away
+from the village, and asked to be allowed to return to it. For having
+taken part in the raid he received a soldier’s cross, which he had
+formerly greatly desired. Now he was quite indifferent about it, and
+even more indifferent about his promotion, the order for which had
+still not arrived. Accompanied by Vanyúsha he rode back to the cordon
+without any accident several hours in advance of the rest of the
+company. He spent the whole evening in his porch watching Maryánka, and
+he again walked about the yard, without aim or thought, all night.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+It was late when he awoke the next day. His hosts were no longer in. He
+did not go shooting, but now took up a book, and now went out into the
+porch, and now again re-entered the hut and lay down on the bed.
+Vanyúsha thought he was ill.
+
+Towards evening Olénin got up, resolutely began writing, and wrote on
+till late at night. He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he
+felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and
+besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand
+it.
+
+This is what he wrote:
+
+“I receive letters of condolence from Russia. They are afraid that I
+shall perish, buried in these wilds. They say about me: ‘He will become
+coarse; he will be behind the times in everything; he will take to
+drink, and who knows but that he may marry a Cossack girl.’ It was not
+for nothing, they say, that Ermólov declared: ‘Anyone serving in the
+Caucasus for ten years either becomes a confirmed drunkard or marries a
+loose woman.’ How terrible! Indeed it won’t do for me to ruin myself
+when I might have the great happiness of even becoming the Countess
+B——’s husband, or a Court chamberlain, or a _Maréchal de noblesse_ of
+my district. Oh, how repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You do
+not know what happiness is and what life is! One must taste life once
+in all its natural beauty, must see and understand what I see every day
+before me—those eternally unapproachable snowy peaks, and a majestic
+woman in that primitive beauty in which the first woman must have come
+from her creator’s hands—and then it becomes clear who is ruining
+himself and who is living truly or falsely—you or I. If you only knew
+how despicable and pitiable you, in your delusions, seem to me! When I
+picture to myself—in place of my hut, my forests, and my love—those
+drawing-rooms, those women with their pomatum-greased hair eked out
+with false curls, those unnaturally grimacing lips, those hidden,
+feeble, distorted limbs, and that chatter of obligatory drawing-room
+conversation which has no right to the name—I feel unendurably
+revolted. I then see before me those obtuse faces, those rich eligible
+girls whose looks seem to say: ‘It’s all right, you may come near
+though I am rich and eligible’—and that arranging and rearranging of
+seats, that shameless match-making and that eternal tittle-tattle and
+pretence; those rules—with whom to shake hands, to whom only to nod,
+with whom to converse (and all this done deliberately with a conviction
+of its inevitability), that continual ennui in the blood passing on
+from generation to generation. Try to understand or believe just this
+one thing: you need only see and comprehend what truth and beauty are,
+and all that you now say and think and all your wishes for me and for
+yourselves will fly to atoms!
+
+“Happiness is being with nature, seeing her, and conversing with her.
+‘He may even (God forbid) marry a common Cossack girl, and be quite
+lost socially’ I can imagine them saying of me with sincere pity! Yet
+the one thing I desire is to be quite ‘lost’ in your sense of the word.
+I wish to marry a Cossack girl, and dare not because it would be a
+height of happiness of which I am unworthy.
+
+“Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryánka.
+The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh in
+me. I did not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted in
+her beauty just as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and the
+sky, nor could I help delighting in her, for she is as beautiful as
+they. I found that the sight of her beauty had become a necessity of my
+life and I began asking myself whether I did not love her. But I could
+find nothing within myself at all like love as I had imagined it to be.
+Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness and desire for marriage,
+nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I have
+experienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that she
+was near—and if I was not happy, I was at peace.
+
+“After an evening gathering at which I met her and touched her, I felt
+that between that woman and myself there existed an indissoluble though
+unacknowledged bond against which I could not struggle, yet I did
+struggle. I asked myself: ‘Is it possible to love a woman who will
+never understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible
+to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?’
+But I was already in love with her, though I did not yet trust to my
+feelings.
+
+“After that evening when I first spoke to her our relations changed.
+Before that she had been to me an extraneous but majestic object of
+external nature: but since then she has become a human being. I began
+to meet her, to talk to her, and sometimes to go to work for her father
+and to spend whole evenings with them, and in this intimate intercourse
+she remained still in my eyes just as pure, inaccessible, and majestic.
+She always responded with equal calm, pride, and cheerful equanimity.
+Sometimes she was friendly, but generally her every look, every word,
+and every movement expressed equanimity—not contemptuous, but crushing
+and bewitching. Every day with a feigned smile on my lips I tried to
+play a part, and with torments of passion and desire in my heart I
+spoke banteringly to her. She saw that I was dissembling, but looked
+straight at me cheerfully and simply. This position became unbearable.
+I wished not to deceive her but to tell her all I thought and felt. I
+was extremely agitated. We were in the vineyard when I began to tell
+her of my love, in words I am now ashamed to remember. I am ashamed
+because I ought not to have dared to speak so to her because she stood
+far above such words and above the feeling they were meant to express.
+I said no more, but from that day my position has been intolerable. I
+did not wish to demean myself by continuing our former flippant
+relations, and at the same time I felt that I had not yet reached the
+level of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myself
+despairingly, ‘What am I to do?’ In foolish dreams I imagined her now
+as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with
+disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be
+murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmítri Andréich
+Olénin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our
+officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukáshka,
+and steal horses, get drunk on _chikhir_, sing rollicking songs, kill
+people, and when drunk climb in at her window for the night without a
+thought of who and what I am, it would be different: then we might
+understand one another and I might be happy.
+
+“I tried to throw myself into that kind of life but was still more
+conscious of my own weakness and artificiality. I cannot forget myself
+and my complex, distorted past, and my future appears to me still more
+hopeless. Every day I have before me the distant snowy mountains and
+this majestic, happy woman. But not for me is the only happiness
+possible in the world; I cannot have this woman! What is most terrible
+and yet sweetest in my condition is that I feel that I understand her
+but that she will never understand me; not because she is inferior: on
+the contrary she ought not to understand me. She is happy, she is like
+nature: consistent, calm, and self-contained; and I, a weak distorted
+being, want her to understand my deformity and my torments! I have not
+slept at night, but have aimlessly passed under her windows not
+rendering account to myself of what was happening to me. On the 18th
+our company started on a raid, and I spent three days away from the
+village. I was sad and apathetic, the usual songs, cards,
+drinking-bouts, and talk of rewards in the regiment, were more
+repulsive to me than usual. Yesterday I returned home and saw her, my
+hut. Daddy Eróshka, and the snowy mountains, from my porch, and was
+seized by such a strong, new feeling of joy that I understood it all. I
+love this woman; I feel real love for the first and only time in my
+life. I know what has befallen me. I do not fear to be degraded by this
+feeling, I am not ashamed of my love, I am proud of it. It is not my
+fault that I love. It has come about against my will. I tried to escape
+from my love by self-renunciation, and tried to devise a joy in the
+Cossack Lukáshka’s and Maryánka’s love, but thereby only stirred up my
+own love and jealousy. This is not the ideal, the so-called exalted
+love which I have known before; not that sort of attachment in which
+you admire your own love and feel that the source of your emotion is
+within yourself and do everything yourself. I have felt that too. It is
+still less a desire for enjoyment: it is something different. Perhaps
+in her I love nature: the personification of all that is beautiful in
+nature; but yet I am not acting by my own will, but some elemental
+force loves through me; the whole of God’s world, all nature, presses
+this love into my soul and says, ‘Love her.’ I love her not with my
+mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel
+myself to be an integral part of all God’s joyous world. I wrote before
+about the new convictions to which my solitary life had brought me, but
+no one knows with what labour they shaped themselves within me and with
+what joy I realized them and saw a new way of life opening out before
+me; nothing was dearer to me than those convictions... Well! ... love
+has come and neither they nor any regrets for them remain! It is even
+difficult for me to believe that I could prize such a one-sided, cold,
+and abstract state of mind. Beauty came and scattered to the winds all
+that laborious inward toil, and no regret remains for what has
+vanished! Self-renunciation is all nonsense and absurdity! That is
+pride, a refuge from well-merited unhappiness, and salvation from the
+envy of others’ happiness: ‘Live for others, and do good!’—Why? when in
+my soul there is only love for myself and the desire to love her and to
+live her life with her? Not for others, not for Lukáshka, I now desire
+happiness. I do not now love those others. Formerly I should have told
+myself that this is wrong. I should have tormented myself with the
+questions: What will become of her, of me, and of Lukáshka? Now I don’t
+care. I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me
+which directs me. I suffer; but formerly I was dead and only now do I
+live. Today I will go to their house and tell her everything.”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXIV
+
+
+Late that evening, after writing this letter, Olénin went to his hosts’
+hut. The old woman was sitting on a bench behind the oven unwinding
+cocoons. Maryánka with her head uncovered sat sewing by the light of a
+candle. On seeing Olénin she jumped up, took her kerchief and stepped
+to the oven.
