“Like it or not, it’s all Selivashka’s doing. He’s luring us somewhere.”
Hearing that, in such terrible weather, we had fallen into the hands of the villain Selivashka, my cousin and I cried even louder, but my aunt, who was born a country squire’s daughter and was later a colonel’s wife, was not so easily disconcerted as a town lady, for whom various adversities are less familiar. My aunt had experience and know-how, and they saved us in a situation which, in fact, was very dangerous.
XIV
I don’t know whether my aunt believed or not in Selivan’s evil enchantments, but she understood perfectly well that right now the most important thing for our salvation was that our horses not overstrain themselves. If the horses got exhausted and stopped, and if the cold intensified, we would all certainly perish. We’d be smothered by the storm and frozen to death. But if the horses kept enough strength to plod on somehow, step by step, then we could nurse some hope that, going by the wind, they would somehow come out on the road and bring us to some dwelling. Let it be just an unheated hut on chicken’s legs in a gully, still the blizzard wouldn’t rage so fiercely in it, there’d be none of this jerking that we felt each time the horses tried to move their weary legs … There we could fall asleep … My cousin and I wanted terribly to sleep. In that respect the only lucky one among us was the baby girl, who slept on the nanny’s breast under a warm hare coat, but the two of us weren’t allowed to fall asleep. My aunt knew it was dangerous, because a sleeping person freezes sooner. Our situation was becoming worse by the minute, because the horses could barely walk, the coachman and the footman on the box began to freeze and to speak inarticulately, but my aunt stopped paying attention to me and my cousin, and we snuggled up to each other and fell asleep at once. I even had cheerful dreams: summer, our garden, our servants, Apollinary, and suddenly it all skipped over to our outing for lily of the valley and to Selivan, about whom I either heard something, or merely recalled something. It was all confused … I couldn’t tell what was happening in dream and what in reality. I feel cold, hear the howling of the wind and the heavy flapping of the bast mat on the sleigh’s roof, and right in front of my eyes stands Selivan, his jacket over his shoulder, and holding a lantern towards us in his outstretched hand … Is this an apparition, a dream, or a fantastic picture?
But it was not a dream, not a fantasy, but fate had in fact seen fit to bring us on that dreadful night to Selivan’s dreadful inn, and we couldn’t seek salvation anywhere else, because there was no other dwelling close by. And meanwhile we had with us my aunt’s box, in which lay her thirty thousand roubles, constituting her entire fortune. With such tempting riches, how could we stay with such a suspicious man as Selivan?
Of course, we were done for! However, the choice could only be of which was better—to freeze in the blizzard, or die under the knife of Selivan and his evil accomplices?
XV
As in the brief moment when lightning flashes, the eye that was in darkness suddenly makes out a multitude of objects at once, so at the appearance of Selivan’s lantern shining on us, I saw terror on all the faces in our disaster-stricken sleigh. The coachman and footman all but fell on their knees and remained transfixed in that position; my aunt drew back as if she wanted to push through the rear of the sleigh. The nanny pressed her face to the baby and suddenly shrank so much that she became no bigger than a baby herself.
Selivan stood there silently, but … in his unhandsome face I did not see the slightest malice. Only now he seemed more concentrated than when he had carried me on his shoulder. After looking us over, he asked quietly:
“Want to warm up?”
My aunt came to her senses sooner than the rest of us and answered:
“Yes, we’re freezing … Save us!”
“Let God save you! Drive in—the cottage is heated.”
And he stepped off the porch and lit the way for the sleigh.
Between the servants, my aunt, and Selivan there was an exchange of curt little phrases, betraying mistrust and fear of the host on our side, and on Selivan’s side a deeply concealed peasant irony and perhaps also a sort of mistrust.
The coachman asked whether there was any food for the horses.
Selivan replied:
“We’ll look for some.”
The footman Boris tried to find out if there were any other travelers.
“Come in—you’ll see,” replied Selivan.
The nanny said:
“Isn’t it scary to stay with you?”
Selivan replied:
“If you’re scared, don’t go in.”
My aunt stopped them, saying to each of them as softly as she could:
“Stop it, don’t squabble—it won’t help anything. It’s impossible to go further. Let’s stay, and God be with us.”
And meanwhile, as this exchange was going on, we found ourselves in a plank-walled room, partitioned off from the rest of the spacious cottage. My aunt went in first, and Boris brought her box in after her. Then came my cousin and I with the nanny.
The box was placed on the table, and on the box was placed a tallow-spattered tin candlestick with a small candle end, which might last an hour, not more.
My aunt’s practical quick-wittedness turned immediately to this object—that is, to the candle.
“First of all, my dear,” she said to Selivan, “bring me a new candle.”
“There’s a candle here.”
“No, give me a new, whole candle!”
“A new, whole one?” Selivan repeated, resting one hand on the table and the other on the box.
“Give me a new, whole candle at once.”
“What do you need a whole one for?”
“That’s none of your business—I won’t be going to bed very soon. Maybe the blizzard will pass and we’ll go on.”
