Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

I

I WAS returning home by the fields. It was midsummer, the hay harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers – red, white, and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow centres and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow, red, and pink scabious; faintly scented, neatly arranged purple plantains with blossoms slightly tinged with pink; cornflowers, the newly opened blossoms bright blue in the sunshine but growing paler and redder towards evening or when growing old; and delicate almond-scented dodder flowers that withered quickly. I gathered myself a large nosegay and was going home when I noticed in a ditch, in full bloom, a beautiful thistle plant of the crimson variety, which in our neighbourhood they call ‘Tartar’ and carefully avoid when mowing – or, if they do happen to cut it down, throw out from among the grass for fear of pricking their hands. Thinking to pick this thistle and put it in the centre of my nosegay, I climbed down into the ditch, and after driving away a velvety humble-bee that had penetrated deep into one of the flowers and had there fallen sweetly asleep, I set to work to pluck the flower. But this proved a very difficult task. Not only did the stalk prick on every side – even through the handkerchief I wrapped round my hand – but it was so tough that I had to struggle with it for nearly five minutes, breaking the fibres one by one; and when I had at last plucked it, the stalk was all frayed and the flower itself no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Moreover, owing to its coarseness and stiffness, it did not seem in place among the delicate blossoms of my nosegay. I threw it away feeling sorry to have vainly destroyed a flower that looked beautiful in its proper place.

‘But what energy and tenacity! With what determination it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life!’ thought I, remembering the effort it had cost me to pluck the flower. The way home led across black-earth fields that had just been ploughed up. I ascended the dusty path. The ploughed field belonged to a landed proprietor and was so large that on both sides and before me to the top of the hill nothing was visible but evenly furrowed and moist earth. The land was well tilled and nowhere was there a blade of grass or any kind of plant to be seen, it was all black. ‘Ah, what a destructive creature is man.… How many different plant-lives he destroys to support his own existence!’ thought I, involuntarily looking around for some living thing in this lifeless black field. In front of me to the right of the road I saw some kind of little clump, and drawing nearer I found it was the same kind of thistle as that which I had vainly plucked and thrown away. This ‘Tartar’ plant had three branches. One was broken and stuck out like the stump of a mutilated arm. Each of the other two bore a flower, once red but now blackened. One stalk was broken, and half of it hung down with a soiled flower at its tip. The other, though also soiled with black mud, still stood erect. Evidently a cartwheel had passed over the plant but it had risen again, and that was why, though erect, it stood twisted to one side, as if a piece of its body had been torn from it, its bowels drawn out, an arm torn off, and one of its eyes plucked out. Yet it stood firm and did not surrender to man who had destroyed all its brothers around it.…

‘What vitality!’ I thought. ‘Man has conquered everything and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won’t submit.’ And I remembered a Caucasian episode of years ago, which I had partly seen myself, partly heard of from eye-witnesses, and in part imagined.

The episode, as it has taken shape in my memory and imagination, was as follows.

* * *

It happened towards the end of 1851.

On a cold November evening Hadji Murád rode into Makhmet, a hostile Chechen aoul that lay some fifteen miles from Russian territory and was filled with the scented smoke of burning kizyák. The strained chant of the muezzin had just ceased, and through the clear mountain air, impregnated with kizyák smoke, above the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep that were dispersing among the sáklyas (which were crowded together like the cells of a honeycomb), could be clearly heard the guttural voices of disputing men, and sounds of women’s and children’s voices rising from near the fountain below.

This Hadji Murád was Shamil’s naïb, famous for his exploits, who used never to ride out without his banner and some dozens of murids, who caracoled and showed off before him. Now wrapped in hood and búrka, from under which protruded a rifle, he rode, a fugitive, with one murid only, trying to attract as little attention as possible and peering with his quick black eyes into the faces of those he met on his way.