+
+“Maryánka dear,” said her mother, “won’t you sit here with me a bit?”
+
+“No, I’m bareheaded,” she replied, and sprang up on the oven.
+
+Olénin could only see a knee, and one of her shapely legs hanging down
+from the oven. He treated the old woman to tea. She treated her guest
+to clotted cream which she sent Maryánka to fetch. But having put a
+plateful on the table Maryánka again sprang on the oven from whence
+Olénin felt her eyes upon him. They talked about household matters.
+Granny Ulítka became animated and went into raptures of hospitality.
+She brought Olénin preserved grapes and a grape tart and some of her
+best wine, and pressed him to eat and drink with the rough yet proud
+hospitality of country folk, only found among those who produce their
+bread by the labour of their own hands.
+
+The old woman, who had at first struck Olénin so much by her rudeness,
+now often touched him by her simple tenderness towards her daughter.
+
+“Yes, we need not offend the Lord by grumbling! We have enough of
+everything, thank God. We have pressed sufficient _chikhir_ and have
+preserved and shall sell three or four barrels of grapes and have
+enough left to drink. Don’t be in a hurry to leave us. We will make
+merry together at the wedding.”
+
+“And when is the wedding to be?” asked Olénin, feeling his blood
+suddenly rush to his face while his heart beat irregularly and
+painfully.
+
+He heard a movement on the oven and the sound of seeds being cracked.
+
+“Well, you know, it ought to be next week. We are quite ready,” replied
+the old woman, as simply and quietly as though Olénin did not exist. “I
+have prepared and have procured everything for Maryánka. We will give
+her away properly. Only there’s one thing not quite right. Our Lukáshka
+has been running rather wild. He has been too much on the spree! He’s
+up to tricks! The other day a Cossack came here from his company and
+said he had been to Nogáy.”
+
+“He must mind he does not get caught,” said Olénin.
+
+“Yes, that’s what I tell him. ‘Mind, Lukáshka, don’t you get into
+mischief. Well, of course, a young fellow naturally wants to cut a
+dash. But there’s a time for everything. Well, you’ve captured or
+stolen something and killed an _abrek!_ Well, you’re a fine fellow! But
+now you should live quietly for a bit, or else there’ll be trouble.’”
+
+“Yes, I saw him a time or two in the division, he was always
+merry-making. He has sold another horse,” said Olénin, and glanced
+towards the oven. A pair of large, dark, and hostile eyes glittered as
+they gazed severely at him.
+
+He became ashamed of what he had said. “What of it? He does no one any
+harm,” suddenly remarked Maryánka. “He makes merry with his own money,”
+and lowering her legs she jumped down from the oven and went out
+banging the door.
+
+Olénin followed her with his eyes as long as she was in the hut, and
+then looked at the door and waited, understanding nothing of what
+Granny Ulítka was telling him.
+
+A few minutes later some visitors arrived: an old man, Granny Ulítka’s
+brother, with Daddy Eróshka, and following them came Maryánka and
+Ústenka.
+
+“Good evening,” squeaked Ústenka. “Still on holiday?” she added,
+turning to Olénin.
+
+“Yes, still on holiday,” he replied, and felt, he did not know why,
+ashamed and ill at ease.
+
+He wished to go away but could not. It also seemed to him impossible to
+remain silent. The old man helped him by asking for a drink, and they
+had a drink. Olénin drank with Eróshka, with the other Cossack, and
+again with Eróshka, and the more he drank the heavier was his heart.
+But the two old men grew merry. The girls climbed onto the oven, where
+they sat whispering and looking at the men, who drank till it was late.
+Olénin did not talk, but drank more than the others. The Cossacks were
+shouting. The old woman would not let them have any more _chikhir_, and
+at last turned them out. The girls laughed at Daddy Eróshka, and it was
+past ten when they all went out into the porch. The old men invited
+themselves to finish their merry-making at Olénin’s. Ústenka ran off
+home and Eróshka led the old Cossack to Vanyúsha. The old woman went
+out to tidy up the shed. Maryánka remained alone in the hut. Olénin
+felt fresh and joyous, as if he had only just woke up. He noticed
+everything, and having let the old men pass ahead he turned back to the
+hut where Maryánka was preparing for bed. He went up to her and wished
+to say something, but his voice broke. She moved away from him, sat
+down cross-legged on her bed in the corner, and looked at him silently
+with wild and frightened eyes. She was evidently afraid of him. Olénin
+felt this. He felt sorry and ashamed of himself, and at the same time
+proud and pleased that he aroused even that feeling in her.
+
+“Maryánka!” he said. “Will you never take pity on me? I can’t tell you
+how I love you.”
+
+She moved still farther away.
+
+“Just hear how the wine is speaking! ... You’ll get nothing from me!”
+
+“No, it is not the wine. Don’t marry Lukáshka. I will marry you.”
+(“What am I saying,” he thought as he uttered these words. “Shall I be
+able to say the same tomorrow?” “Yes, I shall, I am sure I shall, and I
+will repeat them now,” replied an inner voice.)
+
+“Will you marry me?”
+
+She looked at him seriously and her fear seemed to have passed.
+
+“Maryánka, I shall go out of my mind! I am not myself. I will do
+whatever you command,” and madly tender words came from his lips of
+their own accord.
+
+“Now then, what are you drivelling about?” she interrupted, suddenly
+seizing the arm he was stretching towards her. She did not push his arm
+away but pressed it firmly with her strong hard fingers. “Do gentlemen
+marry Cossack girls? Go away!”
+
+“But will you? Everything...”
+
+“And what shall we do with Lukáshka?” said she, laughing.
+
+He snatched away the arm she was holding and firmly embraced her young
+body, but she sprang away like a fawn and ran barefoot into the porch:
+Olénin came to his senses and was terrified at himself. He again felt
+himself inexpressibly vile compared to her, yet not repenting for an
+instant of what he had said he went home, and without even glancing at
+the old men who were drinking in his room he lay down and fell asleep
+more soundly than he had done for a long time.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXV
+
+
+The next day was a holiday. In the evening all the villagers, their
+holiday clothes shining in the sunset, were out in the street. That
+season more wine than usual had been produced, and the people were now
+free from their labours. In a month the Cossacks were to start on a
+campaign and in many families preparations were being made for
+weddings.
+
+Most of the people were standing in the square in front of the Cossack
+Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which cakes and
+pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and cotton prints. On
+the earth-embankment of the office-building sat or stood the old men in
+sober grey, or black coats without gold trimmings or any kind of
+ornament. They conversed among themselves quietly in measured tones,
+about the harvest, about the young folk, about village affairs, and
+about old times, looking with dignified equanimity at the younger
+generation. Passing by them, the women and girls stopped and bent their
+heads. The young Cossacks respectfully slackened their pace and raised
+their caps, holding them for a while over their heads. The old men then
+stopped speaking. Some of them watched the passers-by severely, others
+kindly, and in their turn slowly took off their caps and put them on
+again.
+
+The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their _khorovóds_, but
+having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured _beshmets_ with
+white kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat
+either on the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts sheltered
+from the oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and chattered in their
+ringing voices. Little boys and girls playing in the square sent their
+balls high up into the clear sky, and ran about squealing and shouting.
