“Lise, Lise,” he thought, “and with her ce Maurice. . . .Strange people. . . . But what was the strange fire, and what were they talking about, and who were murdered? I fancy Nastasya has not found out yet and is still waiting for me with my coffee . . . cards? Did I really lose men at cards? H'm! Among us in Russia in the times of serfdom, so called. . . . My God, yes — Fedka!”
He started all over with terror and looked about him. “What if that Fedka is in hiding somewhere behind the bushes? They say he has a regular band of robbers here on the high road. Oh, mercy, I ... I'll tell him the whole truth then, that I was to blame . . . and that I've been miserable about him for ten years.More miserable than he was as a soldier, and . . . I'll give him my purse. H'm! J'ai en tout quarante roubles; il prendra les roubles et il me tuera tout de meme.”
In his panic he for some reason shut up the umbrella and laid it down beside him. A cart came into sight on the high road in the distance coming from the town.
“ Grace a Dieu,that's a cart and it's coming at a walking pace; that can't be dangerous. The wretched little horses here ... I always said that breed ... It was Pyotr Ilyitch though, he talked at the club about horse-breeding and I trumped him, et puis . . .but what's that behind? . . . I believe there's a woman in the cart. A peasant and a woman, cela commenced etre rassurant.The woman behind and the man in front — c'est tres rassurant.There's a cow behind the cart tied by the horns, c'est rassurant au plus haut degre.”
The cart reached him; it was a fairly solid peasant cart. The woman was sitting on a tightly stuffed sack and the man on the front of the cart with his legs hanging over towards Stepan Trofimovitch. A red cow was, in fact, shambling behind, tied by the horns to the cart. The man and the woman gazed open-eyed at Stepan Trofimovitch, and Stepan Trofimovitch gazed back at them with equal wonder, but after he had let them pass twenty paces, he got up hurriedly all of a sudden and walked after them. In the proximity of the cart it was natural that he should feel safer, but when he had overtaken it he became oblivious of everything again and sank back into his disconnected thoughts and fancies. He stepped along with no suspicion, of course, that for the two peasants he was at that instant the most mysterious and interesting object that one could meet on the high road.
“What sort may you be, pray, if it's not uncivil to ask?” the woman could not resist asking at last when Stepan Trofimovitch glanced absent-mindedly at her. She was a woman of about seven and twenty, sturdily built, with black eyebrows, rosy cheeks, and a friendly smile on her red lips, between which gleamed white even teeth.
“You . . . you are addressing me?” muttered Stepan Trofimovitch with mournful wonder.
“A merchant, for sure,” the peasant observed confidently. He was a well-grown man of forty with a broad and intelligent face, framed in a reddish beard.
“No, I am not exactly a merchant, I ... I ... moi c'est autre chose.” Stepan Trofimovitch parried the question somehow, and to be on the safe side he dropped back a little from the cart, so that he was walking on a level with the cow.
“Must be a gentleman,” the man decided, hearing words not Russian, and he gave a tug at the horse.
“That's what set us wondering. You are out for a walk seemingly?” the woman asked inquisitively again.
“You . . . you ask me?”
“Foreigners come from other parts sometimes by the train; your boots don't seem to be from hereabouts. . . .”
“They are army boots,” the man put in complacently and significantly.
“No, I am not precisely in the army, I ...”
“What an inquisitive woman!” Stepan Trofimovitch mused with vexation. “And how they stare at me . . . mais enfin.In fact, it's strange that I feel, as it were, conscience-stricken before them, and yet I've done them no harm.”
The woman was whispering to the man.
“If it's no offence, we'd give you a lift if so be it's agreeable.”
Stepan Trofimovitch suddenly roused himself.
“Yes, yes, my friends, I accept it with pleasure, for I'm very tired; but how am I to get in?”
“How wonderful it is,” he thought to himself, “that I've been walking so long beside that cow and it never entered my head to ask them for a lift. This 'real life' has something very original about it.”
But the peasant had not, however, pulled up the horse.
“But where are you bound for?” he asked with some mistrustfulness.
Stepan Trofimovitch did not understand him at once.
“To Hatovo, I suppose?”
“Hatov? No, not to Hatov's exactly? . . . And I don't know him though I've heard of him.”
“The village of Hatovo, the village, seven miles from here.”
“A village? C'est charmant,to be sure I've heard of it. . . .”
Stepan Trofimovitch was still walking, they had not yet taken him into the cart. A guess that was a stroke of genius flashed through his mind.
“You think perhaps that I am . . . I've got a passport and I am a professor, that is, if you like, a teacher . . . but a head teacher. I am a head teacher. Oui, c'est comme ca qu'on pent traduire.I should be very glad of a lift and I'll buy you . . . I'll buy you a quart of vodka for it.”
“It'll be half a rouble, sir; it's a bad road.”
“Or it wouldn't be fair to ourselves,” put in the woman.
“Half a rouble? Very good then, half a rouble. C'est encore mieux; fai en tout quarante roubles mais . . .”
The peasant stopped the horse and by their united efforts Stepan Trofimovitch was dragged into the cart, and seated on the sack by the woman. He was still pursued by the same whirl of ideas. Sometimes he was aware himself that he was terribly absent-minded, and that he was not thinking of what he ought to be thinking of and wondered at it. This consciousness of abnormal weakness of mind became at moments very painful and even humiliating to him.
“How . . . how is this you've got a cow behind?” he suddenly asked the woman.
“What do you mean, sir, as though you'd never seen one,” laughed the woman.
“We bought it in the town,” the peasant put in. “Our cattle died last spring . . . the plague. All the beasts have died round us, all of them. There aren't half of them left, it's heartbreaking.”
And again he lashed the horse, which had got stuck in a rut.
“Yes, that does happen among you in Russia ... in general we Russians . . . Well, yes, it happens,” Stepan Trofimovitch broke off.
“If you are a teacher, what are you going to Hatovo for? Maybe you are going on farther.”
“I ... I'm not going farther precisely. . . . C'est-d-dire,I'm going to a merchant's.”
“To Spasov, I suppose?”
“Yes, yes, to Spasov. But that's no matter.”
“If you are going to Spasov and on foot, it will take you a week in your boots,” laughed the woman.
“I dare say, I dare say, no matter, mes amis,no matter.” Stepan Trofimovitch cut her short impatiently.
“Awfully inquisitive people; but the woman speaks better than he does, and I notice that since February 19,* their language has altered a little, and . . . and what business is it of mine whether I'm going to Spasov or not? Besides, I'll pay them, so why do they pester me.”
“If you are going to Spasov, you must take the steamer,” the peasant persisted.