When he entered the aoul, instead of riding up the road leading to the open square, he turned to the left into a narrow side-street, and on reaching the second sáklya, which was cut into the hill-side, he stopped and looked round. There was no one under the penthouse in front, but on the roof of the sáklya itself, behind the freshly plastered clay chimney, lay a man covered with a sheepskin. Hadji Murád touched him with the handle of his leather-plaited whip and clicked his tongue, and an old man, wearing a greasy old beshmét and a nightcap, rose from under the sheepskin. His moist red eyelids had no lashes, and he blinked to get them unstuck. Hadji Murád, repeating the customary ‘Selaam aleikum!’ uncovered his face. ‘Aleikum, selaam!’ said the old man, recognizing him, and smiling with his toothless mouth. And raising himself on his thin legs he began thrusting his feet into the wooden-heeled slippers that stood by the chimney. Then he leisurely slipped his arms into the sleeves of his crumpled sheepskin, and going to the ladder that leant against the roof he descended backwards. While he dressed and as he climbed down he kept shaking his head on its thin, shrivelled sunburnt neck and mumbling something with his toothless mouth. As soon as he reached the ground he hospitably seized Hadji Murád’s bridle and right stirrup; but the strong active murid had quickly dismounted and, motioning the old man aside, took his place. Hadji Murád also dismounted, and walking with a slight limp, entered under the penthouse. A boy of fifteen, coming quickly out of the door, met him and wonderingly fixed his sparkling eyes, black as ripe sloes, on the new arrivals.

‘Run to the mosque and call your father,’ ordered the old man as he hurried forward to open the thin, creaking door into the sáklya.

As Hadji Murád entered the outer door, a slight, spare, middle-aged woman in a yellow smock, red beshmét, and wide blue trousers came through an inner door carrying cushions.

‘May thy coming bring happiness!’ said she, and bending nearly double began arranging the cushions along the front wall for the guest to sit on.

‘May thy sons live!’ answered Hadji Murád, taking off his búrka, his rifle, and his sword, and handing them to the old man who carefully hung the rifle and sword on a nail beside the weapons of the master of the house, which were suspended between two large basins that glittered against the clean clay-plastered and carefully whitewashed wall.

Hadji Murád adjusted the pistol at his back, came up to the cushions, and wrapping his Circassian coat closer round him, sat down. The old man squatted on his bare heels beside him, closed his eyes, and lifted his hands palms upwards. Hadji Murád did the same; then after repeating a prayer they both stroked their faces, passing their hands downwards till the palms joined at the end of their beards.

‘Ne habar?’ (‘Is there anything new?’) asked Hadji Murád, addressing the old man.

‘Habar yok’ (‘Nothing new’), replied the old man, looking with his lifeless red eyes not at Hadji Murád’s face but at his breast. ‘I live at the apiary and have only to-day come to see my son.… He knows.’

Hadji Murád, understanding that the old man did not wish to say what he knew and what Hadji Murád wanted to know, slightly nodded his head and asked no more questions.

‘There is no good news,’ said the old man. ‘The only news is that the hares keep discussing how to drive away the eagles, and the eagles tear first one and then another of them. The other day the Russian dogs burnt the hay in the Mitchit aoul.… May their faces be torn!’ he added hoarsely and angrily.

Hadji Murád’s murid entered the room, his strong legs striding softly over the earthen floor. Retaining only his dagger and pistol, he took off his búrka, rifle, and sword as Hadji Murád had done, and hung them up on the same nails as his leader’s weapons.

‘Who is he?’ asked the old man, pointing to the newcomer.

‘My murid. Eldár is his name,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘That is well,’ said the old man, and motioned Eldár to a place on a piece of felt beside Hadji Murád. Eldár sat down, crossing his legs and fixing his fine ram-like eyes on the old man who, having now started talking, was telling how their brave fellows had caught two Russian soldiers the week before and had killed one and sent the other to Shamil in Vedén.

