The possessed or, The devils
regular band of robbers here on the high road. Oh, mercy, I... I'll
tell him the whole truth then, that I was to blame... and that I've
been miserable about him _for ten years_. More miserable than he was as
a soldier, and... I'll give him my purse. H'm! _J'ai en tout quarante
roubles; il prendra les roubles et il me tuera tout de même._"
In his panic he for some reason shut up the umbrella and laid it down
beside him. A cart came into sight on the high road in the distance
coming from the town.
"_Grace à Dieu_, that's a cart and it's coming at a walking pace; that
can't be dangerous. The wretched little horses here... I always said
that breed... It was Pyotr Ilyitch though, he talked at the club
about horse-breeding and I trumped him, _et puis_... but what's that
behind?... I believe there's a woman in the cart. A peasant and a woman,
_cela commence à être rassurant._ The woman behind and the man in front--
_c'est très rassurant._ There's a cow behind the cart tied by the horns,
_c'est rassurant au plus haut degré._"
The cart reached him; it was a fairly solid peasant cart. The woman was
sitting on a tightly stuffed sack and the man on the front of the cart
with his legs hanging over towards Stepan Trofimovitch. A red cow was,
in fact, shambling behind, tied by the horns to the cart. The man
and the woman gazed open-eyed at Stepan Trofimovitch, and Stepan
Trofimovitch gazed back at them with equal wonder, but after he had let
them pass twenty paces, he got up hurriedly all of a sudden and walked
after them. In the proximity of the cart it was natural that he
should feel safer, but when he had overtaken it he became oblivious
of everything again and sank back into his disconnected thoughts and
fancies. He stepped along with no suspicion, of course, that for the
two peasants he was at that instant the most mysterious and interesting
object that one could meet on the high road.
"What sort may you be, pray, if it's not uncivil to ask?" the woman
could not resist asking at last when Stepan Trofimovitch glanced
absent-mindedly at her. She was a woman of about seven and twenty,
sturdily built, with black eyebrows, rosy cheeks, and a friendly smile
on her red lips, between which gleamed white even teeth.
"You... you are addressing me?" muttered Stepan Trofimovitch with
mournful wonder.
"A merchant, for sure," the peasant observed confidently. He was a
well-grown man of forty with a broad and intelligent face, framed in a
reddish beard.
"No, I am not exactly a merchant, I... I... _moi c'est autre chose._"
Stepan Trofimovitch parried the question somehow, and to be on the safe
side he dropped back a little from the cart, so that he was walking on a
level with the cow.
"Must be a gentleman," the man decided, hearing words not Russian, and
he gave a tug at the horse.
"That's what set us wondering. You are out for a walk seemingly?" the
woman asked inquisitively again.
"You... you ask me?"
"Foreigners come from other parts sometimes by the train; your boots
don't seem to be from hereabouts...."
"They are army boots," the man put in complacently and significantly.
"No, I am not precisely in the army, I..."
"What an inquisitive woman!" Stepan Trofimovitch mused with vexation.
"And how they stare at me... _mais enfin_. In fact, it's strange that I
feel, as it were, conscience-stricken before them, and yet I've done
them no harm."
The woman was whispering to the man.
"If it's no offence, we'd give you a lift if so be it's agreeable."
Stepan Trofimovitch suddenly roused himself.
"Yes, yes, my friends, I accept it with pleasure, for I'm very tired;
but how am I to get in?"
"How wonderful it is," he thought to himself, "that I've been walking
so long beside that cow and it never entered my head to ask them for a
lift. This 'real life' has something very original about it."
But the peasant had not, however, pulled up the horse.
"But where are you bound for?" he asked with some mistrustfulness.
Stepan Trofimovitch did not understand him at once.
"To Hatovo, I suppose?"
"Hatov? No, not to Hatov's exactly... And I don't know him though I've
heard of him."
"The village of Hatovo, the village, seven miles from here."
"A village? _C'est charmant,_ to be sure I've heard of it...."
Stepan Trofimovitch was still walking, they had not yet taken him into
the cart. A guess that was a stroke of genius flashed through his mind.
"You think perhaps that I am... I've got a passport and I am a
professor, that is, if you like, a teacher... but a head teacher. I am a
head teacher. _Oui, c'est comme ça qu'on peut traduire._ I should be very
glad of a lift and I'll buy you... I'll buy you a quart of vodka for
it."
"It'll be half a rouble, sir; it's a bad road."
"Or it wouldn't be fair to ourselves," put in the woman.
"Half a rouble? Very good then, half a rouble. _C'est encore mieux; j'ai
en tout quarante roubles mais_..."
The peasant stopped the horse and by their united efforts Stepan
Trofimovitch was dragged into the cart, and seated on the sack by the
woman. He was still pursued by the same whirl of ideas. Sometimes he was
aware himself that he was terribly absent-minded, and that he was not
thinking of what he ought to be thinking of and wondered at it. This
consciousness of abnormal weakness of mind became at moments very
painful and even humiliating to him.
"How... how is this you've got a cow behind?" he suddenly asked the
woman.
"What do you mean, sir, as though you'd never seen one," laughed the
woman.
"We bought it in the town," the peasant put in. "Our cattle died last
spring... the plague. All the beasts have died round us, all of them.
There aren't half of them left, it's heartbreaking."
And again he lashed the horse, which had got stuck in a rut.