+The half-grown girls had started dancing their _khorovóds_, and were
+timidly singing in their thin shrill voices. Clerks, lads not in the
+service, or home for the holiday, bright-faced and wearing smart white
+or new red Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in arm in twos
+or threes from one group of women or girls to another, and stopped to
+joke and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper, in a
+gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door through
+which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were visible and,
+conscious of his own importance and with the pride of an Oriental
+tradesman, waited for customers. Two red-bearded, barefooted Chéchens,
+who had come from beyond the Térek to see the fête, sat on their heels
+outside the house of a friend, negligently smoking their little pipes
+and occasionally spitting, watching the villagers and exchanging
+remarks with one another in their rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a
+workaday-looking soldier in an old overcoat passed across the square
+among the bright-clad girls. Here and there the songs of tipsy Cossacks
+who were merry-making could already be heard. All the huts were closed;
+the porches had been scrubbed clean the day before. Even the old women
+were out in the street, which was everywhere sprinkled with pumpkin and
+melon seed-shells. The air was warm and still, the sky deep and clear.
+Beyond the roofs the dead-white mountain range, which seemed very near,
+was turning rosy in the glow of the evening sun. Now and then from the
+other side of the river came the distant roar of a cannon, but above
+the village, mingling with one another, floated all sorts of merry
+holiday sounds.
+
+Olénin had been pacing the yard all that morning hoping to see
+Maryánka. But she, having put on holiday clothes, went to Mass at the
+chapel and afterwards sat with the other girls on an earth-embankment
+cracking seeds; sometimes again, together with her companions, she ran
+home, and each time gave the lodger a bright and kindly look. Olénin
+felt afraid to address her playfully or in the presence of others. He
+wished to finish telling her what he had begun to say the night before,
+and to get her to give him a definite answer. He waited for another
+moment like that of yesterday evening, but the moment did not come, and
+he felt that he could not remain any longer in this uncertainty. She
+went out into the street again, and after waiting awhile he too went
+out and without knowing where he was going he followed her. He passed
+by the corner where she was sitting in her shining blue satin
+_beshmet_, and with an aching heart he heard behind him the girls
+laughing.
+
+Belétski’s hut looked out onto the square. As Olénin was passing it he
+heard Belétski’s voice calling to him, “Come in,” and in he went.
+
+After a short talk they both sat down by the window and were soon
+joined by Eróshka, who entered dressed in a new _beshmet_ and sat down
+on the floor beside them.
+
+“There, that’s the aristocratic party,” said Belétski, pointing with
+his cigarette to a brightly coloured group at the corner. “Mine is
+there too. Do you see her? in red. That’s a new _beshmet_. Why don’t
+you start the _khorovód?_” he shouted, leaning out of the window. “Wait
+a bit, and then when it grows dark let us go too. Then we will invite
+them to Ústenka’s. We must arrange a ball for them!”
+
+“And I will come to Ústenka’s,” said Olénin in a decided tone. “Will
+Maryánka be there?”
+
+“Yes, she’ll be there. Do come!” said Belétski, without the least
+surprise. “But isn’t it a pretty picture?” he added, pointing to the
+motley crowds.
+
+“Yes, very!” Olénin assented, trying to appear indifferent.
+
+“Holidays of this kind,” he added, “always make me wonder why all these
+people should suddenly be contented and jolly. Today for instance, just
+because it happens to be the fifteenth of the month, everything is
+festive. Eyes and faces and voices and movements and garments, and the
+air and the sun, are all in a holiday mood. And we no longer have any
+holidays!”
+
+“Yes,” said Belétski, who did not like such reflections.
+
+“And why are you not drinking, old fellow?” he said, turning to
+Eróshka.
+
+Eróshka winked at Olénin, pointing to Belétski. “Eh, he’s a proud one
+that _kunak_ of yours,” he said.
+
+Belétski raised his glass.
+
+“_Allah birdy!_” he said, emptying it. (_Allah birdy_, “God has
+given!”—the usual greeting of Caucasians when drinking together.)
+
+“_Sau bul_” (“Your health”), answered Eróshka smiling, and emptied his
+glass.
+
+“Speaking of holidays!” he said, turning to Olénin as he rose and
+looked out of the window, “What sort of holiday is that! You should
+have seen them make merry in the old days! The women used to come out
+in their gold-trimmed _sarafáns_. Two rows of gold coins hanging round
+their necks and gold-cloth diadems on their heads, and when they passed
+they made a noise, ‘flu, flu,’ with their dresses. Every woman looked
+like a princess. Sometimes they’d come out, a whole herd of them, and
+begin singing songs so that the air seemed to rumble, and they went on
+making merry all night. And the Cossacks would roll out a barrel into
+the yards and sit down and drink till break of day, or they would go
+hand-in-hand sweeping the village. Whoever they met they seized and
+took along with them, and went from house to house. Sometimes they used
+to make merry for three days on end. Father used to come home—I still
+remember it—quite red and swollen, without a cap, having lost
+everything: he’d come and lie down. Mother knew what to do: she would
+bring him some fresh caviar and a little _chikhir_ to sober him up, and
+would herself run about in the village looking for his cap. Then he’d
+sleep for two days! That’s the sort of fellows they were then! But now
+what are they?”
+
+“Well, and the girls in the _sarafáns_, did they make merry all by
+themselves?” asked Belétski.
+
+“Yes, they did! Sometimes Cossacks would come on foot or on horse and
+say, ‘Let’s break up the _khorovóds_,’ and they’d go, but the girls
+would take up cudgels. Carnival week, some young fellow would come
+galloping up, and they’d cudgel his horse and cudgel him too. But he’d
+break through, seize the one he loved, and carry her off. And his
+sweetheart would love him to his heart’s content! Yes, the girls in
+those days, they were regular queens!”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXVI
+
+
+Just then two men rode out of the side street into the square. One of
+them was Nazárka. The other, Lukáshka, sat slightly sideways on his
+well-fed bay Kabardá horse which stepped lightly over the hard road
+jerking its beautiful head with its fine glossy mane. The well-adjusted
+gun in its cover, the pistol at his back, and the cloak rolled up
+behind his saddle showed that Lukáshka had not come from a peaceful
+place or from one near by. The smart way in which he sat a little
+sideways on his horse, the careless motion with which he touched the
+horse under its belly with his whip, and especially his half-closed
+black eyes, glistening as he looked proudly around him, all expressed
+the conscious strength and self-confidence of youth. “Ever seen as fine
+a lad?” his eyes, looking from side to side, seemed to say. The elegant
+horse with its silver ornaments and trappings, the weapons, and the
+handsome Cossack himself attracted the attention of everyone in the
+square. Nazárka, lean and short, was much less well dressed. As he rode
+past the old men, Lukáshka paused and raised his curly white sheepskin
+cap above his closely cropped black head.
+
+“Well, have you carried off many Nogáy horses?” asked a lean old man
+with a frowning, lowering look.
+
+“Have you counted them, Grandad, that you ask?” replied Lukáshka,
+turning away.
+
+“That’s all very well, but you need not take my lad along with you,”
+the old man muttered with a still darker frown.
+
+“Just see the old devil, he knows everything,” muttered Lukáshka to
+himself, and a worried expression came over his face; but then,
+noticing a corner where a number of Cossack girls were standing, he
+turned his horse towards them.
+
+“Good evening, girls!” he shouted in his powerful, resonant voice,
+suddenly checking his horse. “You’ve grown old without me, you
+witches!” and he laughed.
+
+“Good evening, Lukáshka! Good evening, laddie!” the merry voices
+answered. “Have you brought much money? Buy some sweets for the
+girls!... Have you come for long? True enough, it’s long since we saw
+you....”
+
+“Nazárka and I have just flown across to make a night of it,” replied
+Lukáshka, raising his whip and riding straight at the girls.
+
+“Why, Maryánka has quite forgotten you,” said Ústenka, nudging Maryánka
+with her elbow and breaking into a shrill laugh.
+
+Maryánka moved away from the horse and throwing back her head calmly
+looked at the Cossack with her large sparkling eyes.
+
+“True enough, you have not been home for a long time! Why are you
+trampling us under your horse?” she remarked dryly, and turned away.
+
+Lukáshka had appeared particularly merry. His face shone with audacity
+and joy. Obviously staggered by Maryánka’s cold reply he suddenly
+knitted his brow.
+
+“Step up on my stirrup and I’ll carry you away to the mountains.
+Mammy!” he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark thoughts
+he caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards Maryánka, he said,
+“I’ll kiss, oh, how I’ll kiss you! ...”
+
+Maryánka’s eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.
+
+“Oh, bother you! you’ll crush my feet,” she said, and bending her head
+looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light blue
+stockings with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with narrow
+silver braid.
