Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

However, if Polikéy imagined that he looked like a wealthy peasant proprietor, he deluded himself. It is true that everyone knows that tradesmen worth ten thousand roubles drive in carts with leather harness; only this was not quite the thing. A bearded man in a blue or black coat drives past, sitting alone inside a cart, driving a well-fed horse, and you just glance to see if the horse is sleek and he himself well fed, and at the way he sits, at the horse’s harness, and the tyres of the cartwheels and at his girdle, and you know at once whether the man has a turnover of a hundred or a thousand roubles. Every experienced person looking closer at Polikéy, at his hands, his face, his newly-grown beard, his girdle, at the hay carelessly thrown into the cart, at the bony Drum, at the worn tyres, would know at once that it was only a serf driving past, and not a merchant, or a cattle-dealer, or even a peasant proprietor, and that he was not worth a thousand, or a hundred, or even ten, roubles.

But Polikéy did not think so: he deceived himself, and deceived himself agreeably. Three half-thousand roubles he is going to carry home in the bosom of his coat. If he likes, he may turn Drum’s head towards Odessa, instead of towards home, and drive off where Fate will take him. But he will not do such a thing; he will bring the lady her money all in order, and will talk about having had larger sums than that on him.

When they came to a public-house Drum began to pull against the left rein, turning towards it and stopping; but Polikéy, though he had the money given him to do the shopping with, cracked the whip above Drum’s head and drove on. The same thing happened at the next public-house, and about noon he got out of the cart, and, opening the gate of the tradesman’s house where all his proprietress’s people put up, led the horse and cart into the yard. There he gave the horse some hay, dined with the tradesman’s men, not forgetting to say what important business he had come on, and then went out, with the fruitseller’s bill in the crown of his cap.

The fruitseller (who knew and evidently mistrusted Polikéy), having read the letter, questioned him as to whether he had really been sent for the money. Polikéy tried to seem offended, but could not manage it, and only smiled his peculiar smile. The fruitseller read the letter over once more, and handed him the money.

Having received the money, Polikéy put it into his bosom and went back to the lodgings. Neither the beershop nor the public-house nor anything tempted him. He felt a pleasant agitation through the whole of his being, and stopped more than once in front of shops exhibiting tempting wares: boots, coats, caps, prints, and foodstuffs, and went on with the pleasant thought: “I could buy it all, but there, now, I won’t do it!”

He went to the market for the things he was asked to buy, collected them all, and started bargaining for a tanned sheepskin coat, for which they were asking twenty-five roubles. For some reason the dealer, after looking at Polikéy, seemed to doubt that he could buy it. But Polikéy pointed to his breast, saying that if he liked he could buy the whole shop, and asked to have the coat tried on; felt it, patted it, blew into the wool till he became permeated with the smell of it, and then took it off with a sigh.

“The price does not suit me. If you’ll let it go for fifteen roubles, now!” he said.

The dealer angrily threw the coat across the table, and Polikéy went out and cheerfully returned to his lodgings.

After supper, having watered Drum and given him some oats, he climbed up on the oven, took out the envelope with the money and examined it for a long time, and then asked a porter, who knew how to read, to read him the address and the words: “With an enclosure of one thousand six hundred and seventeen Assignation Roubles.” The envelope was made of common paper, and sealed with brown sealing-wax, with an anchor stamped on it. There was one large seal in the middle, four at the corners, and there was a drop of sealing-wax near the edge. Polikéy examined all this, and learnt it by heart. He even felt the sharp corners of the paper money. It gave him a kind of childish pleasure to know that he had so much money in his hands. He inserted the money into a hole in the lining of his cap, and lay down with his head on it; but even in the night he kept waking and feeling the envelope. And each time he found it in its place he experienced the pleasant feeling that here was he, the disgraced, the downtrodden Polikéy, carrying such a sum and delivering it up so accurately, as even the steward would not have done.

About midnight the tradesman’s men and Polikéy were wakened by a knocking at the gate and the shouting of peasants. It was the party of recruits from Pokróvsk. There were about ten of them: Harúshkin, Mitúshkin, and Elijah (Doútlof’s nephew), two reserve recruits, the village Elder, old Doútlof, and the men who had driven them. A night-light was burning in the room, and the cook was sleeping on a bench under the icons. She jumped up and began lighting a candle. Polikéy awoke also, and, leaning over from the top of the oven, looked at the peasants as they came in. They came in crossing themselves, and sat down on the benches round the room. They all seemed perfectly calm, so that one could not tell which of them were being enlisted and who had them in charge. They were