“The blizzard won’t pass.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter—I’ll pay you for the candle.”
“I know you’d pay, but I don’t have a candle.”
“Look for one, my dear!”
“No point looking for what’s not there!”
An extremely weak, high voice unexpectedly mixed into this conversation from behind the partition.
“We have no candle, dear lady.”
“Who is that speaking?” asked my aunt.
“My wife.”
My aunt’s face and the nanny’s brightened a little. The nearby presence of a woman seemed to have something cheering about it.
“Is she sick or something?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“An ailment. Go to bed, I need the candle end for the lantern. To bring the horses in.”
And no matter what they said to him, Selivan stood his ground: he needed the candle end, and that was that. He promised to bring it back—but meanwhile he took it and left.
Whether Selivan kept his promise to bring the candle end back—I didn’t see, because my cousin and I fell asleep again, though I kept being troubled by something. Through my sleep I heard the occasional whispering of my aunt and the nanny, and in that whispering I most often heard the word “box.”
Obviously, the nanny and our other people knew that this coffer concealed a great treasure, and everybody had noticed that from the first moment it had caught the greedy attention of our untrustworthy host.
Possessed of great practical experience, my aunt clearly saw the necessity of submitting to circumstances, but then she at once gave orders that suited our dangerous situation.
To keep Selivan from murdering us, it was decided that no one should sleep. Orders were given to unharness the horses, but not to remove the collars, and the coachman and footman both had to sit in the sleigh: they mustn’t separate, because Selivan would kill them one by one, and then we would be helpless. Then he would also murder us and bury us all under the floor, where he had already buried the numerous victims of his fiendishness. The footman and coachman couldn’t stay in the cottage with us, because Seli
van could then cut the tugs of the shaft horse, so that it would be impossible to harness up, or else simply hand the whole troika over to his comrades, whom he meanwhile kept hidden somewhere. In that case we would be quite unable to escape, but if the storm let up soon, as might very well happen, then the coachman would start hitching up, Boris would rap three times on the wall, and we would all rush to the yard, get in, and drive off. So as to be constantly at the ready, none of us got undressed.
I don’t know whether the time went quickly or slowly for the others, but for us, the two sleeping boys, it flew by like a single moment, which suddenly ended in a most terrible awakening.
XVI
I woke up because I found it unbearably hard to breathe. When I opened my eyes, I saw precisely nothing, because it was dark all around me, but in the distance something seemed to show gray: that was the window. As in the light of Selivan’s lantern I had at once seen the faces of all the people in that terrible scene, so now I instantly recalled everything—who I was, and where, and why I was there, and who were all my near and dear people in my father’s house—and I felt pity, and pain, and fear for everything and everybody, and I wanted to cry out, but that was impossible. My mouth was tightly covered by a human hand, and a trembling voice was whispering to me:
“Not a sound, quiet, not a sound! We’re lost—somebody’s trying to break in.”
I recognized my aunt’s voice and pressed her hand as a sign that I had understood her request.
A rustling could be heard outside the door to the front hall … Someone was softly stepping from one foot to the other and feeling the wall with his hands … Obviously, the villain was looking for the door but couldn’t find it …
My aunt pressed us to herself and whispered that God might still help us, because she had fortified the door. But at that same moment, probably because we had betrayed ourselves with our whispering and trembling, behind the plank partition where the rest of the cottage was and from where Selivan’s wife had told us about the candle, someone ran and fell upon the one who was softly stealing up to our door, and they both started breaking it down; the door cracked, the table, bench, and suitcases my aunt had piled against it fell to the floor, and in the flung-open doorway appeared the face of Borisushka, with Selivan’s powerful hands around his neck …
Seeing that, my aunt shouted at Selivan and rushed to Boris.
“Dear lady! God has saved us!” wheezed Boris.
Selivan took his hands away and stood there.
“Quick, quick, let’s get out of here,” said my aunt. “Where are our horses?”
“The horses are at the porch, dear lady, I was just going to call you … And this brigand … God has saved us, dear lady!” Boris babbled quickly, seizing my and my cousin’s hands and gathering up all he could on his way. We all rushed out the door, jumped into the carriage, and went galloping off as fast as the horses could go. Selivan seemed painfully disconcerted and followed us with his eyes. He obviously knew that this would not go without consequences.
Outside it was now getting light, and before us in the east glowed the red, frosty Christmas dawn.