+
+Lukáshka turned towards Ústenka, and Maryánka sat down next to a woman
+with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little hands
+towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down onto her
+blue _beshmet_. Maryánka bent towards the child and glanced at Lukáshka
+from the corner of her eyes. Lukáshka just then was getting out from
+under his coat, from the pocket of his black _beshmet_, a bundle of
+sweetmeats and seeds.
+
+“There, I give them to all of you,” he said, handing the bundle to
+Ústenka and smiling at Maryánka.
+
+A confused expression again appeared on the girl’s face. It was as
+though a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her kerchief
+down below her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-skinned face of
+the baby that still held her by her coin necklace she suddenly began to
+kiss it greedily. The baby pressed his little hands against the girl’s
+high breasts, and opening his toothless mouth screamed loudly.
+
+“You’re smothering the boy!” said the little one’s mother, taking him
+away; and she unfastened her _beshmet_ to give him the breast. “You’d
+better have a chat with the young fellow.”
+
+“I’ll only go and put up my horse and then Nazárka and I will come
+back; we’ll make merry all night,” said Lukáshka, touching his horse
+with his whip and riding away from the girls.
+
+Turning into a side street, he and Nazárka rode up to two huts that
+stood side by side.
+
+“Here we are all right, old fellow! Be quick and come soon!” called
+Lukáshka to his comrade, dismounting in front of one of the huts; then
+he carefully led his horse in at the gate of the wattle fence of his
+own home.
+
+“How d’you do, Stëpka?” he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly
+dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his horse; and
+he made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but not to unsaddle
+it.
+
+The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as she
+pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to say that
+she loved it and that it was a fine horse.
+
+“How d’you do, Mother? How is it that you have not gone out yet?”
+shouted Lukáshka, holding his gun in place as he mounted the steps of
+the porch.
+
+His old mother opened the door.
+
+“Dear me! I never expected, never thought, you’d come,” said the old
+woman. “Why, Kírka said you wouldn’t be here.”
+
+“Go and bring some _chikhir_, Mother. Nazárka is coming here and we
+will celebrate the feast day.”
+
+“Directly, Lukáshka, directly!” answered the old woman. “Our women are
+making merry. I expect our dumb one has gone too.”
+
+She took her keys and hurriedly went to the outhouse. Nazárka, after
+putting up his horse and taking the gun off his shoulder, returned to
+Lukáshka’s house and went in.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXVII
+
+
+“Your health!” said Lukáshka, taking from his mother’s hands a cup
+filled to the brim with _chikhir_ and carefully raising it to his bowed
+head.
+
+“A bad business!” said Nazárka. “You heard how Daddy Burlák said, ‘Have
+you stolen many horses?’ He seems to know!”
+
+“A regular wizard!” Lukáshka replied shortly. “But what of it!” he
+added, tossing his head. “They are across the river by now. Go and find
+them!”
+
+“Still it’s a bad lookout.”
+
+“What’s a bad lookout? Go and take some _chikhir_ to him tomorrow and
+nothing will come of it. Now let’s make merry. Drink!” shouted
+Lukáshka, just in the tone in which old Eróshka uttered the word.
+“We’ll go out into the street and make merry with the girls. You go and
+get some honey; or no, I’ll send our dumb wench. We’ll make merry till
+morning.”
+
+Nazárka smiled.
+
+“Are we stopping here long?” he asked.
+
+“Till we’ve had a bit of fun. Run and get some vodka. Here’s the
+money.”
+
+Nazárka ran off obediently to get the vodka from Yámka’s.
+
+Daddy Eróshka and Ergushóv, like birds of prey, scenting where the
+merry-making was going on, tumbled into the hut one after the other,
+both tipsy.
+
+“Bring us another half-pail,” shouted Lukáshka to his mother, by way of
+reply to their greeting.
+
+“Now then, tell us where did you steal them, you devil?” shouted
+Eróshka. “Fine fellow, I’m fond of you!”
+
+“Fond indeed...” answered Lukáshka laughing, “carrying sweets from
+cadets to lasses! Eh, you old...”
+
+“That’s not true, not true! ... Oh, Mark,” and the old man burst out
+laughing. “And how that devil begged me. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘and arrange
+it.’ He offered me a gun! But no. I’d have managed it, but I feel for
+you. Now tell us where have you been?” And the old man began speaking
+in Tartar.
+
+Lukáshka answered him promptly.
+
+Ergushóv, who did not know much Tartar, only occasionally put in a word
+in Russian: “What I say is he’s driven away the horses. I know it for a
+fact,” he chimed in.
+
+“Giréy and I went together.” (His speaking of Giréy Khan as “Giréy”
+was, to the Cossack mind, evidence of his boldness.) “Just beyond the
+river he kept bragging that he knew the whole of the steppe and would
+lead the way straight, but we rode on and the night was dark, and my
+Giréy lost his way and began wandering in a circle without getting
+anywhere: couldn’t find the village, and there we were. We must have
+gone too much to the right. I believe we wandered about well-nigh till
+midnight. Then, thank goodness, we heard dogs howling.”
+
+“Fools!” said Daddy Eróshka. “There now, we too used to lose our way in
+the steppe. (Who the devil can follow it?) But I used to ride up a
+hillock and start howling like the wolves, like this!” He placed his
+hands before his mouth, and howled like a pack of wolves, all on one
+note. “The dogs would answer at once ... Well, go on—so you found
+them?”
+
+“We soon led them away! Nazárka was nearly caught by some Nogáy women,
+he was!”
+
+“Caught indeed,” Nazárka, who had just come back, said in an injured
+tone.
+
+“We rode off again, and again Giréy lost his way and almost landed us
+among the sand-drifts. We thought we were just getting to the Térek but
+we were riding away from it all the time!”
+
+“You should have steered by the stars,” said Daddy Eróshka.
+
+“That’s what I say,” interjected Ergushóv.
+
+“Yes, steer when all is black; I tried and tried all about... and at
+last I put the bridle on one of the mares and let my own horse go
+free—thinking he’ll lead us out, and what do you think! he just gave a
+snort or two with his nose to the ground, galloped ahead, and led us
+straight to our village. Thank goodness! It was getting quite light. We
+barely had time to hide them in the forest. Nagím came across the river
+and took them away.”
+
+Ergushóv shook his head. “It’s just what I said. Smart. Did you get
+much for them?”
+
+“It’s all here,” said Lukáshka, slapping his pocket.
+
+Just then his mother came into the room, and Lukáshka did not finish
+what he was saying.
+
+“Drink!” he shouted.
+
+“We too, Gírich and I, rode out late one night...” began Eróshka.
+
+“Oh bother, we’ll never hear the end of you!” said Lukáshka. “I am
+going.” And having emptied his cup and tightened the strap of his belt
+he went out.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXVIII
+
+
+It was already dark when Lukáshka went out into the street. The autumn
+night was fresh and calm. The full golden moon floated up behind the
+tall dark poplars that grew on one side of the square. From the
+chimneys of the outhouses smoke rose and spread above the village,
+mingling with the mist. Here and there lights shone through the
+windows, and the air was laden with the smell of _kisyak_, grape-pulp,
+and mist. The sounds of voices, laughter, songs, and the cracking of
+seeds mingled just as they had done in the daytime, but were now more
+distinct. Clusters of white kerchiefs and caps gleamed through the
+darkness near the houses and by the fences.
+
+In the square, before the shop door which was lit up and open, the
+black and white figures of Cossack men and maids showed through the
+darkness, and one heard from afar their loud songs and laughter and
+talk. The girls, hand in hand, went round and round in a circle
+stepping lightly in the dusty square. A skinny girl, the plainest of
+them all, set the tune:
+
+“From beyond the wood, from the forest dark,
+From the garden green and the shady park,
+There came out one day two young lads so gay.
+Young bachelors, hey! brave and smart were they!
+And they walked and walked, then stood still, each man,
+And they talked and soon to dispute began!
+Then a maid came out; as she came along,
+Said, ‘To one of you I shall soon belong!’
+’Twas the fair-faced lad got the maiden fair,
+Yes, the fair-faced lad with the golden hair!
+Her right hand so white in his own took he,
+And he led her round for his mates to see!
+And said, ‘Have you ever in all your life,
+Met a lass as fair as my sweet little wife?’”
