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

went down and found time to speak to her husband. The Cossack, lying stretched out in the cart, was snoring. She came carefully up to the tarantass, and knocked at the box.

“Josy!”

No answer.

“Josy! Josy!” she said louder, quite frightened.

“What’s the matter?” asked Migoúrski, in a sleepy voice, inside the box.

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was asleep,” he said, and by the sound of his voice she knew that he was smiling.

“Well, can I get out?” he asked.

“No! the Cossack is here;” and, saying this, she glanced at the Cossack sleeping in the cart.

And, strange to say, though the Cossack was snoring, his kind blue eyes were open. He looked at her, and only when their glances met did he shut his eyes again.

“Was it only my fancy, or was he really awake?” Albína asked herself. “It must have been my fancy,” she thought, and again turned to the box.

“Bear it a bit longer,” she said. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No; I want to smoke.”

Albína looked at the Cossack. He was asleep.

“Yes, I only fancied it,” she thought.

“Now I shall go and see the Governor.”

“Well, then, good luck to you!”

Albína took a dress from her portmanteau and went into the inn to change the one she was wearing.

Dressed in her best widow’s mourning, Albína crossed the Vólga. Hiring an isvóztchik318 on the quay, she drove to the Governor’s. The Governor received her. The pretty, smiling Polish widow, speaking excellent French, pleased the would-be-young old Governor very much. He granted all she asked, and bade her call again next day, to receive an order to the Mayor of Tsarítsin.

Pleased at the success of her application, and by the effect she noticed that her attractiveness produced on the Governor’s manners, Albína returned happy and hopeful. She descended the hill in a tarantass, driving along the unpaved street back to the landing. The sun had risen above the forest, and its slanting rays played on the rippling waters of the wide overflow of the river. Apple-trees, covered with sweet blossoms, appeared like white clouds to right and left. A forest of masts was seen along the banks, and white sails gleamed on the surface of the broad overflow, ruffled by a gentle breeze. At the landing, after some talk with her driver, Albína inquired whether she could hire a boat to take her to Astrakhán; and dozens of noisy, merry boatmen offered her their services and boats. She came to an agreement with a man she liked better than the rest, and went to look at his boat, that lay among a crowd of others near the landing. The boat had a small movable mast with a sail, and also oars for calm weather. Two healthy-looking bourlák rowers sat in the boat, sunning themselves. The merry, kindly boatman advised her not to leave her tarantass behind, but to take off the wheels and place it in the boat. “There will be just enough room, and it will be more comfortable for you to sit in it. If God gives us good weather, we’ll run down to Astrakhán in five days or so.”

Having come to terms with the boatman, Albína bade him come to Lóginof’s inn, in the Pokróvsky suburb, to see the tarantass and to receive hand-money. Everything was succeeding beyond her expectations. In a rapturously happy mood she crossed the Vólga, paid her driver, and went towards the inn-yard.

XII

The Cossack, Daniel Lifánof, belonged to the Strelétsky Settlement, on the watershed of the Vólga and the Urál. He was thirty-four, and was completing the last month of the term of his army service. At home he had a grandfather, a man of ninety (who could remember Pougatchéf319); two brothers; a sister-in-law (the wife of an elder brother who had been sent to the mines for being an Old Believer); a wife; and two sons. His father had been killed in the war with the French. He was the head of the family. In his homestead they had sixteen horses and two yoke of oxen, and they had a good deal of land sown with wheat. Daniel had served in Órenburg and Kazán. He kept strictly to the Old Faith, did not smoke, would neither eat nor drink out of a vessel used by the Orthodox, and considered his oath sacred. In all his actions he was deliberately, firmly exact; and giving his whole attention to whatever his superiors set him to do, he never forgot it for a moment until he had done his duty as he understood it. Now he was ordered to escort two Polish women and two coffins to Sarátof, so that no evil should befall them on the way, and they were to travel quietly and not be up to any mischief; and at Sarátof he was to hand them over honourably to the Authorities.

And so he had brought them safely to Sarátof⁠—little dog, coffins and all. The women, though Poles, were harmless agreeable women, and they did nothing wrong. But here in the Pokróvsky suburb, towards evening, passing by the tarantass, he noticed that the little dog jumped inside and whined and wagged its tail, and he thought he heard someone’s voice coming from under the seat of the tarantass. One of the Polish women⁠—the old one⁠—grew frightened on seeing the dog in the tarantass, and caught it and carried it away.

“There’s something wrong there,” thought the Cossack, and remained on the lookout. When the young Polish woman came out in the night to the tarantass, he pretended to be asleep, and distinctly heard a man’s voice coming from the box. Early in the morning he went to the police to let them know that the Polish women entrusted to his care were not travelling honestly, but were carrying, instead of coffins, a live man in their box.

When Albína⁠—in her rapturously happy mood, sure that all was now finished, and that in a few days