Hadji Murád heard him absently, looking at the door and listening to the sounds outside. Under the penthouse steps were heard, the door creaked, and Sado, the master of the house, came in. He was a man of about forty, with a small beard, long nose, and eyes as black, though not as glittering, as those of his fifteen-year-old son who had run to call him home and who now entered with his father and sat down by the door. The master of the house took off his wooden slippers at the door, and pushing his old and much-worn cap to the back of his head (which had remained unshaved so long that it was beginning to be overgrown with black hair), at once squatted down in front of Hadji Murád.

He too lifted his hands palms upwards, as the old man had done, repeated a prayer, and then stroked his face downwards. Only after that did he begin to speak. He told how an order had come from Shamil to seize Hadji Murád alive or dead, that Shamil’s envoys had left only the day before, that the people were afraid to disobey Shamil’s orders, and that therefore it was necessary to be careful.

‘In my house,’ said Sado, ‘no one shall injure my kunák while I live, but how will it be in the open fields?… We must think it over.’

Hadji Murád listened with attention and nodded approvingly. When Sado had finished he said:

‘Very well. Now we must send a man with a letter to the Russians. My murid will go but he will need a guide.’

‘I will send brother Bata,’ said Sado. ‘Go and call Bata,’ he added, turning to his son.

The boy instantly bounded to his nimble feet as if he were on springs, and swinging his arms, rapidly left the sáklya. Some ten minutes later he returned with a sinewy, short-legged Chechen, burnt almost black by the sun, wearing a worn and tattered yellow Circassian coat with frayed sleeves, and crumpled black leggings.

Hadji Murád greeted the newcomer, and again without wasting a single word, immediately asked:

‘Canst thou conduct my murid to the Russians?’

‘I can,’ gaily replied Bata. ‘I can certainly do it. There is not another Chechen who would pass as I can. Another might agree to go and might promise anything, but would do nothing; but I can do it!’

‘All right,’ said Hadji Murád. ‘Thou shalt receive three for thy trouble,’ and he held up three fingers.

Bata nodded to show that he understood, and added that it was not money he prized, but that he was ready to serve Hadji Murád for the honour alone. Everyone in the mountains knew Hadji Murád, and how he slew the Russian swine.

‘Very well.… A rope should be long but a speech short,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘Well then I’ll hold my tongue,’ said Bata.

‘Where the river Argun bends by the cliff,’ said Hadji Murád, ‘there are two stacks in a glade in the forest – thou knowest?’

‘I know.’

‘There my four horsemen are waiting for me,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘Aye,’ answered Bata, nodding.

‘Ask for Khan Mahomá. He knows what to do and what to say. Canst thou lead him to the Russian commander, Prince Vorontsóv?’

‘Yes, I’ll take him.’

‘Canst thou take him and bring him back again?’

‘I can.’

‘Then take him there and return to the wood. I shall be there too.’

‘I will do it all,’ said Bata, rising, and putting his hands on his heart he went out.

Hadji Murád turned to his host.

‘A man must also be sent to Chekhi,’ he began, and took hold of one of the cartridge pouches of his Circassian coat, but let his hand drop immediately and became silent on seeing two women enter the sáklya.

One was Sado’s wife – the thin middle-aged woman who had arranged the cushions. The other was quite a young girl, wearing red trousers and a green beshmét. A necklace of silver coins covered the whole front of her dress, and at the end of the short but thick plait of hard black hair that hung between her thin shoulder-blades a silver ruble was suspended. Her eyes, as sloe-black as those of her father and brother, sparkled brightly in her young face which tried to be stern. She did not look at the visitors, but evidently felt their presence.

Sado’s wife brought in a low round table on which stood tea, pancakes in butter, cheese, churek (that is, thinly rolled out bread), and honey. The girl carried a basin, a ewer, and a towel.