+
+
+The old women stood round listening to the songs. The little boys and
+girls ran about chasing one another in the dark. The men stood by,
+catching at the girls as the latter moved round, and sometimes breaking
+the ring and entering it. On the dark side of the doorway stood
+Belétski and Olénin, in their Circassian coats and sheepskin caps, and
+talked together in a style of speech unlike that of the Cossacks, in
+low but distinct tones, conscious that they were attracting attention.
+
+Next to one another in the _khorovód_ circle moved plump little Ústenka
+in her red _beshmet_ and the stately Maryánka in her new smock and
+_beshmet_. Olénin and Belétski were discussing how to snatch Ústenka
+and Maryánka out of the ring. Belétski thought that Olénin wished only
+to amuse himself, but Olénin was expecting his fate to be decided. He
+wanted at any cost to see Maryánka alone that very day and to tell her
+everything, and ask her whether she could and would be his wife.
+Although that question had long been answered in the negative in his
+own mind, he hoped he would be able to tell her all he felt, and that
+she would understand him.
+
+“Why did you not tell me sooner?” said Belétski. “I would have got
+Ústenka to arrange it for you. You are such a queer fellow! ...”
+
+“What’s to be done! ... Some day, very soon, I’ll tell you all about
+it. Only now, for Heaven’s sake, arrange so that she should come to
+Ústenka’s.”
+
+“All right, that’s easily done! Well, Maryánka, will you belong to the
+‘fair-faced lad’, and not to Lukáshka?” said Belétski, speaking to
+Maryánka first for propriety’s sake, but having received no reply he
+went up to Ústenka and begged her to bring Maryánka home with her. He
+had hardly time to finish what he was saying before the leader began
+another song and the girls started pulling each other round in the ring
+by the hand.
+
+They sang:
+
+Past the garden, by the garden,
+A young man came strolling down,
+Up the street and through the town.
+And the first time as he passed
+He did wave his strong right hand.
+As the second time he passed
+Waved his hat with silken band.
+But the third time as he went
+He stood still: before her bent.
+
+How is it that thou, my dear,
+My reproaches dost not fear?
+In the park don’t come to walk
+That we there might have a talk?
+Come now, answer me, my dear,
+Dost thou hold me in contempt?
+Later on, thou knowest, dear,
+Thou’lt get sober and repent.
+Soon to woo thee I will come,
+And when we shall married be
+Thou wilt weep because of me!
+
+Though I knew what to reply,
+Yet I dared not him deny,
+No, I dared not him deny!
+So into the park went I,
+In the park my lad to meet,
+There my dear one I did greet.
+
+Maiden dear, I bow to thee!
+Take this handkerchief from me.
+In thy white hand take it, see!
+Say I am beloved by thee.
+I don’t know at all, I fear,
+What I am to give thee, dear!
+To my dear I think I will
+Of a shawl a present make—
+And five kisses for it take.
+
+
+Lukáshka and Nazárka broke into the ring and started walking about
+among the girls. Lukáshka joined in the singing, taking seconds in his
+clear voice as he walked in the middle of the ring swinging his arms.
+“Well, come in, one of you!” he said. The other girls pushed Maryánka,
+but she would not enter the ring. The sound of shrill laughter, slaps,
+kisses, and whispers mingled with the singing.
+
+As he went past Olénin, Lukáshka gave a friendly nod.
+
+“Dmítri Andréich! Have you too come to have a look?” he said.
+
+“Yes,” answered Olénin dryly.
+
+Belétski stooped and whispered something into Ústenka’s ear. She had
+not time to reply till she came round again, when she said:
+
+“All right, we’ll come.”
+
+“And Maryánka too?”
+
+Olénin stooped towards Maryánka. “You’ll come? Please do, if only for a
+minute. I must speak to you.”
+
+“If the other girls come, I will.”
+
+“Will you answer my question?” said he, bending towards her. “You are
+in good spirits today.”
+
+She had already moved past him. He went after her.
+
+“Will you answer?”
+
+“Answer what?”
+
+“The question I asked you the other day,” said Olénin, stooping to her
+ear. “Will you marry me?”
+
+Maryánka thought for a moment.
+
+“I’ll tell you,” said she, “I’ll tell you tonight.”
+
+And through the darkness her eyes gleamed brightly and kindly at the
+young man.
+
+He still followed her. He enjoyed stooping closer to her. But Lukáshka,
+without ceasing to sing, suddenly seized her firmly by the hand and
+pulled her from her place in the ring of girls into the middle. Olénin
+had only time to say, “Come to Ústenka’s,” and stepped back to his
+companion.
+
+The song came to an end. Lukáshka wiped his lips, Maryánka did the
+same, and they kissed. “No, no, kisses five!” said Lukáshka. Chatter,
+laughter, and running about, succeeded to the rhythmic movements and
+sound. Lukáshka, who seemed to have drunk a great deal, began to
+distribute sweetmeats to the girls.
+
+“I offer them to everyone!” he said with proud, comically pathetic
+self-admiration. “But anyone who goes after soldiers goes out of the
+ring!” he suddenly added, with an angry glance at Olénin.
+
+The girls grabbed his sweetmeats from him, and, laughing, struggled for
+them among themselves. Belétski and Olénin stepped aside.
+
+Lukáshka, as if ashamed of his generosity, took off his cap and wiping
+his forehead with his sleeve came up to Maryánka and Ústenka.
+
+“Answer me, my dear, dost thou hold me in contempt?” he said in the
+words of the song they had just been singing, and turning to Maryánka
+he angrily repeated the words: “Dost thou hold me in contempt? When we
+shall married be thou wilt weep because of me!” he added, embracing
+Ústenka and Maryánka both together.
+
+Ústenka tore herself away, and swinging her arm gave him such a blow on
+the back that she hurt her hand.
+
+“Well, are you going to have another turn?” he asked.
+
+“The other girls may if they like,” answered Ústenka, “but I am going
+home and Maryánka was coming to our house too.”
+
+With his arm still round her, Lukáshka led Maryánka away from the crowd
+to the darker corner of a house.
+
+“Don’t go, Maryánka,” he said, “let’s have some fun for the last time.
+Go home and I will come to you!”
+
+“What am I to do at home? Holidays are meant for merrymaking. I am
+going to Ústenka’s,” replied Maryánka.
+
+“I’ll marry you all the same, you know!”
+
+“All right,” said Maryánka, “we shall see when the time comes.”
+
+“So you are going,” said Lukáshka sternly, and, pressing her close, he
+kissed her on the cheek.
+
+“There, leave off! Don’t bother,” and Maryánka, wrenching herself from
+his arms, moved away.
+
+“Ah my girl, it will turn out badly,” said Lukáshka reproachfully and
+stood still, shaking his head. “Thou wilt weep because of me...” and
+turning away from her he shouted to the other girls:
+
+“Now then! Play away!”
+
+What he had said seemed to have frightened and vexed Maryánka. She
+stopped, “What will turn out badly?”
+
+“Why, that!”
+
+“That what?”
+
+“Why, that you keep company with a soldier-lodger and no longer care
+for me!”
+
+“I’ll care just as long as I choose. You’re not my father, nor my
+mother. What do you want? I’ll care for whom I like!”
+
+“Well, all right...” said Lukáshka, “but remember!” He moved towards
+the shop. “Girls!” he shouted, “why have you stopped? Go on dancing.
+Nazárka, fetch some more _chikhir_.”
+
+“Well, will they come?” asked Olénin, addressing Belétski.
+
+“They’ll come directly,” replied Belétski. “Come along, we must prepare
+the ball.”
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XXXIX
+
+
+It was already late in the night when Olénin came out of Belétski’s hut
+following Maryánka and Ústenka. He saw in the dark street before him
+the gleam of the girl’s white kerchief. The golden moon was descending
+towards the steppe. A silvery mist hung over the village. All was
+still; there were no lights anywhere and one heard only the receding
+footsteps of the young women. Olénin’s heart beat fast. The fresh moist
+atmosphere cooled his burning face. He glanced at the sky and turned to
+look at the hut he had just come out of: the candle was already out.
+Then he again peered through the darkness at the girls’ retreating
+shadows. The white kerchief disappeared in the mist. He was afraid to
+remain alone, he was so happy. He jumped down from the porch and ran
+after the girls.
+
+“Bother you, someone may see...” said Ústenka.
+
+“Never mind!”
+
+Olénin ran up to Maryánka and embraced her.
+
+Maryánka did not resist.