XVII
We reached home in no more than half an hour, talking incessantly all the way about the frights we had lived through. My aunt, the nanny, the coachman, and Boris kept interrupting each other and constantly crossing themselves, thanking God for our amazing salvation. My aunt told us she hadn’t slept all night, because she kept hearing someone approaching the door and trying to open it. That had prompted her to block it with whatever she could find. She had also heard some suspicious whispering behind Selivan’s partition, and it had seemed to her that he had quietly opened his door more than once, come out to the front hall, and quietly touched the latch of our door. Our nanny had also heard all that, though she, by her own admission, had fallen asleep on and off. The coachman and Boris had seen more than anyone else. Fearing for the horses, the coachman had never left them for a moment, but Borisushka had come to our door more than once, and each time he had come, Selivan had appeared in his doorway at the same moment. When the blizzard had died down towards dawn, the coachman and Boris had quietly harnessed the horses and quietly driven out through the gate, having opened it themselves; but when Boris had just as quietly come to our door again to lead us out, Selivan, seeing that the booty was slipping through his fingers, had fallen upon Boris and begun to choke him. Thank God, of course, he had not succeeded, and now he was no longer going to get off with suspicions alone, as he had so far: his evil intentions were all too clear and all too obvious, and everything had taken place not eye to eye with some one person, but before six witnesses, of whom my aunt alone was worth several owing to her importance, because the whole town knew her for an intelligent woman, and, despite her modest fortune, the governor visited her, and our then police chief owed her the arranging of his family happiness. At one word from her, he would, of course, immediately start investigating the matter while the trail was hot, and Selivan would not escape the noose he had thought to throw around our necks.
The circumstances themselves seemed to fall together so that everything pointed to immediate revenge for us on Selivan and to his punishment for the brutal attempt on our lives and property.
As we approached our house, beyond the spring on the hill, we met a fellow on horseback, who was extremely glad to see us, swung his legs against his horse’s flanks, and, taking off his hat while still some distance away, rode up to us with a beaming face and began reporting to my aunt about the worry we had caused everybody at home.
It turned out that father, mother, and the entire household as well had not slept that night. They had expected us without fail, and ever since the snowstorm had broken out in the evening, there had been great anxiety as to whether we had lost our way, or some other misfortune had befallen us: we might have broken a shaft in a pothole, we might have been attacked by wolves … Father had sent several men on horseback with lanterns to meet us, but the storm had torn the lanterns from their hands and extinguished them, and neither men nor horses could get very far from the house. A man trudges on for a long time—it seems to him that he’s going against the storm, and suddenly—halt, the horse refuses to move from the spot. The rider urges it on, though he is so choked he can hardly breathe, but the horse doesn’t move … The horseman dismounts, so as to take the bridle and lead the frightened animal on, and suddenly, to his surprise, he discovers that his horse is standing with its forehead leaning against the wall of the stable or the shed … Only one of the scouts made it a little further and had an actual encounter on his way: this was the harness-maker Prokhor. They gave him an outrunner, a postillion’s horse, who used to take the bit between his teeth, so that the iron didn’t touch his lips, and as a result became insensible to any restraint. He carried Prokhor off into the very hell of the snowstorm, and galloped for a long time, kicking up his rump and bobbing his head down to his knees, until finally, during one of these capers, the harness-maker went flying over the horse’s head and landed right in the middle of some strange heap of living people, who, however, at first did not show him any friendliness. On the contrary, one of them straightaway fetched him a whack on the head, another made corrections to his back, and a third set about trampling him with his feet and poking him with something cold, metallic, and extremely uncomfortable for his senses.
Prokhor was nobody’s fool: he realized he was dealing with special creatures and started shouting furiously.
The terror he felt probably lent his voice special force, and he was immediately heard. For his salvation, right there, a couple of steps away from him, a “fiery glow” appeared. This was the light that had been placed in the window of our kitchen, by the wall of which huddled the police chief, his secretary, his messenger, and a coachman with a troika of horses, stuck in a snowdrift.
They, too, had lost their way and, ending up by our kitchen, thought they were somewhere in a field by a haystack.
They were dug out and taken,
some to the kitchen, some to the house, where the police chief was now having tea, hoping to get back to his family in town before they woke up and started worrying about his absence after such a stormy night.
“That’s splendid,” said my aunt. “The police chief is the one we need most of all now.”
“Yes, he’s a plucky fellow—he’ll give it to Selivashka!” people chimed in, and we raced on at a gallop and drove up to the house while the police chief’s troika was still standing at our porch.
They would at once tell the police chief everything, and half an hour later the brigand Selivan would already be in his hands.
XVIII
My father and the police chief were struck by what we had endured on the way and especially in the house of the brigand Selivan, who had wanted to kill us and take our things and money …
By the way, about the money. At the mention of it, my aunt at once exclaimed:
“Ah, my God! Where is my box?”
Where, indeed, was that box and the thousands that were in it?
Just imagine, it wasn’t there! Yes, yes, it was the one thing that wasn’t there, either among the things brought inside, or in the sleigh—in short, not anywhere … The box had obviously remained there and was now in the hands of Selivan … Or … maybe he had even stolen it during the night. It would have been possible for him; as the owner, he would know all the cracks in his wretched house, and there were probably not a few of them … He might have a removable floorboard or a loose plank in the partition.
And the police chief, with his experience in tracking down robberies, had only just uttered this last suggestion about the loose plank, which Selivan might quietly have removed at night and reached through to make away with the box, when my aunt covered her face with her hands and collapsed into an armchair.
Fearing for her box, she had hidden it precisely in the corner under the bench that stood against the partition separating our night lodgings from the part of the cottage where Selivan and his wife lived …
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 60