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

others won’t travel in such weather.” Then he remembered that on the 9th he had to receive payment from the butcher for his oxen. “He meant to come himself, but he won’t find me, and my wife won’t know how to receive the money. She doesn’t know the right way of doing things,” he thought, recalling how at their party the day before she had not known how to treat the police-officer who was their guest. “Of course she’s only a woman! Where could she have seen anything? In my father’s time what was our house like? Just a rich peasant’s house: just an oatmill and an inn⁠—that was the whole property. But what have I done in these fifteen years? A shop, two taverns, a flour-mill, a grain-store, two farms leased out, and a house with an iron-roofed barn,” he thought proudly. “Not as it was in Father’s time! Who is talked of in the whole district now? Brekhunóv! And why? Because I stick to business. I take trouble, not like others who lie abed or waste their time on foolishness while I don’t sleep of nights. Blizzard or no blizzard I start out. So business gets done. They think moneymaking is a joke. No, take pains and rack your brains! You get overtaken out of doors at night, like this, or keep awake night after night till the thoughts whirling in your head make the pillow turn,” he meditated with pride. “They think people get on through luck. After all, the Mirónovs are now millionaires. And why? Take pains and God gives. If only He grants me health!”

The thought that he might himself be a millionaire like Mirónov, who began with nothing, so excited Vasíli Andréevich that he felt the need of talking to somebody. But there was no one to talk to.⁠ ⁠… If only he could have reached Goryáchkin he would have talked to the landlord and shown him a thing or two.

“Just see how it blows! It will snow us up so deep that we shan’t be able to get out in the morning!” he thought, listening to a gust of wind that blew against the front of the sledge, bending it and lashing the snow against it. He raised himself and looked round. All he could see through the whirling darkness was Mukhórty’s dark head, his back covered by the fluttering drugget, and his thick knotted tail; while all round, in front and behind, was the same fluctuating whity darkness, sometimes seeming to get a little lighter and sometimes growing denser still.

“A pity I listened to Nikíta,” he thought. “We ought to have driven on. We should have come out somewhere, if only back to Gríshkino and stayed the night at Tarás’s. As it is we must sit here all night. But what was I thinking about? Yes, that God gives to those who take trouble, but not to loafers, lie-abeds, or fools. I must have a smoke!”

He sat down again, got out his cigarette-case, and stretched himself flat on his stomach, screening the matches with the skirt of his coat. But the wind found its way in and put out match after match. At last he got one to burn and lit a cigarette. He was very glad that he had managed to do what he wanted, and though the wind smoked more of the cigarette than he did, he still got two or three puffs and felt more cheerful. He again leant back, wrapped himself up, started reflecting and remembering, and suddenly and quite unexpectedly lost consciousness and fell asleep.

Suddenly something seemed to give him a push and awoke him. Whether it was Mukhórty who had pulled some straw from under him, or whether something within him had startled him, at all events it woke him, and his heart began to beat faster and faster so that the sledge seemed to tremble under him. He opened his eyes. Everything around him was just as before. “It looks lighter,” he thought. “I expect it won’t be long before dawn.” But he at once remembered that it was lighter because the moon had risen. He sat up and looked first at the horse. Mukhórty still stood with his back to the wind, shivering all over. One side of the drugget, which was completely covered with snow, had been blown back, the breeching had slipped down and the snow-covered head with its waving forelock and mane were now more visible. Vasíli Andréevich leant over the back of the sledge and looked behind. Nikíta still sat in the same position in which he had settled himself. The sacking with which he was covered, and his legs, were thickly covered with snow.

“If only that peasant doesn’t freeze to death! His clothes are so wretched. I may be held responsible for him. What shiftless people they are⁠—such a want of education,” thought Vasíli Andréevich, and he felt like taking the drugget off the horse and putting it over Nikíta, but it would be very cold to get out and move about and, moreover, the horse might freeze to death. “Why did I bring him with me? It was all her stupidity!” he thought, recalling his unloved wife, and he rolled over into his old place at the front part of the sledge. “My uncle once spent a whole night like this,” he reflected, “and was all right.” But another case came at once to his mind. “But when they dug Sebastian out he was dead⁠—stiff like a frozen carcass. If I’d only stopped the night in Gríshkino all this would not have happened!”

And wrapping his coat carefully round him so that none of the warmth of the fur should be wasted but should warm him all over, neck, knees, and feet, he shut his eyes and tried to sleep again. But try as he would he could not get drowsy, on the contrary he felt wide awake and animated. Again he began counting his gains and the debts due