+
+“Haven’t you kissed enough yet?” said Ústenka. “Marry and then kiss,
+but now you’d better wait.”
+
+“Good-night, Maryánka. Tomorrow I will come to see your father and tell
+him. Don’t you say anything.”
+
+“Why should I!” answered Maryánka.
+
+Both the girls started running. Olénin went on by himself thinking over
+all that had happened. He had spent the whole evening alone with her in
+a corner by the oven. Ústenka had not left the hut for a single moment,
+but had romped about with the other girls and with Belétski all the
+time. Olénin had talked in whispers to Maryánka.
+
+“Will you marry me?” he had asked.
+
+“You’d deceive me and not have me,” she replied cheerfully and calmly.
+
+“But do you love me? Tell me for God’s sake!”
+
+“Why shouldn’t I love you? You don’t squint,” answered Maryánka,
+laughing and with her hard hands squeezing his....
+
+“What whi-ite, whi-i-ite, soft hands you’ve got—so like clotted cream,”
+she said.
+
+“I am in earnest. Tell me, will you marry me?”
+
+“Why not, if father gives me to you?”
+
+“Well then remember, I shall go mad if you deceive me. Tomorrow I will
+tell your mother and father. I shall come and propose.”
+
+Maryánka suddenly burst out laughing.
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“It seems so funny!”
+
+“It’s true! I will buy a vineyard and a house and will enroll myself as
+a Cossack.”
+
+“Mind you don’t go after other women then. I am severe about that.”
+
+Olénin joyfully repeated all these words to himself. The memory of them
+now gave him pain and now such joy that it took away his breath. The
+pain was because she had remained as calm as usual while talking to
+him. She did not seem at all agitated by these new conditions. It was
+as if she did not trust him and did not think of the future. It seemed
+to him that she only loved him for the present moment, and that in her
+mind there was no future with him. He was happy because her words
+sounded to him true, and she had consented to be his. “Yes,” thought he
+to himself, “we shall only understand one another when she is quite
+mine. For such love there are no words. It needs life—the whole of
+life. Tomorrow everything will be cleared up. I cannot live like this
+any longer; tomorrow I will tell everything to her father, to Belétski,
+and to the whole village.”
+
+Lukáshka, after two sleepless nights, had drunk so much at the fête
+that for the first time in his life his feet would not carry him, and
+he slept in Yámka’s house.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XL
+
+
+The next day Olénin awoke earlier than usual, and immediately
+remembered what lay before him, and he joyfully recalled her kisses,
+the pressure of her hard hands, and her words, “What white hands you
+have!” He jumped up and wished to go at once to his hosts’ hut to ask
+for their consent to his marriage with Maryánka. The sun had not yet
+risen, but it seemed that there was an unusual bustle in the street and
+side-street: people were moving about on foot and on horseback, and
+talking. He threw on his Circassian coat and hastened out into the
+porch. His hosts were not yet up. Five Cossacks were riding past and
+talking loudly together. In front rode Lukáshka on his broad-backed
+Kabardá horse.
+
+The Cossacks were all speaking and shouting so that it was impossible
+to make out exactly what they were saying.
+
+“Ride to the Upper Post,” shouted one.
+
+“Saddle and catch us up, be quick,” said another.
+
+“It’s nearer through the other gate!”
+
+“What are you talking about?” cried Lukáshka. “We must go through the
+middle gates, of course.”
+
+“So we must, it’s nearer that way,” said one of the Cossacks who was
+covered with dust and rode a perspiring horse. Lukáshka’s face was red
+and swollen after the drinking of the previous night and his cap was
+pushed to the back of his head. He was calling out with authority as
+though he were an officer.
+
+“What is the matter? Where are you going?” asked Olénin, with
+difficulty attracting the Cossacks’ attention.
+
+“We are off to catch _abreks_. They’re hiding among the sand-drifts. We
+are just off, but there are not enough of us yet.”
+
+And the Cossacks continued to shout, more and more of them joining as
+they rode down the street. It occurred to Olénin that it would not look
+well for him to stay behind; besides he thought he could soon come
+back. He dressed, loaded his gun with bullets, jumped onto his horse
+which Vanyúsha had saddled more or less well, and overtook the Cossacks
+at the village gates. The Cossacks had dismounted, and filling a wooden
+bowl with _chikhir_ from a little cask which they had brought with
+them, they passed the bowl round to one another and drank to the
+success of their expedition. Among them was a smartly dressed young
+cornet, who happened to be in the village and who took command of the
+group of nine Cossacks who had joined for the expedition. All these
+Cossacks were privates, and although the cornet assumed the airs of a
+commanding officer, they only obeyed Lukáshka. Of Olénin they took no
+notice at all, and when they had all mounted and started, and Olénin
+rode up to the cornet and began asking him what was taking place, the
+cornet, who was usually quite friendly, treated him with marked
+condescension. It was with great difficulty that Olénin managed to find
+out from him what was happening. Scouts who had been sent out to search
+for _abreks_ had come upon several hillsmen some six miles from the
+village. These _abreks_ had taken shelter in pits and had fired at the
+scouts, declaring they would not surrender. A corporal who had been
+scouting with two Cossacks had remained to watch the _abreks_, and had
+sent one Cossack back to get help.
+
+The sun was just rising. Three miles beyond the village the steppe
+spread out and nothing was visible except the dry, monotonous, sandy,
+dismal plain covered with the footmarks of cattle, and here and there
+with tufts of withered grass, with low reeds in the flats, and rare,
+little-trodden footpaths, and the camps of the nomad Nogáy tribe just
+visible far away. The absence of shade and the austere aspect of the
+place were striking. The sun always rises and sets red in the steppe.
+When it is windy whole hills of sand are carried by the wind from place
+to place.
+
+When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence, uninterrupted by
+any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking. That morning in the
+steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun had already risen. It all
+seemed specially soft and desolate. The air was hushed, the footfalls
+and the snorting of the horses were the only sounds to be heard, and
+even they quickly died away.
+
+The men rode almost silently. A Cossack always carries his weapons so
+that they neither jingle nor rattle. Jingling weapons are a terrible
+disgrace to a Cossack. Two other Cossacks from the village caught the
+party up and exchanged a few words. Lukáshka’s horse either stumbled or
+caught its foot in some grass, and became restive—which is a sign of
+bad luck among the Cossacks, and at such a time was of special
+importance. The others exchanged glances and turned away, trying not to
+notice what had happened. Lukaskha pulled at the reins, frowned
+sternly, set his teeth, and flourished his whip above his head. His
+good Kabardá horse, prancing from one foot to another not knowing with
+which to start, seemed to wish to fly upwards on wings. But Lukáshka
+hit its well-fed sides with his whip once, then again, and a third
+time, and the horse, showing its teeth and spreading out its tail,
+snorted and reared and stepped on its hind legs a few paces away from
+the others.
+
+“Ah, a good steed that!” said the cornet.
+
+That he said _steed_ instead of _horse_ indicated special praise.
+
+“A lion of a horse,” assented one of the others, an old Cossack.
+
+The Cossacks rode forward silently, now at a footpace, then at a trot,
+and these changes were the only incidents that interrupted for a moment
+the stillness and solemnity of their movements.
+
+Riding through the steppe for about six miles, they passed nothing but
+one Nogáy tent, placed on a cart and moving slowly along at a distance
+of about a mile from them. A Nogáy family was moving from one part of
+the steppe to another. Afterwards they met two tattered Nogáy women
+with high cheekbones, who with baskets on their backs were gathering
+dung left by the cattle that wandered over the steppe. The cornet, who
+did not know their language well, tried to question them, but they did
+not understand him and, obviously frightened, looked at one another.
+
+Lukáshka rode up to them both, stopped his horse, and promptly uttered
+the usual greeting. The Nogáy women were evidently relieved, and began
+speaking to him quite freely as to a brother.
+
+“_Ay-ay, kop abrek!_” they said plaintively, pointing in the direction
+in which the Cossacks were going. Olénin understood that they were
+saying, “Many _abreks_.”
+
+Never having seen an engagement of that kind, and having formed an idea
+of them only from Daddy Eróshka’s tales, Olénin wished not to be left
+behind by the Cossacks, but wanted to see it all. He admired the
+Cossacks, and was on the watch, looking and listening and making his
+own observations. Though he had brought his sword and a loaded gun with
+him, when he noticed that the Cossacks avoided him he decided to take
+no part in the action, as in his opinion his courage had already been
+sufficiently proved when he was with his detachment, and also because
+he was very happy.
