Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eróshka
whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to
Olénin’s lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked
meeting women before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olénin
still asleep, and even Vanyúsha, though awake, was still in bed and
looking round the room considering whether it was not time to get up,
when Daddy Eróshka, gun on shoulder and in full hunter’s trappings,
opened the door.
“A cudgel!” he shouted in his deep voice. “An alarm! The Chéchens are
upon us! Iván! Get the samovar ready for your master, and get up
yourself—quick,” cried the old man. “That’s our way, my good man! Why
even the girls are already up! Look out of the window. See, she’s going
for water and you’re still sleeping!”
Olénin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight
of the old man and at the sound of his voice.
“Quick, Vanyúsha, quick!” he cried.
“Is that the way you go hunting?” said the old man. “Others are having
their breakfast and you are asleep! Lyam! Here!” he called to his dog.
“Is your gun ready?” he shouted, as loud as if a whole crowd were in
the hut.
“Well, it’s true I’m guilty, but it can’t be helped! The powder,
Vanyúsha, and the wads!” said Olénin.
“A fine!” shouted the old man.
“_Du tay voulay vou?_” asked Vanyúsha, grinning.
“You’re not one of us—your gabble is not like our speech, you devil!”
the old man shouted at Vanyúsha, showing the stumps of his teeth.
“A first offence must be forgiven,” said Olénin playfully, drawing on
his high boots.
“The first offence shall be forgiven,” answered Eróshka, “but if you
oversleep another time you’ll be fined a pail of _chikhir_. When it
gets warmer you won’t find the deer.”
“And even if we do find him he is wiser than we are,” said Olénin,
repeating the words spoken by the old man the evening before, “and you
can’t deceive him!”
“Yes, laugh away! You kill one first, and then you may talk. Now then,
hurry up! Look, there’s the master himself coming to see you,” added
Eróshka, looking out of the window. “Just see how he’s got himself up.
He’s put on a new coat so that you should see that he’s an officer. Ah,
these people, these people!”
Sure enough Vanyúsha came in and announced that the master of the house
wished to see Olénin.
“_L’arjan!_” he remarked profoundly, to forewarn his master of the
meaning of this visitation. Following him, the master of the house in a
new Circassian coat with an officer’s stripes on the shoulders and with
polished boots (quite exceptional among Cossacks) entered the room,
swaying from side to side, and congratulated his lodger on his safe
arrival.
The cornet, Elias Vasílich, was an _educated_ Cossack. He had been to
Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was
noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling
beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his
self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just the same
as Daddy Eróshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face
and his hands and his red nose. Olénin asked him to sit down.
“Good morning, Father Elias Vasílich,” said Eróshka, rising with (or so
it seemed to Olénin) an ironically low bow.
“Good morning. Daddy. So you’re here already,” said the cornet, with a
careless nod.
The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny
and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come
to see Olénin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary
Cossack, and wanted to let Olénin feel his importance from the first.
“That’s our Egyptian Nimrod,” he remarked, addressing Olénin and
pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. “A mighty hunter
before the Lord! He’s our foremost man on every hand. You’ve already
been pleased to get acquainted with him.”
Daddy Eróshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and
shook his head thoughtfully at the cornet’s ability and learning, and
muttered to himself: “Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he invents!”
“Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,” answered Olénin.
“Yes, sir, exactly,” said the cornet, “but I have a small business with
you.”
“What do you want?”
“Seeing that you are a gentleman,” began the cornet, “and as I may
understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and therefore we
may always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.” (He stopped and
looked with a smile at Olénin and at the old man.) “But if you have the
desire with my consent, then, as my wife is a foolish woman of our
class, she could not quite comprehend your words of yesterday’s date.
Therefore my quarters might be let for six rubles to the Regimental
Adjutant, without the stables; but I can always avert that from myself
free of charge. But, as you desire, therefore I, being myself of an
officer’s rank, can come to an agreement with you in everything
personally, as an inhabitant of this district, not according to our
customs, but can maintain the conditions in every way....”
“Speaks clearly!” muttered the old man.
The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last, not
without difficulty, Olénin gathered that the cornet wished to let his
rooms to him, Olénin, for six rubles a month. The latter gladly agreed
to this, and offered his visitor a glass of tea. The cornet declined
it.
“According to our silly custom we consider it a sort of sin to drink
out of a ‘worldly’ tumbler,” he said. “Though, of course, with my
education I may understand, but my wife from her human weakness...”
“Well then, will you have some tea?”
“If you will permit me, I will bring my own particular glass,” answered
the cornet, and stepped out into the porch.
“Bring me my glass!” he cried.
In a few minutes the door opened and a young sunburnt arm in a print
sleeve thrust itself in, holding a tumbler in the hand. The cornet went
up, took it, and whispered something to his daughter. Olénin poured tea
for the cornet into the latter’s own “particular” glass, and for
Eróshka into a “worldly” glass.
“However, I do not desire to detain you,” said the cornet, scalding his
lips and emptying his tumbler. “I too have a great liking for fishing,
and I am here, so to say, only on leave of absence for recreation from
my duties. I too have the desire to tempt fortune and see whether some
_Gifts of the Térek_ may not fall to my share. I hope you too will come
and see us and have a drink of our wine, according to the custom of our
village,” he added.
The cornet bowed, shook hands with Olénin, and went out. While Olénin
was getting ready, he heard the cornet giving orders to his family in
an authoritative and sensible tone, and a few minutes later he saw him
pass by the window in a tattered coat with his trousers rolled up to
his knees and a fishing net over his shoulder.
