VII
Early next morning a big-boned bay gelding—for some reason called Drum—harnessed to a small cart (the steward himself used to drive in that cart), stood at the porch of the serfs’ quarters. Annie, Polikéy’s eldest daughter, barefooted in spite of the falling sleet and the cold wind, and evidently frightened, stood holding the reins at arm’s length, and with her other hand held a faded, yellowy-green jacket that was thrown over her head. This jacket served the family as blanket, cloak, hood, carpet, overcoat for Polikéy, and many other things besides. Polikéy’s cubicle was all in a bustle. The dim light of a rainy morning was just peeping in at the window, which was broken here and there, and mended with paper. Akoulína went away from her cooking by the oven, and left her children—the youngest of whom were still in bed—shivering because the jacket that served them as a blanket had been taken away and only replaced by the shawl off their mother’s head.
Akoulína was busy getting her husband ready for his journey. His shirt was clean, but his boots, which were gaping open, gave her much trouble. She had taken off her thick worsted stockings (her only pair) and given them to her husband, and had managed to cut out a pair of soles from a saddlecloth (that had been carelessly left about in the stable and brought home by Polikéy two days before) in such a way that they should stop the holes in his boots and keep his feet dry.
Polikéy sat, feet and all on the bed, untwisting his girdle so that it should not look like a dirty rope. The lisping, cross little girl, wrapped in the sheepskin (which though it covered her head was trailing round her feet) had been despatched to ask Nikíta to lend them a cap. The bustle was increased by the other serfs, who came to ask Polikéy to get different things for them in town. One wanted needles; another, tea; a third, some tobacco; and another, some oil to burn before his icon. The joiner’s wife—who to conciliate Polikéy had already had time to boil her samovar, and bring him a mug full of liquid which she called tea—wanted some sugar.
Though Nikíta refused to lend a cap, and they had to mend their own—i.e., to push in the bits of wadding that hung out of the rents and to sew them up with the surgical needle; though at first the boots with the saddlecloth soles would not go on to his feet; though Annie, chilled through, nearly let Drum get away, and Mary, in the long sheepskin, had to take her place, and then Mary had to take off the sheepskin, and Akoulína had to hold the horse herself—it all ended by Polikéy successfully getting all the warm family garments on to himself, leaving only the jacket and a pair of slippers behind. When ready, he got into the little cart. He wrapped the sheepskin coat round him, shook up the bag of hay at the bottom of the cart, again wrapped himself round, took the reins, wrapped the coat still closer round him in the way that very respectable men do, and started.
His little boy Mike, running out into the porch, begged to have a ride; the lisping Mary also begged that she might “have a lide,” and was “not cold even without the theepthkin;” so Polikéy stopped Drum and smiled his weak smile, while Akoulína put the children into the cart and, bending towards him, asked him in a whisper to remember his oath, and not to drink on the way.
Polikéy took the children through the village as far as the smithy, put them down, wrapped himself up and put his cap straight again, and drove off at a slow, sedate trot, his cheeks shaking at every jolt and his feet knocking against the sides of the cart. Mary and Mike, with their bare feet, rushed down the slippery hill to the house at such a rate, and yelling so, that a stray dog from the village looked up at them and scurried home with its tail between its legs, which made Polikéy’s heirs yell ten times louder.
It was abominable weather: the wind was cutting, and something between rain and snow, and now and then fine hail, beat on Polikéy’s face and on his bare hands which held the reins—and over which he kept drawing the sleeves of his coat—and on the leather of the horse-collar, and on the old head of Drum, who set back his ears and half closed his eyes.
Then suddenly the rain stopped, and it brightened up for a moment. The bluish snow-clouds stood out clear, and the sun seemed to come out, but uncertainly and cheerlessly, like Polikéy’s own smile. Nevertheless, Polikéy was deep in pleasant thoughts. He whom they threatened to exile and enlist, whom only those who were too lazy did not scold and beat, who was always shoved into the worst places, he was now driving to fetch a sum of money, and a large sum, and his mistress trusted him, and he was driving in the steward’s cart behind Drum—with whom the lady herself had driven out—just as if he were some innkeeper, with leather collar-strap and reins instead of ropes. And Polikéy settled himself straighter, pushed in the bits of wadding hanging out of his cap, and again wrapped his coat closer.