+
+Suddenly a shot was heard in the distance.
+
+The cornet became excited, and began giving orders to the Cossacks as
+to how they should divide and from which side they should approach. But
+the Cossacks did not appear to pay any attention to these orders,
+listening only to what Lukáshka said and looking to him alone.
+Lukáshka’s face and figure were expressive of calm solemnity. He put
+his horse to a trot with which the others were unable to keep pace, and
+screwing up his eyes kept looking ahead.
+
+“There’s a man on horseback,” he said, reining in his horse and keeping
+in line with the others.
+
+Olénin looked intently, but could not see anything. The Cossacks soon
+distinguished two riders and quietly rode straight towards them.
+
+“Are those the _abreks?_” asked Olénin.
+
+The Cossacks did not answer his question, which appeared quite
+meaningless to them. The _abreks_ would have been fools to venture
+across the river on horseback.
+
+“That’s friend Ródka waving to us, I do believe,” said Lukáshka,
+pointing to the two mounted men who were now clearly visible. “Look,
+he’s coming to us.”
+
+A few minutes later it became plain that the two horsemen were the
+Cossack scouts. The corporal rode up to Lukáshka.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XLI
+
+
+“Are they far?” was all Lukáshka said.
+
+Just then they heard a sharp shot some thirty paces off. The corporal
+smiled slightly.
+
+“Our Gúrka is having shots at them,” he said, nodding in the direction
+of the shot.
+
+Having gone a few paces farther they saw Gúrka sitting behind a
+sand-hillock and loading his gun. To while away the time he was
+exchanging shots with the _abreks_, who were behind another sand-heap.
+A bullet came whistling from their side.
+
+The cornet was pale and grew confused. Lukáshka dismounted from his
+horse, threw the reins to one of the other Cossacks, and went up to
+Gúrka. Olénin also dismounted and, bending down, followed Lukáshka.
+They had hardly reached Gúrka when two bullets whistled above them.
+
+Lukáshka looked around laughing at Olénin and stooped a little.
+
+“Look out or they will kill you, Dmítri Andréich,” he said. “You’d
+better go away—you have no business here.” But Olénin wanted absolutely
+to see the _abreks_.
+
+From behind the mound he saw caps and muskets some two hundred paces
+off. Suddenly a little cloud of smoke appeared from thence, and again a
+bullet whistled past. The _abreks_ were hiding in a marsh at the foot
+of the hill. Olénin was much impressed by the place in which they sat.
+In reality it was very much like the rest of the steppe, but because
+the _abreks_ sat there it seemed to detach itself from all the rest and
+to have become distinguished. Indeed it appeared to Olénin that it was
+the very spot for _abreks_ to occupy. Lukáshka went back to his horse
+and Olénin followed him.
+
+“We must get a hay-cart,” said Lukáshka, “or they will be killing some
+of us. There behind that mound is a Nogáy cart with a load of hay.”
+
+The cornet listened to him and the corporal agreed. The cart of hay was
+fetched, and the Cossacks, hiding behind it, pushed it forward. Olénin
+rode up a hillock from whence he could see everything. The hay-cart
+moved on and the Cossacks crowded together behind it. The Cossacks
+advanced, but the Chéchens, of whom there were nine, sat with their
+knees in a row and did not fire.
+
+All was quiet. Suddenly from the Chéchens arose the sound of a mournful
+song, something like Daddy Eróshka’s “Ay day, dalalay.” The Chéchens
+knew that they could not escape, and to prevent themselves from being
+tempted to take to flight they had strapped themselves together, knee
+to knee, had got their guns ready, and were singing their death-song.
+
+The Cossacks with their hay-cart drew closer and closer, and Olénin
+expected the firing to begin at any moment, but the silence was only
+broken by the _abreks_’ mournful song. Suddenly the song ceased; there
+was a sharp report, a bullet struck the front of the cart, and Chéchen
+curses and yells broke the silence and shot followed on shot and one
+bullet after another struck the cart. The Cossacks did not fire and
+were now only five paces distant.
+
+Another moment passed and the Cossacks with a whoop rushed out on both
+sides from behind the cart—Lukáshka in front of them. Olénin heard only
+a few shots, then shouting and moans. He thought he saw smoke and
+blood, and abandoning his horse and quite beside himself he ran towards
+the Cossacks. Horror seemed to blind him. He could not make out
+anything, but understood that all was over. Lukáshka, pale as death,
+was holding a wounded Chéchen by the arms and shouting, “Don’t kill
+him. I’ll take him alive!” The Chéchen was the red-haired man who had
+fetched his brother’s body away after Lukáshka had killed him. Lukáshka
+was twisting his arms. Suddenly the Chéchen wrenched himself free and
+fired his pistol. Lukáshka fell, and blood began to flow from his
+stomach. He jumped up, but fell again, swearing in Russian and in
+Tartar. More and more blood appeared on his clothes and under him. Some
+Cossacks approached him and began loosening his girdle. One of them,
+Nazárka, before beginning to help, fumbled for some time, unable to put
+his sword in its sheath: it would not go the right way. The blade of
+the sword was blood-stained.
+
+The Chéchens with their red hair and clipped moustaches lay dead and
+hacked about. Only the one we know of, who had fired at Lukáshka,
+though wounded in many places was still alive. Like a wounded hawk all
+covered with blood (blood was flowing from a wound under his right
+eye), pale and gloomy, he looked about him with wide-open excited eyes
+and clenched teeth as he crouched, dagger in hand, still prepared to
+defend himself. The cornet went up to him as if intending to pass by,
+and with a quick movement shot him in the ear. The Chéchen started up,
+but it was too late, and he fell.
+
+The Cossacks, quite out of breath, dragged the bodies aside and took
+the weapons from them. Each of the red-haired Chéchens had been a man,
+and each one had his own individual expression. Lukáshka was carried to
+the cart. He continued to swear in Russian and in Tartar.
+
+“No fear, I’ll strangle him with my hands. _Anna seni!_” he cried,
+struggling. But he soon became quiet from weakness.
+
+Olénin rode home. In the evening he was told that Lukáshka was at
+death’s door, but that a Tartar from beyond the river had undertaken to
+cure him with herbs.
+
+The bodies were brought to the village office. The women and the little
+boys hastened to look at them.
+
+It was growing dark when Olénin returned, and he could not collect
+himself after what he had seen. But towards night memories of the
+evening before came rushing to his mind. He looked out of the window,
+Maryánka was passing to and fro from the house to the cowshed, putting
+things straight. Her mother had gone to the vineyard and her father to
+the office. Olénin could not wait till she had quite finished her work,
+but went out to meet her. She was in the hut standing with her back
+towards him. Olénin thought she felt shy.
+
+“Maryánka,” said he, “I say, Maryánka! May I come in?”
+
+She suddenly turned. There was a scarcely perceptible trace of tears in
+her eyes and her face was beautiful in its sadness. She looked at him
+in silent dignity.
+
+Olénin again said:
+
+“Maryánka, I have come—”
+
+“Leave me alone!” she said. Her face did not change but the tears ran
+down her cheeks.
+
+“What are you crying for? What is it?”
+
+“What?” she repeated in a rough voice. “Cossacks have been killed,
+that’s what for.”
+
+“Lukáshka?” said Olénin.
+
+“Go away! What do you want?”
+
+“Maryánka!” said Olénin, approaching her.
+
+“You will never get anything from me!”
+
+“Maryánka, don’t speak like that,” Olénin entreated.
+
+“Get away. I’m sick of you!” shouted the girl, stamping her foot, and
+moved threateningly towards him. And her face expressed such
+abhorrence, such contempt, and such anger that Olénin suddenly
+understood that there was no hope for him, and that his first
+impression of this woman’s inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.
+
+Olénin said nothing more, but ran out of the hut.
+
+
+
+
+ Chapter XLII
+
+
+For two hours after returning home he lay on his bed motionless. Then
+he went to his company commander and obtained leave to visit the staff.
+Without taking leave of anyone, and sending Vanyúsha to settle his
+accounts with his landlord, he prepared to leave for the fort where his
+regiment was stationed. Daddy Eróshka was the only one to see him off.