“A rascal!” said Daddy Eróshka, emptying his “worldly” tumbler. “And
will you really pay him six rubles? Was such a thing ever heard of?
They would let you the best hut in the village for two rubles. What a
beast! Why, I’d let you have mine for three!”
“No, I’ll remain here,” said Olénin.
“Six rubles!... Clearly it’s a fool’s money. Eh, eh, eh!” answered the
old man. “Let’s have some _chikhir_, Iván!”
Having had a snack and a drink of vodka to prepare themselves for the
road, Olénin and the old man went out together before eight o’clock.
At the gate they came up against a wagon to which a pair of oxen were
harnessed. With a white kerchief tied round her head down to her eyes,
a coat over her smock, and wearing high boots, Maryánka with a long
switch in her hand was dragging the oxen by a cord tied to their horns.
“Mammy,” said the old man, pretending that he was going to seize her.
Maryánka flourished her switch at him and glanced merrily at them both
with her beautiful eyes.
Olénin felt still more light-hearted.
“Now then, come on, come on,” he said, throwing his gun on his shoulder
and conscious of the girl’s eyes upon him.
“Gee up!” sounded Maryánka’s voice behind them, followed by the creak
of the moving wagon.
As long as their road lay through the pastures at the back of the
village Eróshka went on talking. He could not forget the cornet and
kept on abusing him.
“Why are you so angry with him?” asked Olénin.
“He’s stingy. I don’t like it,” answered the old man. “He’ll leave it
all behind when he dies! Then who’s he saving up for? He’s built two
houses, and he’s got a second garden from his brother by a law-suit.
And in the matter of papers what a dog he is! They come to him from
other villages to fill up documents. As he writes it out, exactly so it
happens. He gets it quite exact. But who is he saving for? He’s only
got one boy and the girl; when she’s married who’ll be left?”
“Well then, he’s saving up for her dowry,” said Olénin.
“What dowry? The girl is sought after, she’s a fine girl. But he’s such
a devil that he must yet marry her to a rich fellow. He wants to get a
big price for her. There’s Luke, a Cossack, a neighbour and a nephew of
mine, a fine lad. It’s he who killed the Chéchen—he has been wooing her
for a long time, but he hasn’t let him have her. He’s given one excuse,
and another, and a third. ‘The girl’s too young,’ he says. But I know
what he is thinking. He wants to keep them bowing to him. He’s been
acting shamefully about that girl. Still, they will get her for
Lukáshka, because he is the best Cossack in the village, a brave, who
has killed an _abrek_ and will be rewarded with a cross.”
“But how about this? When I was walking up and down the yard last
night, I saw my landlord’s daughter and some Cossack kissing,” said
Olénin.
“You’re pretending!” cried the old man, stopping.
“On my word,” said Olénin.
“Women are the devil,” said Eróshka pondering. “But what Cossack was
it?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Well, what sort of a cap had he, a white one?”
“Yes.”
“And a red coat? About your height?”
“No, a bit taller.”
“It’s he!” and Eróshka burst out laughing. “It’s himself, it’s Mark. He
is Luke, but I call him Mark for a joke. His very self! I love him. I
was just such a one myself. What’s the good of minding them? My
sweetheart used to sleep with her mother and her sister-in-law, but I
managed to get in. She used to sleep upstairs; that witch her mother
was a regular demon; it’s awful how she hated me. Well, I used to come
with a chum, Gírchik his name was. We’d come under her window and I’d
climb on his shoulders, push up the window and begin groping about. She
used to sleep just there on a bench. Once I woke her up and she nearly
called out. She hadn’t recognized me. ‘Who is there?’ she said, and I
could not answer. Her mother was even beginning to stir, but I took off
my cap and shoved it over her mouth; and she at once knew it by a seam
in it, and ran out to me. I used not to want anything then. She’d bring
along clotted cream and grapes and everything,” added Eróshka (who
always explained things practically), “and she wasn’t the only one. It
was a life!”
“And what now?”
“Now we’ll follow the dog, get a pheasant to settle on a tree, and then
you may fire.”
“Would you have made up to Maryánka?”
“Attend to the dogs. I’ll tell you tonight,” said the old man, pointing
to his favourite dog, Lyam.
After a pause they continued talking, while they went about a hundred
paces. Then the old man stopped again and pointed to a twig that lay
across the path.
“What do you think of that?” he said. “You think it’s nothing? It’s bad
that this stick is lying so.”
“Why is it bad?”
He smiled.
“Ah, you don’t know anything. Just listen to me. When a stick lies like
that don’t you step across it, but go round it or throw it off the path
this way, and say ‘Father and Son and Holy Ghost,’ and then go on with
God’s blessing. Nothing will happen to you. That’s what the old men
used to teach me.”
“Come, what rubbish!” said Olénin. “You’d better tell me more about
Maryánka. Does she carry on with Lukáshka?”
“Hush ... be quiet now!” the old man again interrupted in a whisper:
“just listen, we’ll go round through the forest.”
And the old man, stepping quietly in his soft shoes, led the way by a
narrow path leading into the dense, wild, overgrown forest. Now and
again with a frown he turned to look at Olénin, who rustled and
clattered with his heavy boots and, carrying his gun carelessly,
several times caught the twigs of trees that grew across the path.
“Don’t make a noise. Step softly, soldier!” the old man whispered
angrily.
There was a feeling in the air that the sun had risen. The mist was
dissolving but it still enveloped the tops of the trees. The forest
looked terribly high. At every step the aspect changed: what had
appeared like a tree proved to be a bush, and a reed looked like a
tree.