Sado and Hadji Murád kept silent as long as the women, with their coin ornaments tinkling, moved softly about in their red soft-soled slippers, setting out before the visitors the things they had brought. Eldár sat motionless as a statue, his ram-like eyes fixed on his crossed legs, all the time the women were in the sáklya. Only after they had gone and their soft footsteps could no longer be heard behind the door, did he give a sigh of relief.

Hadji Murád having pulled out a bullet from one of the cartridge-pouches of his Circassian coat, and having taken out a rolled-up note that lay beneath it, held it out, saying:

‘To be handed to my son.’

‘Where must the answer be sent?’

‘To thee; and thou must forward it to me.’

‘It shall be done,’ said Sado, and placed the note in a cartridge-pocket of his own coat. Then he took up the metal ewer and moved the basin towards Hadji Murád.

Hadji Murád turned up the sleeves of his beshmét on his white muscular arms, held out his hands under the clear cold water which Sado poured from the ewer, and having wiped them on a clean unbleached towel, turned to the table. Eldár did the same. While the visitors ate, Sado sat opposite and thanked them several times for their visit. The boy sat by the door never taking his sparkling eyes off Hadji Murád’s face, and smiled as if in confirmation of his father’s words.

Though he had eaten nothing for more than twenty-four hours Hadji Murád ate only a little bread and cheese; then, drawing out a small knife from under his dagger, he spread some honey on a piece of bread.

‘Our honey is good,’ said the old man, evidently pleased to see Hadji Murád eating his honey. ‘This year, above all other years, it is plentiful and good.’

‘I thank thee,’ said Hadji Murád and turned from the table. Eldár would have liked to go on eating but he followed his leader’s example, and having moved away from the table, handed him the ewer and basin.

Sado knew that he was risking his life by receiving such a guest in his house, for after his quarrel with Shamil the latter had issued a proclamation to all the inhabitants of Chechnya forbidding them to receive Hadji Murád on pain of death. He knew that the inhabitants of the aoul might at any moment become aware of Hadji Murád’s presence in his house and might demand his surrender. But this not only did not frighten Sado, it even gave him pleasure: he considered it his duty to protect his guest though it should cost him his life, and he was proud and pleased with himself because he was doing his duty.

‘Whilst thou art in my house and my head is on my shoulders no one shall harm thee,’ he repeated to Hadji Murád.

Hadji Murád looked into his glittering eyes and understanding that this was true, said with some solemnity –

‘Mayest thou receive joy and life!’

Sado silently laid his hand on his heart in token of thanks for these kind words.

Having closed the shutters of the sáklya and laid some sticks in the fireplace, Sado, in an exceptionally bright and animated mood, left the room and went into that part of his sáklya where his family all lived. The women had not yet gone to sleep, and were talking about the dangerous visitors who were spending the night in their guest-chamber.

II

AT Vozdvízhensk, the advanced fort situated some ten miles from the aoul in which Hadji Murád was spending the night, three soldiers and a non-commissioned officer left the fort and went beyond the Shahgirínsk Gate. The soldiers, dressed as Caucasian soldiers used to be in those days, wore sheepskin coats and caps, and boots that reached above their knees, and they carried their cloaks tightly rolled up and fastened across their shoulders. Shouldering arms, they first went some five hundred paces along the road and then turned off it and went some twenty paces to the right – the dead leaves rustling under their boots – till they reached the blackened trunk of a broken plane tree just visible through the darkness. There they stopped. It was at this plane tree that an ambush party was usually placed.

The bright stars, that had seemed to be running along the tree-tops while the soldiers were walking through the forest, now stood still, shining brightly between the bare branches of the trees.

‘A good job it’s dry,’ said the non-commissioned officer Panóv, bringing down his long gun and bayonet with a clang from his shoulder and placing it against the plane tree.

The three soldiers did the same.

‘Sure enough I’ve lost it!’ muttered Panóv crossly. ‘Must have left it behind or I’ve dropped it on the way.’

‘What are you looking for?’ asked one of the soldiers in a bright, cheerful voice.

