That, too, we all saw.
But however it was, our tall tales caused Selivan much grief: his place was searched, his whole forest was combed, and he himself was kept under guard for a long time, but nothing suspicious was found, and no traces of the murdered woman we had all seen turned up either. Selivan went back home again, but that didn’t help him in public opinion: after that, everybody knew he was an undoubted, though elusive, villain, and nobody would have anything to do with him. As for me, so that I wouldn’t be exposed to the strong influence of the poetic element, I was taken to a “noble boarding school,” where I began to acquire a general education in perfect tranquillity, until the approach of the Christmas holidays, when it was time for me to go home, again inevitably passing Selivan’s inn, and seeing great horrors in it with my own eyes.
XII
Selivan’s bad repute earned me great prestige among my boarding school comrades, with whom I shared my knowledge of this horrible man. None of my schoolmates had yet experienced such horrific sensations as I could boast of, and now, when I was faced with driving past Selivan again—to that no one could remain unconcerned and indifferent. On the contrary, most of my comrades pitied me and said straight out that they wouldn’t want to be in my place, though two or three daredevils envied me and boasted that they would like very much to meet Selivan face-to-face. But two of them were inveterate braggarts, while the third could very well not fear anyone, because, according to him, his grandmother had an antique Venetian ring with a tavousi stone in it, which made a man “inaccessible to any trouble.”† In my family there was no such jewel, and, besides, I was supposed to make my Christmas journey not with our own horses, but with my aunt, who had sold her house in Orel just before the holidays and, having received thirty thousand roubles for it, was coming to us to buy an estate in our parts that my father had long ago negotiated for her.
To my vexation, my aunt’s departure had been delayed a whole two days by some important business matters, and we left Orel only on the morning before Christmas.
We traveled in a roomy bast-covered sleigh hitched to a troika, with the coachman Spiridon and the young footman Boriska. In the sleigh were my aunt, myself, my boy cousin, my little girl cousins, and the nanny Lyubov Timofeevna.
With decent horses on a good road, one could reach our estate from Orel in five or six hours. We arrived in Kromy at two o’clock and stopped at a merchant’s we knew, to have tea and feed the horses. This was a usual stopover for us, and it was also necessary for the toilette of my little cousin, who was still in diapers.
The weather was good, close to being a thaw; but while we were feeding the horses, a slight chill set in, and then it began to “smoke”—that is, a fine snow blew low over the ground.
My aunt hesitated whether to wait until it was over or, on the contrary, to hurry up and start sooner, so as to get home before the real storm broke.
We had some fourteen miles left to go. The coachman and the footman, who wanted to see in the holiday with their families and friends, assured us that we had time to make it safely, as long as we didn’t dawdle and set out soon.
My own wishes and my aunt’s also corresponded fully to what Spiridon and Boriska wanted. No one wanted to see in the holiday in a strange house in Kromy. Besides, my aunt was mistrustful and suspicious, and she now had a considerable sum of money with her, placed in a little mahogany box, covered with a slipcase of thick green frieze.
To spend the night in a strange house with such a large sum of money seemed very unsafe to my aunt, and she decided to heed the advice of our faithful servants.
At a little past three, our sleigh was hitched up and left Kromy in the direction of the schismatic village of Kolchevo;8 but we had only just crossed the river Kroma over the ice when we felt as if we suddenly didn’t have enough air to take a deep breath. The horses ran quickly, snorting and wagging their heads, which was a sure sign that they also felt a lack of air. Meanwhile the sleigh raced along with a peculiar lightness, as if it were being pushed from behind. The wind was at our backs, and seemed to be urging us on with redoubled speed towards some predestined boundary line. Soon, however, our brisk path began to “stammer”; soft snowdrifts already appeared along the road—they became more and more frequent, and soon enough our former brisk path couldn’t be seen at all.
My aunt peeked worriedly out of the window to ask the coachman whether we had kept to the right road, but drew back at once, all showered with fine, cold dust, and before we managed to catch the attention of the men on the box, snow came rushing past in thick flakes, the sky turned dark in an instant, and we found ourselves in the grip of a real blizzard.
XIII
To go back to Kromy was as dangerous as to go on. It was probably more dangerous behind us, because there was the river, with several ice holes near the town, and we might easily not see them in the snowstorm and fall through the ice, while ahead there was the level steppe and only Selivan’s forest at the fifth mile, which was no more dangerous in a storm, because it must even have been quieter in the forest. Besides, the road didn’t go deep into the forest, but ran along the edge of it. The forest could only serve us as an indication that we were halfway home, and therefore the coachman Spiridon drove the horses more quickly.
The road kept getting more difficult and snowy: the former merry noise of the runners was forgotten; on the contrary, the sleigh crawled over crumbly snowdrifts and soon began lurching now this way, now that.
We lost our calm state of mind and began asking the footman and the coachman all the time about our situation, receiving uncertain and hesitant replies from them. They tried to instill in us a confidence in our safety, while feeling no such confidence themselves.
After half an hour of quick driving, with Spiridon whipping up the horses more and more often, we were cheered by the outcry:
“There’s Selivan’s forest coming in sight!”
“Is it far off?” asked my aunt.
“No, we’ve almost reached it.”
That was as it should have been—we had already been driving for about an hour since Kromy, but another good half hour went by—we kept driving, and the whip snapped over the horses more and more often, but there was no forest.
“What’s wrong? Where’s Selivan’s forest?”
No reply from the box.
“Where’s the forest?” my aunt asked again. “Have we passed it?”