‘One can’t get away from God, friends! Good-bye.’ And straightening his bag with a jerk he went his way.
‘It would be far better to wait!’ the man who was digging into the water-melon said with conviction.
‘It can’t be helped!’ muttered the newcomer, as he squeezed between the wheels of the crowded carts. [‘It seems I too must buy a water-melon for my supper. Just think what people are saying!’]
III
THE post-station was full of people when Kozeltsóv drove up. The first one he met in the porch was a very thin young man, the superintendent, bickering with two officers who were following him.
‘It’s not only three days you’ll have to wait but maybe ten.… Even generals have to wait, my good sir!’ said the superintendent, evidently wishing to hurt the travellers’ feelings. ‘I can’t hitch myself to a cart for you, can I?’
‘Then don’t give horses to anyone, if you have none! Why did you give them to that lackey with the baggage?’ shouted the elder of the officers, who had a tumbler of tea in his hand.
‘Just consider a moment, Mr Superintendent,’ said the other, a very young officer, hesitatingly. ‘We are not going for our own pleasure. You see, we are evidently wanted there, since we have been summoned. I shall really have to report it to the general. It will never do, you know.… It seems you don’t respect an officer’s position.’
But the elder man interrupted him crossly. ‘You always spoil everything! You only hinder me … a man has to know how to speak to these people. There you see, he has lost all respect.… Horses, I say, this very minute!’
‘Willingly, my dear sir, but where am I to get them from?’
The superintendent was silent for a few minutes. Then he suddenly flared up and waving his arms began:
‘I know it all very well, my dear sir, and fully understand it, but what am I to do? You give me but’ (a ray of hope showed itself on the faces of the officers) … ‘let me but hold out to the end of the month, and I’ll stay here no longer. I’d rather go to the Malákhov Hill than remain here, I swear I would! Let them do what they please. There’s not a single sound vehicle left in the whole place, and it’s the third day the horses haven’t had a wisp of hay.’ And the superintendent disappeared through the gate.
Kozeltsóv entered the room together with the officers.
‘Well,’ said the elder calmly to the younger, though the moment before he had seemed quite beside himself, ‘we’ve been three months on the road already and can wait a bit longer. No matter, we’ll get there soon enough!’
The dirty, smoky room was so full of officers and trunks that Kozeltsóv had some difficulty in finding a seat on the window-sill. While observing the faces and listening to the conversation of the others he began rolling himself a cigarette. To the right of the door sat the principal group round a crooked, greasy table on which stood two samovars with verdigris showing on them here and there, and with sugar spread on various bits of paper. A young officer who had not yet grown a moustache, in a new, quilted Caucasian coat which had certainly been made out of a woman’s dressing-gown, was filling a teapot, and there were four other equally young officers in different parts of the room. One of them lay asleep on the sofa with a fur coat of some kind rolled up under his head; another was standing at the table cutting up some roast mutton for a one-armed officer who sat there. Two officers, one in an adjutant’s cloak, the other in infantry uniform made of fine cloth and with a satchel across his shoulders, were sitting by the stove, and from the way they looked at the others and the manner in which the one with the satchel smoked his cigar, it was plain that they were not officers of the line and were glad they were not. Their manner did not show contempt so much as a certain calm self-satisfaction founded partly on money and partly on intimacy with generals – a consciousness of superiority extending even to a desire to conceal it. Then there was a thick-lipped young doctor and an artillery officer who looked like a German – these were sitting on the sofa almost on the feet of the sleeping officer, counting money. There were also several orderlies, some dozing, others near the door busy with bundles and portmanteaux. Among all these people Kozeltsóv did not recognize a single acquaintance, but he listened with interest to their conversation. He liked the young officers who, as he at once concluded from their appearance, had come straight from the Cadet College; they reminded him of the fact that his brother, who was coming straight from the College too, ought to reach one of the batteries in Sevastopol in a few days’ time. But he did not like the officer with the satchel, whose face he had seen somewhere before – everything about him seemed insolent and repellent. ‘We’ll put him down if he ventures to say anything!’ he thought, and he even moved from the window to the stove and sat down there. Belonging to a line regiment and being a good officer, he had a general dislike for those ‘on the Staff’, and such he at once recognized these officers to be.
IV
‘I SAY, isn’t it an awful nuisance that being so near we can’t get there?’ said one of the young officers. ‘There may be an action to-day and we shan’t be in it.’
The high-pitched voice and the fresh rosy spots which appeared on his face betrayed the charming youthful bashfulness of one in constant fear of not saying the right thing.
The officer who had lost an arm looked at him with a smile.
‘You’ll get there soon enough, believe me,’ he said.
The young officer looked respectfully at the crippled man, whose emaciated face suddenly lit up with a smile, and then silently turned his attention to making his tea. And really the face, the attitude, and especially the empty sleeve of the officer expressed a kind of calm indifference that seemed to say in reply to every word and action: ‘Yes, all that is admirable, but I know it all, and can do it all if only I wish to.’
‘Well, and how shall we decide it?’ the young officer began again, turning to his comrade in the Caucasian coat. ‘Shall we stay the night here or go on with our own horse?’
His comrade decided to stay.
‘Just fancy, Captain,’ continued the one who was making the tea, addressing the one-armed officer and handing him a knife he had dropped, ‘we are told that horses were awfully dear in Sevastopol, so we two bought one together in Simferópol.’
‘I expect they made you pay a stiff price.’
‘I really don’t know, Captain. We paid ninety rubles for it with the trap. Is that very much?’ he said, turning to the company in general, including Kozeltsóv, who was looking at him.
‘It’s not much if it’s a young horse,’ said Kozeltsóv.
‘You think not?… And we were told it was too much. Only it limps a bit, but that will pass. We were told it’s strong.’
‘What Cadet College were you at?’ asked Kozeltsóv, who wished to get news of his brother.
‘We are now from the Nobles’ Regiment. There are six of us and we are all going to Sevastopol – by our own desire,’ said the talkative young officer. ‘Only we don’t know where our battery is. Some say it is Sevastopol, but those fellows there say it’s in Odessa.’
‘Couldn’t you have found out in Simferópol?’ asked Kozeltsóv.
‘They didn’t know.… Only think, one of our comrades went to the Chancellery there and got nothing but rudeness. Just think how unpleasant! Would you like a ready-made cigarette?’ he said to the one-armed officer who was trying to get out his cigar-case.
He attended to this officer’s wants with a kind of servile enthusiasm.
‘And are you from Sevastopol too?’ he continued. ‘How wonderful it is! How all of us in Petersburg used to think about you all and all our heroes!’ he said, addressing Kozeltsóv with respect and kindly affection.