However, if Polikéy imagined that he looked like a wealthy peasant proprietor, he deluded himself. It is true that everyone knows that tradesmen worth ten thousand roubles drive in carts with leather harness; only this was not quite the thing. A bearded man in a blue or black coat drives past, sitting alone inside a cart, driving a well-fed horse, and you just glance to see if the horse is sleek and he himself well fed, and at the way he sits, at the horse’s harness, and the tyres of the cartwheels and at his girdle, and you know at once whether the man has a turnover of a hundred or a thousand roubles. Every experienced person looking closer at Polikéy, at his hands, his face, his newly-grown beard, his girdle, at the hay carelessly thrown into the cart, at the bony Drum, at the worn tyres, would know at once that it was only a serf driving past, and not a merchant, or a cattle-dealer, or even a peasant proprietor, and that he was not worth a thousand, or a hundred, or even ten, roubles.
But Polikéy did not think so: he deceived himself, and deceived himself agreeably. Three half-thousand roubles he is going to carry home in the bosom of his coat. If he likes, he may turn Drum’s head towards Odessa, instead of towards home, and drive off where Fate will take him. But he will not do such a thing; he will bring the lady her money all in order, and will talk about having had larger sums than that on him.
When they came to a public-house Drum began to pull against the left rein, turning towards it and stopping; but Polikéy, though he had the money given him to do the shopping with, cracked the whip above Drum’s head and drove on. The same thing happened at the next public-house, and about noon he got out of the cart, and, opening the gate of the tradesman’s house where all his proprietress’s people put up, led the horse and cart into the yard. There he gave the horse some hay, dined with the tradesman’s men, not forgetting to say what important business he had come on, and then went out, with the fruitseller’s bill in the crown of his cap.
The fruitseller (who knew and evidently mistrusted Polikéy), having read the letter, questioned him as to whether he had really been sent for the money. Polikéy tried to seem offended, but could not manage it, and only smiled his peculiar smile. The fruitseller read the letter over once more, and handed him the money.
Having received the money, Polikéy put it into his bosom and went back to the lodgings. Neither the beershop nor the public-house nor anything tempted him. He felt a pleasant agitation through the whole of his being, and stopped more than once in front of shops exhibiting tempting wares: boots, coats, caps, prints, and foodstuffs, and went on with the pleasant thought: “I could buy it all, but there, now, I won’t do it!”
He went to the market for the things he was asked to buy, collected them all, and started bargaining for a tanned sheepskin coat, for which they were asking twenty-five roubles. For some reason the dealer, after looking at Polikéy, seemed to doubt that he could buy it. But Polikéy pointed to his breast, saying that if he liked he could buy the whole shop, and asked to have the coat tried on; felt it, patted it, blew into the wool till he became permeated with the smell of it, and then took it off with a sigh.
“The price does not suit me. If you’ll let it go for fifteen roubles, now!” he said.
The dealer angrily threw the coat across the table, and Polikéy went out and cheerfully returned to his lodgings.
After supper, having watered Drum and given him some oats, he climbed up on the oven, took out the envelope with the money and examined it for a long time, and then asked a porter, who knew how to read, to read him the address and the words: “With an enclosure of one thousand six hundred and seventeen Assignation Roubles.” The envelope was made of common paper, and sealed with brown sealing-wax, with an anchor stamped on it. There was one large seal in the middle, four at the corners, and there was a drop of sealing-wax near the edge. Polikéy examined all this, and learnt it by heart. He even felt the sharp corners of the paper money. It gave him a kind of childish pleasure to know that he had so much money in his hands. He inserted the money into a hole in the lining of his cap, and lay down with his head on it; but even in the night he kept waking and feeling the envelope. And each time he found it in its place he experienced the pleasant feeling that here was he, the disgraced, the downtrodden Polikéy, carrying such a sum and delivering it up so accurately, as even the steward would not have done.