At the station for horses Koseltzoff found a crowd of people, and the
first figure he perceived was the postmaster in person, very young and
very thin, quarrelling with two officers.
“You will not only wait twenty-four hours but ten times twenty-four
hours. Generals wait too,” he said, with the evident wish to stir them
up in a lively manner. “And I am not going to hitch myself in, you
understand!”
“If this is so, if there are no horses, they can’t be given to any one.
Why, then, are they given to a servant who is carrying baggage?” shouted
one of the two soldiers, holding a glass of tea in his hand.
Although he carefully avoided using personal pronouns, it could easily
be guessed that he would have liked to say thee and thou to his
interlocutor.
“I want you to understand, Mr. Postmaster,” hesitatingly said the other
officer, “that we are not travelling for our pleasure. If we have been
summoned it is because we are necessary. You can be sure I will tell the
general, for it really seems as if you have no respect for the rank of
officer.”
“You spoil my work every time, and you are in my way,” rejoined his
comrade, half vexed. “Why do you talk to him about respect? You have to
speak to him in another manner. Horses!” he suddenly shouted, “horses,
this instant!”
“I wouldn’t ask better than to give them to you, but where can I get
them? I understand very well, my friend,” continued the postmaster,
after a moment of silence, and warming up by degrees as he gesticulated,
“but what do you want me to do? Let me just”--and the officers’ faces at
once had a hopeful expression--“keep soul and body together to the end
of the month, and then I won’t be seen any longer. I would rather go to
the Malakoff than remain here, God knows! Do what you like--but I
haven’t a single wagon in good condition, and for three days the horses
haven’t seen a handful of hay.”
At these words he disappeared. Koseltzoff and the two officers entered
the house.
“So!” said the elder to the younger with a calm tone, which strongly
contrasted with his recent wrath. “We are already three months on the
road. Let’s wait. It is no misfortune; there isn’t any hurry.”
Koseltzoff with difficulty found in the room of the post-house, all
smoky, dirty, and filled with officers and trunks, an empty corner near
the window. He sat down there, and, rolling a cigarette, began to
examine faces and to listen to conversations. The chief group was placed
on the right of the entrance door, around a shaky and greasy table on
which two copper tea-urns, stained here and there with verdigris, were
boiling; lump-sugar was strewn about in several paper wrappings. A young
officer without a mustache, in a new Circassian coat, was pouring water
into a teapot; four others of about his own age were scattered in
different corners of the room. One of them, his head placed on a cloak
which served him as a pillow, was sleeping on a divan; another, standing
near a table, was cutting roast mutton into small mouthfuls for a
one-armed comrade. Two officers, one in an aide-de-camp’s overcoat, the
other in a fine cloth infantry overcoat, and carrying a saddle-bag, were
sitting beside the stove; and it could be readily divined by the way
they looked at the others, by the manner the one with the saddle-bag was
smoking, that they were not officers of the line, and that they were
very glad of it. Their manner did not betray scorn but a certain
satisfaction with themselves, founded partly on their relations with
the generals, and on a feeling of superiority developed to such a point
that they tried to conceal it from others. There was also in the place a
doctor with fleshy lips, and an artilleryman with a German physiognomy,
seated almost on the feet of the sleeper, busily counting money. Four
men-servants, some dozing, some fumbling in the trunks and the packets
heaped up near the door, completed the number of those present, among
whom Koseltzoff found not a face he knew. The young officers pleased
him. He guessed at once from their appearance that they had just come
out of school, and this called to his mind that his young brother was
also coming straight therefrom to serve in one of the Sebastopol
batteries. On the other hand, the officer with the saddle-bag, whom he
believed he had met somewhere, altogether displeased him. He found him
to have an expression of face so antipathetic and so insolent that he
was going to sit down on the large base of the stove, with the intention
of putting him in his proper place if he happened to say anything
disagreeable. In his quality of brave and honorable officer at the
front he did not like the staff-officers, and for such he took these at
the first glance.