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

the journey, and, repeating her usual asseveration, “By my mother!” declared her heart was bursting with fear and joy. Migoúrski was glad of his deliverance from the garret where he had spent more than a month, but yet gladder at Albína’s animation and joy of life. She seemed to have forgotten all former griefs and all danger, and came running to him in the garret, beaming with rapturous delight as in the days of her girlhood.

At three in the morning came a Cossack escort, and brought a driver with three horses. Albína and Ludwíka, with their little dog, got into the tarantass and sat down on cushions covered with a rug. The Cossack and the driver got onto the box; Migoúrski, dressed as a peasant, lay at the bottom of the vehicle.

They drove out of the town, and the three good horses drew the tarantass along the smooth road, hard as a stone, that ran through an endless uncultivated steppe covered with last year’s dry, silvery feather-grass.

X

Albína’s heart swelled with hope and elation. Wishing to impart her feelings to someone, she occasionally, smiling slightly, drew Ludwíka’s attention by a movement of her head⁠—first to the Cossack’s broad back, and then to the bottom of the tarantass. Ludwíka sat looking before her fixedly, with a significant expression, and only slightly twitched her lips.

The day was bright. All around spread the boundless desert steppe, its silvery feather-grass glittering in the slanting rays of the morning sun. First on one and then on the other side of the hard road⁠—on which the brisk unshod hoofs of the Bashkir horses resounded as on asphalt⁠—appeared little mounds of earth thrown up by Siberian marmots, with one of the little creatures sitting up erect and keeping watch. At the approach of danger it would raise the alarm by a shrill whistle, and disappear down its burrow. They met but few travellers: only a Cossack train of carts laden with wheat, or a mounted Bashkir with whom their Cossack briskly bandied Tartar words. At each post-station they got fresh and well-fed horses, and the half-roubles Albína gave to the drivers made them gallop full speed all the way⁠—“State-messenger style,” as they expressed it.

At the first station, when the first driver had gone away with the horses and his successor had not yet come with the fresh ones, and the Cossack had gone into the yard, Albína bent down and asked her husband how he felt, and whether he needed anything.

“Splendid!⁠ ⁠… Quite comfortable! I want nothing; I can easily lie here for two days, if necessary.”

Towards evening they reached the large village of Dergátchi. That her husband might stretch his limbs and refresh himself, Albína did not put up at the post-station, but stopped in an inn-yard; and, giving some money to the Cossack, sent him at once to buy her some milk and eggs. The tarantass stood in a shed, and it was dark in the yard. Setting Ludwíka to watch the Cossack, Albína let her husband out and fed him; and before the Cossack returned he was again in his hiding-place. Albína’s spirits rose higher and higher, and she could not restrain her gaiety and delight. Having no one to talk to but Ludwíka, the Cossack, and her dog, Trezórka, she amused herself with them. Ludwíka, in spite of her plainness, suspected all the men she ever met of having amorous designs upon herself; and on this occasion she had the same suspicions of their escort, the sturdy, good-natured Urál Cossack, with unusually bright and kind blue eyes, whose simplicity and good-natured adroitness made him very agreeable to both the women.

Besides Trezórka (at whom Albína shook her finger, not allowing him to sniff under the seat), she now amused herself with Ludwíka’s comical coquetting with the Cossack; who, never suspecting the designs attributed to him, smiled at all that was said. Albína, excited by the danger, the success that was attending the accomplishment of her plan, and the air of the steppes, experienced a long-forgotten feeling of childlike joy and happiness. Migoúrski heard her talking merrily, and forgetting himself⁠—in spite of the physical discomfort of his position, which he concealed from her (he was especially tormented by thirst and heat)⁠—he rejoiced at her joy.

Towards the evening of the second day, something began to appear in the distance, through the mist. It was Sarátof and the Vólga. The Cossack, whose eyes were used to the steppes, could see the Vólga and a mast, and pointed them out to Ludwíka⁠—who said she could see them too; but Albína could see nothing, and only repeated loudly, that her husband should hear, “Sarátof⁠ ⁠… Vólga⁠ ⁠…” as if she were talking to Trezórka; and so she informed her husband of all she saw.

XI

Not entering the town, Albína stopped on the left bank of the Vólga, in the Pokróvsky suburb, just opposite Sarátof itself. Here she hoped to be able to speak to her husband during the night, and even to let him out of his box. But the Cossack never left the tarantass during the whole of the short spring night, but sat near it in a cart that stood under the same shed. Ludwíka, by Albína’s orders, remained in the tarantass, and feeling sure it was because of her that the Cossack remained near it, she winked, laughed, and hid her pockmarked face in her kerchief. But Albína saw nothing amusing in this now, and became more and more anxious; wondering why the Cossack remained so persistently near the tarantass.

Several times during that short night, in which the evening twilight melted into the twilight of dawn, Albína left the inn, and, passing through a passage which smelt foully, came out into the back porch. The Cossack did not sleep, but sat in the empty cart beside the tarantass, with his legs hanging down. Only just before daybreak, when the cocks were already awake and crowing to one another from yard to yard, Albína