‘The bowl of my pipe. Where the devil has it got to?’

‘Have you got the stem?’ asked the cheerful voice.

‘Here it is.’

‘Then why not stick it straight into the ground?’

‘Not worth bothering!’

‘We’ll manage that in a minute.’

Smoking in ambush was forbidden, but this ambush hardly deserved the name. It was rather an outpost to prevent the mountaineers from bringing up a cannon unobserved and firing at the fort as they used to. Panóv did not consider it necessary to forgo the pleasure of smoking, and therefore accepted the cheerful soldier’s offer. The latter took a knife from his pocket and made a small round hole in the ground. Having smoothed it, he adjusted the pipe-stem to it, then filled the hole with tobacco and pressed it down, and the pipe was ready. A sulphur match flared and for a moment lit up the broad-cheeked face of the soldier who lay on his stomach, the air whistled in the stem, and Panóv smelt the pleasant odour of burning tobacco.

‘Fixed it up?’ said he, rising to his feet.

‘Why, of course!’

‘What a smart chap you are, Avdéev!… As wise as a judge! Now then, lad.’

Avdéev rolled over on his side to make room for Panóv, letting smoke escape from his mouth.

Panóv lay down prone, and after wiping the mouthpiece with his sleeve, began to inhale.

When they had had their smoke the soldiers began to talk.

‘They say the commander has had his fingers in the cashbox again,’ remarked one of them in a lazy voice. ‘He lost at cards, you see.’

‘He’ll pay it back again,’ said Panóv.

‘Of course he will! He’s a good officer,’ assented Avdéev.

‘Good! good!’ gloomily repeated the man who had started the conversation. ‘In my opinion the company ought to speak to him. “If you’ve taken the money, tell us how much and when you’ll repay it.’ ”

‘That will be as the company decides,’ said Panóv, tearing himself away from the pipe.

‘Of course. “The community is a strong man,” ’ assented Avdéev, quoting a proverb.

‘There will be oats to buy and boots to get towards spring. The money will be wanted, and what shall we do if he’s pocketed it?’ insisted the dissatisfied one.

‘I tell you it will be as the company wishes,’ repeated Panóv. ‘It’s not the first time: he takes it and gives it back.’

In the Caucasus in those days each company chose men to manage its own commissariat. They received 6 rubles 50 kopeks¹ a month per man from the treasury, and catered for the company. They planted cabbages, made hay, had their own carts, and prided themselves on their well-fed horses. The company’s money was kept in a chest of which the commander had the key, and it often happened that he borrowed from the chest. This had just happened again, and the soldiers were talking about it. The morose soldier, Nikítin, wished to demand an account from the commander, while Panóv and Avdéev considered that unnecessary.

After Panóv, Nikítin had a smoke, and then spreading his cloak on the ground sat down on it leaning against the trunk of the plane tree. The soldiers were silent. Far above their heads the crowns of the trees rustled in the wind and suddenly, above this incessant low rustling, rose the howling, whining, weeping, and chuckling of jackals.

‘Just listen to those accursed creatures – how they caterwaul!’

‘They’re laughing at you because your mouth’s all on one side,’ remarked the high voice of the third soldier, an Ukrainian.

All was silent again, except for the wind that swayed the branches, now revealing and now hiding the stars.

‘I say, Panóv,’ suddenly asked the cheerful Avdéev, ‘do you ever feel dull?’

‘Dull, why?’ replied Panóv reluctantly.

‘Well, I do.… I feel so dull sometimes that I don’t know what I might not be ready to do to myself.’

‘There now!’ was all Panóv replied.

‘That time when I drank all the money it was from dullness. It took hold of me … took hold of me till I thought to myself, “I’ll just get blind drunk!’ ”

‘But sometimes drinking makes it still worse.’

‘Yes, that’s happened to me too. But what is a man to do with himself?’

‘But what makes you feel so dull?’

