Hadji Murád, Leo Tolstoy [romantic books to read txt] 📗

he rode home and went to bed, and slept for eighteen hours as people usually sleep after losing heavily. From the fact that he asked her to lend him fifty kopeks to tip the Cossack who had escorted him, and from his sorrowful looks and short answers, Márya Dmítrievna guessed that he had lost at cards, and she reproached the Major for having given him leave of absence.

When he woke up at noon next day and remembered the situation he was in, he longed again to plunge into the oblivion from which he had just emerged; but it was impossible. Steps had to be taken to repay the four hundred and seventy rubles he owed to the stranger. The first step he took was to write to his brother, confessing his sin and imploring him, for the last time, to lend him five hundred rubles on the security of the mill that they still owned in common. Then he wrote to a stingy relative, asking her to lend him five hundred rubles at whatever rate of interest she liked. Finally he went to the Major, knowing that he⁠—or rather Márya Dmítrievna⁠—had some money, and asked him to lend him five hundred rubles.

“I’d let you have them at once,” said the Major, “but Másha won’t! These women are so closefisted⁠—who the devil can understand them?⁠ ⁠… And yet you must get out of it somehow, devil take him!⁠ ⁠… Hasn’t that brute the canteen-keeper got something?”

But it was no use trying to borrow from the canteen-keeper; so Butler’s salvation could only come from his brother or his stingy relative.

XXII

Not having attained his aim in Chechnya, Hadji Murád returned to Tiflis and went every day to Vorontsóv’s; and whenever he could obtain audience he implored the Viceroy to gather together the mountaineer prisoners and exchange them for his family. He said that unless that were done his hands were tied and he could not serve the Russians and destroy Shamil, as he desired to do. Vorontsóv vaguely promised to do what he could, but put it off, saying that he would decide when General Argutínski reached Tiflis and he could talk the matter over with him.

Then Hadji Murád asked Vorontsóv to allow him to go to live for a while in Nukhá, a small town in Transcaucasia, where he thought he could better carry on negotiations about his family with Shamil and with the people who were attached to himself. Moreover, Nukhá, being a Mohammedan town, had a mosque where he could more conveniently perform the rites of prayer demanded by the Mohammedan law. Vorontsóv wrote to Petersburg about it, but meanwhile gave Hadji Murád permission to go to Nukhá.

For Vorontsóv and the authorities in Petersburg, as well as for most Russians acquainted with Hadji Murád’s history, the whole episode presented itself as a lucky turn in the Caucasian war, or simply as an interesting event. For Hadji Murád, on the other hand, it was a terrible crisis in his life. He had escaped from the mountains partly to save himself, partly out of hatred of Shamil; and difficult as this flight had been, he had attained his object, and for a time was glad of his success, and really devised a plan to attack Shamil; but the rescue of his family⁠—which he had thought would be easy to arrange⁠—had proved more difficult than he expected.

Shamil had seized the family and kept them prisoners, threatening to hand the women over to the different aouls, and to blind or kill the son. Now Hadji Murád had gone to Nukhá intending to try, by the aid of his adherents in Daghestan, to rescue his family from Shamil by force or by cunning. The last spy who had come to see him in Nukhá informed him that the Avars devoted to him were preparing to capture his family and to come over to the Russians with it; but that there were not enough of them, and they could not risk making the attempt in Vedenó where the family was presently imprisoned, but could do so only if the family were moved from Vedenó to some other place⁠—in which case they promised to rescue them on the way.

Hadji Murád sent word to his friends that he would give three thousand rubles for the liberation of his family.

At Nukhá a small house of five rooms was assigned to Hadji Murád near the mosque and the Khan’s palace. The officers in charge of him, his interpreter, and his henchmen stayed in the same house. Hadji Murád’s life was spent in the expectation and reception of messengers from the mountains, and in rides he was allowed to take in the neighborhood.

On 24th April, returning from one of these rides, Hadji Murád learnt that during his absence an official had arrived from Tiflis, sent by Vorontsóv. In spite of his longing to know what message the official had brought him, Hadji Murád, before going into the room where the officer in charge and the official were waiting, went to his bedroom and repeated his noonday prayer. When he had finished he came out into the room which served him as drawing and reception room. The official who had come from Tiflis, Councillor Kiríllov, informed Hadji Murád of Vorontsóv’s wish that he should come to Tiflis on the 12th to meet General Argutínski.

“Yakshí!” said Hadji Murád angrily. The councillor did not please him. “Have you brought money?”

“I have,” answered Kiríllov.

“For two weeks now,” said Hadji Murád, holding up first both hands and then four fingers. “Give here!”

“We’ll give it you at once,” said the official, getting his purse out of his traveling bag. “What does he want with the money?” he went on in Russian, thinking that Hadji Murád would not understand. But Hadji Murád understood, and glanced angrily at Kiríllov. While getting out the money the councillor, wishing to begin a conversation with Hadji Murád in order to have something to tell