'All right,' answered Lukashka. 'And if Girey Khan should come across the river send him to me at the cordon, for I shan't get leave again for a long time now; I have some business with him.'
He began to get ready to start.
'I will send him on,' said the old woman. 'It seems you have been spreeing at Yamka's all the time. I went out in the night to see the cattle, and I think it was your voice I heard singing songs.'
Lukashka did not reply, but went out into the passage, threw the bags over his shoulder, tucked up the skirts of his coat, took his musket, and then stopped for a moment on the threshold.
'Good-bye, mother!' he said as he closed the gate behind him. 'Send me a small barrel with Nazarka. I promised it to the lads, and he'll call for it.'
'May Christ keep you, Lukashka. God be with you! I'll send you some, some from the new barrel,' said the old woman, going to the fence: 'But listen,' she added, leaning over the fence.
The Cossack stopped.
'You've been making merry here; well, that's all right. Why should not a young man amuse himself? God has sent you luck and that's good. But now look out and mind, my son. Don't you go and get into mischief. Above all, satisfy your superiors: one has to! And I will sell the wine and find money for a horse and will arrange a match with the girl for you.'
'All right, all right!' answered her son, frowning.
His deaf sister shouted to attract his attention. She pointed to her head and the palm of her hand, to indicate the shaved head of a Chechen. Then she frowned, and pretending to aim with a gun, she shrieked and began rapidly humming and shaking her head. This meant that Lukashka should kill another Chechen.
Lukashka understood. He smiled, and shifting the gun at his back under his cloak stepped lightly and rapidly, and soon disappeared in the thick mist.
The old woman, having stood a little while at the gate, returned silently to the hut and immediately began working.
Chapter XVIII
Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eroshka whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to Olenin's lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked meeting women before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olenin still asleep, and even Vanyusha, though awake, was still in bed and looking round the room considering whether it was not time to get up, when Daddy Eroshka, gun on shoulder and in full hunter's trappings, opened the door.
'A cudgel!' he shouted in his deep voice. 'An alarm! The Chechens are upon us! Ivan! 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!'
Olenin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight of the old man and at the sound of his voice.
'Quick, Vanyusha, 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,
Vanyusha, and the wads!' said Olenin.
'A fine!' shouted the old man.
'Du tay voulay vou?' asked Vanyusha, grinning.
'You're not one of us—your gabble is not like our speech, you devil!' the old man shouted at Vanyusha, showing the stumps of his teeth.
'A first offence must be forgiven,' said Olenin playfully, drawing on his high boots.
'The first offence shall be forgiven,' answered Eroshka, '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 Olenin, 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 Eroshka, 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 Vanyusha came in and announced that the master of the house wished to see Olenin.
'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 Vasilich, 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 Eroshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face and his hands and his red nose. Olenin asked him to sit down.
'Good morning. Father Elias Vasilich,' said Eroshka, rising with (or so it seemed to Olenin) 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 Olenin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary Cossack, and wanted to let Olenin feel his importance from the first.
'That's our Egyptian Nimrod,' he remarked, addressing Olenin 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 Eroshka 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 Olenin.
'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 Olenin 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, Olenin gathered that the cornet wished to let his rooms to him, Olenin, 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.