The horses had long been ready, but I still did not feel like parting from the stationmaster and his daughter. At last I took leave of them; the father wished me a good journey, and the daughter saw me off to the carriage. In the entryway I stopped and asked permission to kiss her. Dunya consented…I can count many kisses,
Since I first took up that occupation,
but not one of them left me with so lasting, so pleasant a memory.
Several years passed, and circumstance brought me to that same highway, to those same parts. I remembered the old stationmaster’s daughter and rejoiced to think that I would see her again. But, I reflected, maybe the old stationmaster has been replaced; Dunya is probably already married. The thought of the death of the one or the other also flashed in my mind, and I approached the * * * station with sad foreboding.
The horses stopped by the little station house. On entering the room, I immediately recognized the pictures illustrating the story of the prodigal son; the table and the bed stood in their former places; but there were no plants in the windows now, and everything around had a look of decline and neglect. The stationmaster was asleep under a sheepskin coat; my arrival awakened him; he got up…This was indeed Samson Vyrin; but how he had aged! While he was preparing to copy my travel papers, I kept looking at his gray hair, his deeply wrinkled, long-unshaven face, his bent back—and could not stop marveling at how three or four years could turn a hearty fellow into a feeble old man.
“Do you recognize me?” I asked him. “You and I are old acquaintances.”
“Maybe so,” he answered gloomily. “It’s a big road out there; many travelers have passed my way.”
“Is your Dunya well?” I went on. The old man frowned.
“God knows,” he answered.
“So she’s evidently married?” I said. The old man pretended not to hear my question and went on reading my papers in a whisper. I stopped my questions and asked him to put the kettle on. Curiosity was beginning to stir in me, and I hoped that punch would loosen my old acquaintance’s tongue.
I was not mistaken: the old man did not refuse the offered glass. I noticed that rum brightened his gloominess. At the second glass he became talkative; he remembered me, or made as if he did, and I learned a story from him which at the time greatly interested and moved me.
“So you knew my Dunya?” he began. “Well, who didn’t? Ah, Dunya, Dunya! What a girl she was! It used to be, whoever passed through, they all praised her, nobody said a bad word about her. Ladies gave her presents, one a little shawl, another a pair of earrings. Gentleman travelers stayed longer on purpose, supposedly to have dinner or supper, but really only so as to go on looking at her. It used to be, however angry a master was, he’d calm down with her there and talk kindly to me. Would you believe it, sir: couriers, government messengers, sat talking to her for half an hour at a time. She ran the household: what to tidy up, what to prepare, she kept it all going. And I, old fool that I am, couldn’t admire her enough, couldn’t rejoice enough. Didn’t I love my Dunya, didn’t I cherish my little one; wasn’t that the life for her? But no, you can’t pray trouble away; what’s fated won’t pass you by.”
Here he began telling me his grief in detail.
Once, three years ago, on a winter evening, when the stationmaster was drawing lines in a new register and his daughter behind the partition was sewing herself a dress, a troika drove up and a traveler in a Circassian hat, a military greatcoat, wrapped in a scarf, came into the room and demanded horses. The horses were all gone. At that news, the traveler raised his voice and his whip; but Dunya, who was used to such scenes, ran out from behind the partition and sweetly addressed him with a question: Wouldn’t he like something to eat? Dunya’s appearance produced its usual effect. The traveler’s anger went away; he agreed to wait for horses and ordered supper. Having taken off the wet, shaggy hat, unwound the scarf, and pulled off the greatcoat, the traveler emerged as a young, trim hussar with a small black moustache. He made himself comfortable at the stationmaster’s and began conversing gaily with him and his daughter. Supper was served. Meanwhile horses arrived, and the stationmaster ordered them hitched to the traveler’s kibitka at once, without being fed; but, on going back inside, he found the young man lying nearly unconscious on a bench: he felt faint, had a headache, it was impossible to go on…What could they do! The stationmaster yielded his bed to him, and it was decided that, if the sick man did not feel better, they would send to S–– the next morning for a doctor.
The next day the hussar was worse. His man rode to town for the doctor. Dunya tied a handkerchief moistened with vinegar around his head and sat down by his bed with her sewing. In front of the stationmaster, the sick man groaned and said scarcely a word; however, he drank two cups of coffee and, groaning, ordered dinner for himself. Dunya never left his side. He kept asking to drink, and Dunya offered him a mug of her specially prepared lemonade. The sick man moistened his lips, and each time he handed back the mug, he pressed Dunyushka’s hand with his own weak hand in token of gratitude. Towards dinnertime the doctor came. He took the sick man’s pulse, talked with him in German, and announced in Russian that all he needed was peace and quiet, and that he could set out on his way in a couple of days. The hussar handed him twenty-five roubles for the visit and invited him for dinner; the doctor accepted; the two ate with great appetite, drank a bottle of wine, and parted very pleased with each other.
Another day went by, and the hussar recovered completely. He was extremely cheerful, joked incessantly now with Dunya, now with the stationmaster, whistled tunes, talked with the travelers, copied their papers into the register, and was so much to the good stationmaster’s liking that on the third day he was sorry to part with his amiable guest. It was Sunday; Dunya was about to go to church. The hussar’s kibitka was ready. He said good-bye to the stationmaster, rewarded him generously for his bed and board; said good-bye to Dunya as well, and volunteered to take her to the church, which was at the edge of the village. Dunya stood in perplexity…
“What are you afraid of?” her father said to her. “His honor’s not a wolf, he’s not going eat you: ride to church with him.”
Dunya got into the kibitka beside the hussar, the servant leaped up onto the box, the coachman whistled, and the horses galloped off.
The poor stationmaster could not understand how on earth he could have allowed his Dunya to go off with the hussar, how such blindness could have come over him, and what had happened then to his reason. Before half an hour went by, his heart began to ache, to ache, and anxiety took such hold of him that he could not bear it and went to church himself. Coming to the church, he saw that people were already leaving, but Dunya was neither within the fence nor on the porch. He hurriedly went into the church: the priest was coming out of the sanctuary; the sexton was putting out the candles; two old women were still praying in one corner; but there was no Dunya in the church. The poor father barely brought himself to ask the sexton if she had been at the service. The sexton replied that she had not. The stationmaster went home more dead than alive. One hope remained for him: Dunya, with the flightiness of youth, might have taken it into her head to go on to the next station, where her godmother lived. In painful agitation he waited for the return of the troika in which he had sent her off. The coachman did not return. Finally, in the evening, he came back alone and drunk, with devastating news: “Dunya went on from that station with the hussar.”
The old man could not bear his misfortune; he took at once to that same bed in which the young deceiver had lain the day before. Now, considering all the circumstances, the stationmaster figured out that the illness had been feigned. The poor man came down with a high fever; he was taken to S–– and another man temporarily filled his place. He was treated by the same doctor who had visited the young hussar. He assured the stationmaster that the young man had been perfectly well and that even then he had guessed his evil intentions, but had said nothing for fear of his whip. Whether the German was telling the truth, or merely wished to boast of his prescience, he did not comfort his poor patient in the least. Having barely recovered from his illness, the stationmaster obtained a two-month leave from his superior in S–– and, telling no one of his intentions, set out on foot after his daughter. From the travel papers he knew that cavalry captain Minsky was going from Smolensk to Petersburg. The coachman who had driven him said that Dunya had wept all the time on the way, though she seemed to be going of her own will.