‘What, me?… Why, it’s the longing for home.’

‘Is yours a wealthy home then?’

‘No; we weren’t wealthy, but things went properly – we lived well.’ And Avdéev began to relate what he had already told Panóv many times.

‘You see, I went as a soldier of my own free will, instead of my brother,’ he said. ‘He has children. They were five in the family and I had only just married. Mother began begging me to go. So I thought, “Well, maybe they will remember what I’ve done.” So I went to our proprietor … he was a good master and he said, “You’re a fine fellow, go!” So I went instead of my brother.’

‘Well, that was right,’ said Panóv.

‘And yet, will you believe me, Panóv, it’s chiefly because of that that I feel so dull now? “Why did you go instead of your brother?” I say to myself. “He’s living like a king now over there, while you have to suffer here”; and the more I think of it the worse I feel.… It seems just a piece of ill-luck!’

Avdéev was silent.

‘Perhaps we’d better have another smoke,’ said he after a pause.

‘Well then, fix it up!’

But the soldiers were not to have their smoke. Hardly had Avdéev risen to fix the pipe-stem in its place when above the rustling of the trees they heard footsteps along the road. Panóv took his gun and pushed Nikítin with his foot.

Nikítin rose and picked up his cloak.

The third soldier, Bondarénko, rose also, and said:

‘And I have dreamt such a dream, mates.…’

‘Sh!’ said Avdéev, and the soldiers held their breath, listening. The footsteps of men in soft-soled boots were heard approaching. The fallen leaves and dry twigs could be heard rustling clearer and clearer through the darkness. Then came the peculiar guttural tones of Chechen voices. The soldiers could now not only hear men approaching, but could see two shadows passing through a clear space between the trees; one shadow taller than the other. When these shadows had come in line with the soldiers, Panóv, gun in hand, stepped out on to the road, followed by his comrades.

‘Who goes there?’ cried he.

‘Me, friendly Chechen,’ said the shorter one. This was Bata. ‘Gun, yok!… sword, yok!’ said he, pointing to himself. ‘Prince, want!’

The taller one stood silent beside his comrade. He too was unarmed.

‘He means he’s a scout, and wants the Colonel,’ explained Panóv to his comrades.

‘Prince Vorontsóv … much want! Big business!’ said Bata.

‘All right, all right! We’ll take you to him,’ said Panóv. ‘I say, you’d better take them,’ said he to Avdéev, ‘you and Bondarénko; and when you’ve given them up to the officer on duty come back again. Mind,’ he added, ‘be careful to make them keep in front of you!’

‘And what of this?’ said Avdéev, moving his gun and bayonet as though stabbing someone. ‘I’d just give a dig, and let the steam out of him!’

‘What’ll he be worth when you’ve stuck him?’ remarked Bondarénko.

‘Now, march!’

When the steps of the two soldiers conducting the scouts could no longer be heard, Panóv and Nikítin returned to their post.

‘What the devil brings them here at night?’ said Nikítin.

‘Seems it’s necessary,’ said Panóv. ‘But it’s getting chilly,’ he added, and unrolling his cloak he put it on and sat down by the tree.

About two hours later Avdéev and Bondarénko returned.

‘Well, have you handed them over?’

‘Yes. They weren’t yet asleep at the colonel’s – they were taken straight in to him. And do you know, mates, those shaven-headed lads are fine!’ continued Avdéev. ‘Yes, really. What a talk I had with them!’

‘Of course you’d talk,’ remarked Nikítin disapprovingly.

‘Really they’re just like Russians. One of them is married. “Molly,” says I, “bar?” “Bar,” he says. Bondarénko, didn’t I say “bar?” “Many bar?” “A couple,” says he. A couple! Such a good talk we had! Such nice fellows!’

‘Nice, indeed!’ said Nikitin. ‘If you met him alone he’d soon let the guts out of you.’

‘It will be getting light before long,’ said Panóv.