"Yes, that does happen among you in Russia... in general we Russians...
Well, yes, it happens," Stepan Trofimovitch broke off.
"If you are a teacher, what are you going to Hatovo for? Maybe you are
going on farther."
"I... I'm not going farther precisely.... _C'est-à-dire,_ I'm going to a
merchant's."
"To Spasov, I suppose?"
"Yes, yes, to Spasov. But that's no matter."
"If you are going to Spasov and on foot, it will take you a week in your
boots," laughed the woman.
"I dare say, I dare say, no matter, _mes amis_, no matter." Stepan
Trofimovitch cut her short impatiently.
"Awfully inquisitive people; but the woman speaks better than he does,
and I notice that since February 19,* their language has altered a
little, and... and what business is it of mine whether I'm going to
Spasov or not? Besides, I'll pay them, so why do they pester me."
*February 19, 1861, the day of the Emancipation of the Serfs, is
meant.--Translator's note.
"If you are going to Spasov, you must take the steamer," the peasant
persisted.
"That's true indeed," the woman put in with animation, "for if you
drive along the bank it's twenty-five miles out of the way."
"Thirty-five."
"You'll just catch the steamer at Ustyevo at two o'clock tomorrow," the
woman decided finally. But Stepan Trofimovitch was obstinately silent.
His questioners, too, sank into silence. The peasant tugged at his horse
at rare intervals; the peasant woman exchanged brief remarks with him.
Stepan Trofimovitch fell into a doze. He was tremendously surprised when
the woman, laughing, gave him a poke and he found himself in a rather
large village at the door of a cottage with three windows.
"You've had a nap, sir?"
"What is it? Where am I? Ah, yes! Well... never mind," sighed Stepan
Trofimovitch, and he got out of the cart.
He looked about him mournfully; the village scene seemed strange to him
and somehow terribly remote.
"And the half-rouble, I was forgetting it!" he said to the peasant,
turning to him with an excessively hurried gesture; he was evidently by
now afraid to part from them.
"We'll settle indoors, walk in," the peasant invited him.
"It's comfortable inside," the woman said reassuringly.
Stepan Trofimovitch mounted the shaky steps. "How can it be?" he
murmured in profound and apprehensive perplexity. He went into the
cottage, however. _"Elle l'a voulu"_ he felt a stab at his heart and again
he became oblivious of everything, even of the fact that he had gone
into the cottage.
It was a light and fairly clean peasant's cottage, with three windows
and two rooms; not exactly an inn, but a cottage at which people
who knew the place were accustomed to stop on their way through the
village. Stepan Trofimovitch, quite unembarrassed, went to the foremost
corner; forgot to greet anyone, sat down and sank into thought.
Meanwhile a sensation of warmth, extremely agreeable after three hours
of travelling in the damp, was suddenly diffused throughout his person.
Even the slight shivers that spasmodically ran down his spine--such as
always occur in particularly nervous people when they are feverish and
have suddenly come into a warm room from the cold--became all at once
strangely agreeable. He raised his head and the delicious fragrance of
the hot pancakes with which the woman of the house was busy at the stove
tickled his nostrils. With a childlike smile he leaned towards the woman
and suddenly said:
"What's that? Are they pancakes? _Mais... c'est charmant._"
"Would you like some, sir?" the woman politely offered him at once.
"I should like some, I certainly should, and... may I ask you for some
tea too," said Stepan Trofimovitch, reviving.
"Get the samovar? With the greatest pleasure."
On a large plate with a big blue pattern on it were served the
pancakes--regular peasant pancakes, thin, made half of wheat, covered
with fresh hot butter, most delicious pancakes. Stepan Trofimovitch
tasted them with relish.
"How rich they are and how good! And if one could only have _un doigt
d'eau de vie_."
"It's a drop of vodka you would like, sir, isn't it?"
"Just so, just so, a little, _un tout petit rien_."
"Five farthings' worth, I suppose?"
"Five, yes, five, five, five, _un tout petit rien_," Stepan Trofimovitch
assented with a blissful smile.
Ask a peasant to do anything for you, and if he can, and will, he
will serve you with care and friendliness; but ask him to fetch you
vodka--and his habitual serenity and friendliness will pass at once into
a sort of joyful haste and alacrity; he will be as keen in your
interest as though you were one of his family. The peasant who fetches
vodka--even though you are going to drink it and not he and he knows
that beforehand--seems, as it were, to be enjoying part of your future
gratification. Within three minutes (the tavern was only two paces
away), a bottle and a large greenish wineglass were set on the table
before Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Is that all for me!" He was extremely surprised. "I've always had vodka
but I never knew you could get so much for five farthings."
He filled the wineglass, got up and with a certain solemnity crossed the
room to the other corner where his fellow-traveller, the black-browed
peasant woman, who had shared the sack with him and bothered him with
her questions, had ensconced herself. The woman was taken aback, and
began to decline, but after having said all that was prescribed by
politeness, she stood up and drank it decorously in three sips, as women
do, and, with an expression of intense suffering on her face, gave back
the wineglass and bowed to Stepan Trofimovitch. He returned the bow with
dignity and returned to the table with an expression of positive pride
on his countenance.
All this was done on the inspiration of the moment: a second before he
had no idea that he would go and treat the peasant woman.
"I know how to get on with peasants to perfection, to perfection, and