+They had a drink, and then a second, and then yet another. Again as on
+the night of his departure from Moscow, a three-horsed conveyance stood
+waiting at the door. But Olénin did not confer with himself as he had
+done then, and did not say to himself that all he had thought and done
+here was “not it”. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved
+Maryánka more than ever, and knew that he could never be loved by her.
+
+“Well, good-bye, my lad!” said Daddy Eróshka. “When you go on an
+expedition, be wise and listen to my words—the words of an old man.
+When you are out on a raid or the like (you know I’m an old wolf and
+have seen things), and when they begin firing, don’t get into a crowd
+where there are many men. When you fellows get frightened you always
+try to get close together with a lot of others. You think it is merrier
+to be with others, but that’s where it is worst of all! They always aim
+at a crowd. Now I used to keep farther away from the others and went
+alone, and I’ve never been wounded. Yet what things haven’t I seen in
+my day?”
+
+“But you’ve got a bullet in your back,” remarked Vanyúsha, who was
+clearing up the room.
+
+“That was the Cossacks fooling about,” answered Eróshka.
+
+“Cossacks? How was that?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Oh, just so. We were drinking. Vánka Sítkin, one of the Cossacks, got
+merry, and puff! he gave me one from his pistol just here.”
+
+“Yes, and did it hurt?” asked Olénin. “Vanyúsha, will you soon be
+ready?” he added.
+
+“Ah, where’s the hurry! Let me tell you. When he banged into me, the
+bullet did not break the bone but remained here. And I say: ‘You’ve
+killed me, brother. Eh! What have you done to me? I won’t let you off!
+You’ll have to stand me a pailful!’”
+
+“Well, but did it hurt?” Olénin asked again, scarcely listening to the
+tale.
+
+“Let me finish. He stood a pailful, and we drank it, but the blood went
+on flowing. The whole room was drenched and covered with blood. Grandad
+Burlák, he says, ‘The lad will give up the ghost. Stand a bottle of the
+sweet sort, or we shall have you taken up!’ They bought more drink, and
+boozed and boozed—”
+
+“Yes, but did it hurt you much?” Olénin asked once more.
+
+“Hurt, indeed! Don’t interrupt: I don’t like it. Let me finish. We
+boozed and boozed till morning, and I fell asleep on the top of the
+oven, drunk. When I woke in the morning I could not unbend myself
+anyhow—”
+
+“Was it very painful?” repeated Olénin, thinking that now he would at
+last get an answer to his question.
+
+“Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but I
+could not bend and could not walk.”
+
+“And then it healed up?” said Olénin, not even laughing, so heavy was
+his heart.
+
+“It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!” And
+lifting his shirt he showed his powerful back, where just near the bone
+a bullet could be felt and rolled about.
+
+“Feel how it rolls,” he said, evidently amusing himself with the bullet
+as with a toy. “There now, it has rolled to the back.”
+
+“And Lukáshka, will he recover?” asked Olénin.
+
+“Heaven only knows! There’s no doctor. They’ve gone for one.”
+
+“Where will they get one? From Gróznoe?” asked Olénin.
+
+“No, my lad. Were I the Tsar I’d have hung all your Russian doctors
+long ago. Cutting is all they know! There’s our Cossack Bakláshka, no
+longer a real man now that they’ve cut off his leg! That shows they’re
+fools. What’s Bakláshka good for now? No, my lad, in the mountains
+there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vórchik, he was on an
+expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well, your doctors
+gave him up, but one of theirs came from the mountains and cured him!
+They understand herbs, my lad!”
+
+“Come, stop talking rubbish,” said Olénin. “I’d better send a doctor
+from head-quarters.”
+
+“Rubbish!” the old man said mockingly. “Fool, fool! Rubbish. You’ll
+send a doctor!—If yours cured people, Cossacks and Chéchens would go to
+you for treatment, but as it is your officers and colonels send to the
+mountains for doctors. Yours are all humbugs, all humbugs.”
+
+Olénin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was humbug in
+the world in which he had lived and to which he was now returning.
+
+“How is Lukáshka? You’ve been to see him?” he asked.
+
+“He just lies as if he were dead. He does not eat nor drink. Vodka is
+the only thing his soul accepts. But as long as he drinks vodka it’s
+well. I’d be sorry to lose the lad. A fine lad—a brave, like me. I too
+lay dying like that once. The old women were already wailing. My head
+was burning. They had already laid me out under the holy icons. So I
+lay there, and above me on the oven little drummers, no bigger than
+this, beat the tattoo. I shout at them and they drum all the harder.”
+(The old man laughed.) “The women brought our church elder. They were
+getting ready to bury me. They said, ‘He defiled himself with worldly
+unbelievers; he made merry with women; he ruined people; he did not
+fast, and he played the _balaláyka_. Confess,’ they said. So I began to
+confess. ‘I’ve sinned!’ I said. Whatever the priest said, I always
+answered ‘I’ve sinned.’ He began to ask me about the _balaláyka_.
+‘Where is the accursed thing,’ he says. ‘Show it me and smash it.’ But
+I say, ‘I’ve not got it.’ I’d hidden it myself in a net in the
+outhouse. I knew they could not find it. So they left me. Yet after all
+I recovered. When I went for my _balaláyka_—What was I saying?” he
+continued. “Listen to me, and keep farther away from the other men or
+you’ll get killed foolishly. I feel for you, truly: you are a drinker—I
+love you! And fellows like you like riding up the mounds. There was one
+who lived here who had come from Russia, he always would ride up the
+mounds (he called the mounds so funnily, ‘hillocks’). Whenever he saw a
+mound, off he’d gallop. Once he galloped off that way and rode to the
+top quite pleased, but a Chéchen fired at him and killed him! Ah, how
+well they shoot from their gun-rests, those Chéchens! Some of them
+shoot even better than I do. I don’t like it when a fellow gets killed
+so foolishly! Sometimes I used to look at your soldiers and wonder at
+them. There’s foolishness for you! They go, the poor fellows, all in a
+clump, and even sew red collars to their coats! How can they help being
+hit! One gets killed, they drag him away and another takes his place!
+What foolishness!” the old man repeated, shaking his head. “Why not
+scatter, and go one by one? So you just go like that and they won’t
+notice you. That’s what you must do.”
+
+“Well, thank you! Good-bye, Daddy. God willing we may meet again,” said
+Olénin, getting up and moving towards the passage.
+
+The old man, who was sitting on the floor, did not rise.
+
+“Is that the way one says ‘Good-bye’? Fool, fool!” he began. “Oh dear,
+what has come to people? We’ve kept company, kept company for well-nigh
+a year, and now ‘Good-bye!’ and off he goes! Why, I love you, and how I
+pity you! You are so forlorn, always alone, always alone. You’re
+somehow so unsociable. At times I can’t sleep for thinking about you. I
+am so sorry for you. As the song has it:
+
+It is very hard, dear brother,
+In a foreign land to live.
+
+
+So it is with you.”
+
+“Well, good-bye,” said Olénin again.
+
+The old man rose and held out his hand. Olénin pressed it and turned to
+go.
+
+“Give us your mug, your mug!”
+
+And the old man took Olénin by the head with both hands and kissed him
+three times with wet moustaches and lips, and began to cry.
+
+“I love you, good-bye!”
+
+Olénin got into the cart.
+
+“Well, is that how you’re going? You might give me something for a
+remembrance. Give me a gun! What do you want two for?” said the old
+man, sobbing quite sincerely.
+
+Olénin got out a musket and gave it to him.
+
+“What a lot you’ve given the old fellow,” murmured Vanyúsha, “he’ll
+never have enough! A regular old beggar. They are all such irregular
+people,” he remarked, as he wrapped himself in his overcoat and took
+his seat on the box.
+
+“Hold your tongue, swine!” exclaimed the old man, laughing. “What a
+stingy fellow!”
+
+Maryánka came out of the cowshed, glanced indifferently at the cart,
+bowed and went towards the hut.
+
+“_La fille!_” said Vanyúsha, with a wink, and burst out into a silly
+laugh.
+
+“Drive on!” shouted Olénin, angrily.
+
+“Good-bye, my lad! Good-bye. I won’t forget you!” shouted Eróshka.
+
+Olénin turned round. Daddy Eróshka was talking to Maryánka, evidently
+about his own affairs, and neither the old man nor the girl looked at
+Olénin.
+
+
+
+
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