‘Yes, the stars are beginning to go out,’ said Avdéev, sitting down and making himself comfortable.

And the soldiers were silent again.

III

THE windows of the barracks and the soldiers’ houses had long been dark in the fort; but there were still lights in the windows of the best house.

In it lived Prince Simon Mikhaílovich Vorontsóv, Commander of the Kurín Regiment, an Imperial Aide-de-Camp and son of the Commander-in-Chief. Vorontsóv’s wife, Márya Vasílevna, a famous Petersburg beauty, was with him and they lived in this little Caucasian fort more luxuriously than anyone had ever lived there before. To Vorontsóv, and even more to his wife, it seemed that they were not only living a very modest life, but one full of privations, while to the inhabitants of the place their luxury was surprising and extraordinary.

Just now, at midnight, the host and hostess sat playing cards with their visitors, at a card-table lit by four candles, in the spacious drawing-room with its carpeted floor and rich curtains drawn across the windows. Vorontsóv, who had a long face and wore the insignia and gold cords of an aide-de-camp, was partnered by a shaggy young man of gloomy appearance, a graduate of Petersburg University whom Princess Vorontsóv had lately had sent to the Caucasus to be tutor to her little son (born of her first marriage). Against them played two officers: one a broad, red-faced man, Poltorátsky, a company commander who had exchanged out of the Guards; and the other the regimental adjutant, who sat very straight on his chair with a cold expression on his handsome face.

Princess Márya Vasílevna, a large-built, large-eyed, black-browed beauty, sat beside Poltorátsky – her crinoline touching his legs – and looked over his cards. In her words, her looks, her smile, her perfume, and in every movement of her body, there was something that reduced Poltorátsky to obliviousness of everything except the consciousness of her nearness, and he made blunder after blunder, trying his partner’s temper more and more.

‘No … that’s too bad! You’ve wasted an ace again,’ said the regimental adjutant, flushing all over as Poltorátsky threw out an ace.

Poltorátsky turned his kindly, wide-set black eyes towards the dissatisfied adjutant uncomprehendingly, as though just aroused from sleep.

‘Do forgive him!’ said Márya Vasílevna, smiling. ‘There, you see! Didn’t I tell you so?’ she went on, turning to Poltorátsky.

‘But that’s not at all what you said,’ replied Poltorátsky, smiling.

‘Wasn’t it?’ she queried, with an answering smile, which excited and delighted Poltorátsky to such a degree that he blushed crimson and seizing the cards began to shuffle.

‘It isn’t your turn to deal,’ said the adjutant sternly, and with his white ringed hand he began to deal himself, as though he wished to get rid of the cards as quickly as possible.

The prince’s valet entered the drawing-room and announced that the officer on duty wanted to speak to him.

‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said the prince, speaking Russian with an English accent. ‘Will you take my place, Márya?’

‘Do you all agree?’ asked the princess, rising quickly and lightly to her full height, rustling her silks, and smiling the radiant smile of a happy woman.

‘I always agree to everything,’ replied the adjutant, very pleased that the princess – who could not play at all – was now going to play against him.

Poltorátsky only spread out his hands and smiled.

The rubber was nearly finished when the prince returned to the drawing-room, animated and obviously very pleased.

‘Do you know what I propose?’

‘What?’

‘That we have some champagne.’

‘I am always ready for that,’ said Poltorátsky.

‘Why not? We shall be delighted!’ said the adjutant.

‘Bring some, Vasíli!’ said the prince.

‘What did they want you for?’ asked Márya Vasílevna.

‘It was the officer on duty and another man.’

‘Who? What about?’ asked Márya Vasílevna quickly.

‘I mustn’t say,’ said Vorontsóv, shrugging his shoulders.

‘You mustn’t say!’ repeated Márya Vasílevna. ‘We’ll see about that.’

When the champagne was brought each of the visitors drank a glass, and having finished the game and settled the scores they began to take their leave.

