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

they would be free⁠—came to the inn-yard, she was surprised to see an elegant pair of horses and two Cossacks at the gates. A crowd had collected round the gates, and were gazing into the yard.

So full of hope and energy was she, that it did not occur to her that the pair of horses and the crowd of people had any connection with her. She entered the yard, and glancing at once towards the shed where her tarantass stood, she saw that it was just there that the people were crowding, and at the same moment she heard Trezórka barking desperately.

The most terrible thing that could possibly have happened had actually come to pass! In front of the tarantass, in his clean uniform, with buttons, shoulder-straps and patent-leather boots glittering in the sunshine, stood an imposing-looking man, with black whiskers, speaking in a loud, hoarse, commanding voice. In front of him, between two soldiers, dressed as a peasant, and with bits of hay in his tangled hair, stood her Josy, raising and lowering his powerful shoulders as if perplexed by what was going on around him. Trezórka, his hair bristling, quite unconscious that he was the cause of all this misfortune, was barking angrily at the Police Master. When he saw Albína, Migoúrski gave a start and wished to approach her, but the soldiers prevented him.

“Never mind, Albína, never mind!” uttered Migoúrski, with his usual gentle smile.

“Ah! Here’s the little lady herself!” said the Police Master. “Come here, please.⁠ ⁠… The coffins of your infants, eh?” he added, winking towards Migoúrski. Albína did not answer, but clutching at her breast, stared open-mouthed and horror-stricken at her husband.

As happens at the moment of death, and in general at the decisive moments of life, a crowd of feelings and thoughts passed through her mind in a single instant, before she had yet realized or quite believed in her misfortune. The first feeling was one already long familiar to her⁠—a feeling of offended pride at seeing her hero-husband humiliated by these coarse, savage people who now had him in their power. “How dare they hold him⁠—the best of all men⁠—in their power?” At the same time another feeling⁠—the consciousness of misfortune⁠—seized her. This consciousness of her misfortune awoke the memory of the greatest misfortune of her life⁠—her children’s death. And at once the question arose: “Why⁠—why were the children taken?” And this question suggested another: “Why is he now perishing and being tormented⁠—he, my beloved, my husband, the best of men?” And then she remembered the shameful punishment awaiting him, and that it was all her doing.

“What is he to you? Is he your husband?” the Police Master repeated.

“Why? What for?” she cried; and bursting into hysterical laughter, she fell on the box, which had been removed from the tarantass and now stood on the ground beside it. Shaking with sobs, her face bathed in tears, Ludwíka approached her.

“Mistress⁠ ⁠… dear, darling mistress!⁠ ⁠… By God, nothing will come of it⁠—nothing!⁠ ⁠…” she said, mechanically passing her hand over Albína.

Migoúrski was handcuffed and led out of the yard. Seeing this, Albína ran after him.

“Forgive me! Forgive me!” she said. “It is my fault⁠—my fault alone!”

“They’ll soon find out whose fault it is! Your turn will come, too,” said the Police Master, and he pushed her aside with his arm.

Migoúrski was taken to the ferry, and Albína followed him without knowing why, paying no heed to Ludwíka’s dissuasions.

The Cossack, Daniel Lifánof, stood all this while by the wheels of the tarantass, looking gloomily now at the Police Master, now at Albína, now at his own feet. After Migoúrski had been led away, Trezórka, who had got used to Lifánof on the journey, began wagging his tail and caressing him. The Cossack suddenly moved away from the tarantass, pulled off his cap, threw it violently on the ground, shoved Trezórka aside with his boot, and went into the inn. There he demanded vodka, and drank day and night till he had drunk all the money he had, and all his clothes as well. Only when he came to himself in a ditch, during the second night, did he stop thinking about the tormenting problem: Whether he had done well to report to the Authorities about the Polish woman’s husband inside the box?

Migoúrski was tried for attempting to escape, and was condemned to run the gauntlet through a line of 1,000 men. By the intercession of his relations and of Wánda (who had influential connections in Petersburg), his sentence was commuted to one of exile for life to Siberia. Albína followed him. As to Nicholas I, he rejoiced at having crushed the hydra of revolution⁠—not only in Poland, but throughout Europe⁠—and prided himself on having benefited the Russian people by keeping Poland under Russian rule. And men in gold-embroidered uniforms, wearing stars, so applauded him for this, that he sincerely believed himself to be a great man, and his life a great blessing to humanity⁠—especially to the Russian people, to whose perversion and stupefaction he unconsciously directed all his powers.

1906.

God’s Way and Man’s I

It happened in Russia in the ’seventies, when the struggle between the Revolutionists and the Government was at its height.

The General-Governor of a district in South Russia, a healthy-looking German with drooping moustaches and a cold look on his expressionless face, dressed in a military uniform, with a white cross at his neck, sat one evening in his cabinet, at a table on which were placed four candles with green shades, looking through and signing papers left for him by his secretary.

Among those papers was the death-warrant of Anatole Svetlogoúb, a graduate of the Novorossíysk University, sentenced for taking part in a conspiracy to overthrow the then existing Government. The General, frowning deeply, signed that paper, too. With his white, well-kept fingers, wrinkled by old age and the use of much soap, he carefully adjusted the edges of the sheets and laid them aside. The next paper