IX
As soon as all was quiet, Polikéy climbed down softly, like a guilty man, and began to get ready. Somehow he felt uneasy at the thought of spending the night there among the recruits. The cocks were already crowing more frequently, answering one another. Drum had eaten all his oats, and was straining towards the drinking-trough. Polikéy harnessed him and led him out, past the peasant carts. His cap, with its contents, was safe, and the wheels of his cart were soon rattling along the frozen Pokróvsk road.
Polikéy felt easier only when he had left the town behind. Up to then he kept imagining that at any moment he might hear himself being pursued, that he would be stopped, and that in place of Elijah’s arms his own would be bound behind his back, and he would be taken to the recruiting station next morning. It might have been the frost, or it might have been fear; but something made cold shivers run down his back, and again and again he kept touching up Drum with the whip. The first person he met was a priest in a tall fur cap, accompanied by a workman blind in one eye. Taking this for an evil omen, Polikéy grew still more alarmed; but outside the town this fear gradually passed. Drum went on at a walking pace; the road in front became more visible.
Polikéy took off his cap and felt the notes. “Shall I hide it in my bosom?” he thought. “No; I should have to undo my girdle. … Wait a bit! When I get to the foot of the incline, I’ll get down and arrange myself again. … The cap is sewn up tight at the top, and it can’t fall through the lining. After all, I’d better not take the cap off till I get home.”
When he had reached the foot of the incline, Drum of his own accord trotted up the next hill, and Polikéy, who was as anxious as Drum to get home, did not check him. All was well—at any rate, so Polikéy imagined; and he gave himself up to dreams of his mistress’s gratitude, of the five roubles which she would give him, and of the joy of his family. He took off his cap, felt for the envelope, and, smiling, put the cap tighter on his head. The velveteen crown of the cap was very rotten, and just because Akoulína had carefully sewn up the rents in one place, it burst open in another; and the very movement by which Polikéy in the dark had thought to push the envelope with the money deeper under the wadding, tore the cap farther, and pushed out a corner of the envelope through the velveteen crown.
The dawn was appearing, and Polikéy, who had not slept all night, began to drowse. Pulling his cap lower down, and thereby pushing the envelope still farther out, Polikéy let his head droop forward towards the front of the cart. He awoke near home, and was about to catch hold of his cap; but, feeling that it sat firmly on his head, he did not take it off, convinced that the envelope was inside. He gave Drum a touch, arranged the hay in the cart again, put on the appearance of a well-to-do peasant, and, proudly looking about him, rattled homewards.
There was the kitchen; there the domestic serfs’ quarters. There was the joiner’s wife carrying some linen cloth; there was the office, and there the house of the proprietress, where in a few moments Polikéy would be proving himself to be a trustworthy and honest man. “One can say anything about anybody,” he would say; and the lady would reply, “Well, thank you, Polikéy! Here are three (or perhaps five, perhaps even ten) roubles,” and she would order tea for him, or even vodka. “It would not be amiss, after being out in the cold. With ten roubles we would have a treat on the holiday, and buy boots, and return Nikíta his four and a half roubles (it can’t be helped! … He has begun bothering). …”
When he was some hundred steps from his home, Polikéy wrapped his coat round him, pulled his girdle straight, took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and without haste thrust his hand inside the lining. The hand began to move faster and faster inside the lining, then the other hand went in too, while his face grew paler and paler. One of the hands went right through the cap.
Polikéy fell on his knees, stopped the horse, and began searching in the cart among the hay and the things he had bought, feeling inside his coat and in his trouser pockets. The money was nowhere to be found.
“Dear me! What does it mean? … What is going to happen? …” He began howling, clutching at his hair. But recollecting that he might be seen, he turned the horse back, pulled the cap on, and drove the dissatisfied Drum back along the road.
“I can’t bear going out with Polikéy,” Drum must have thought. “Once in all his life he has fed and watered me at the right time, and then only in order to deceive me so unpleasantly! How hard I tried to run home! I am tired, and hardly have we got within smell of our own hay before he starts driving me back!”
“Now then, you devil’s jade!” shouted Polikéy through his tears, standing up in the cart, pulling at Drum’s mouth and beating him with the whip.