‘Is it your company that’s ordered to the forest to-morrow?’ the prince asked Poltorátsky as they said good-bye.

‘Yes, mine … why?’

‘Then we shall meet to-morrow,’ said the prince, smiling slightly.

‘Very pleased,’ replied Poltorátsky, not quite understanding what Vorontsóv was saying to him and preoccupied only by the thought that he would in a minute be pressing Márya Vasílevna’s hand.

Márya Vasílevna, according to her wont, not only pressed his hand firmly but shook it vigorously, and again reminding him of his mistake in playing diamonds, she gave him what he took to be a delightful, affectionate, and meaning smile.

Poltorátsky went home in an ecstatic condition only to be understood by people like himself who, having grown up and been educated in society, meet a woman belonging to their own circle after months of isolated military life, and moreover a woman like Princess Vorontsóv.

When he reached the little house in which he and his comrade lived he pushed the door, but it was locked. He knocked, with no result. He felt vexed, and began kicking the door and banging it with his sword. Then he heard a sound of footsteps and Vovílo – a domestic serf of his – undid the cabin-hook which fastened the door.

‘What do you mean by locking yourself in, blockhead?’

‘But how is it possible, sir …?’

‘You’re tipsy again! I’ll show you “how it is possible!” ’ and Poltorátsky was about to strike Vovílo but changed his mind. ‘Oh, go to the devil!… Light a candle.’

‘In a minute.’

Vovílo was really tipsy. He had been drinking at the name-day party of the ordnance-sergeant, Iván Petróvich. On returning home he began comparing his life with that of the latter. Iván Petróvich had a salary, was married, and hoped in a year’s time to get his discharge.

Vovílo had been taken ‘up’ when a boy – that is, he had been taken into his owner’s household service – and now although he was already over forty he was not married, but lived a campaigning life with his harum-scarum young master. He was a good master, who seldom struck him, but what kind of a life was it? ‘He promised to free me when we return from the Caucasus, but where am I to go with my freedom?… It’s a dog’s life!’ thought Vovílo, and he felt so sleepy that, afraid lest someone should come in and steal something, he fastened the hook of the door and fell asleep.

* * *

Poltorátsky entered the bedroom which he shared with his comrade Tíkhonov.

‘Well, have you lost?’ asked Tíkhonov, waking up.

‘No, as it happens, I haven’t. I’ve won seventeen rubles, and we drank a bottle of Cliquot!’

‘And you’ve looked at Márya Vasílevna?’

‘Yes, and I’ve looked at Márya Vasílevna,’ repeated Poltorátsky.

‘It will soon be time to get up,’ said Tíkhonov. ‘We are to start at six.’

‘Vovílo!’ shouted Poltorátsky, ‘see that you wake me up properly to-morrow at five!’

‘How can I wake you if you fight?’

‘I tell you you’re to wake me! Do you hear?’

‘All right.’ Vovílo went out, taking Poltorátsky’s boots and clothes with him. Poltorátsky got into bed and smoked a cigarette and put out his candle, smiling the while. In the dark he saw before him the smiling face of Márya Vasílevna.

* * *

The Vorontsóvs did not go to bed at once. When the visitors had left, Márya Vasílevna went up to her husband and standing in front of him, said severely –

‘Eh bien! Vous allez me dire ce que c’est.’

‘Mais, ma chère …’

‘Pas de “ma chère”! C’était un émissaire, n’est-ce pas?’

‘Quand měme, je ne puis pas vous le dire.’

‘Vous ne pouvez pas? Alors, c’est moi qui vais vous le dire!’

‘Vous?’²

‘It was Hadji Murád, wasn’t it?’ said Márya Vasílevna, who had for some days past heard of the negotiations and thought that Hadji Murád himself had been to see her husband. Vorontsóv could not altogether deny this, but disappointed her by saying that it was not Hadji Murád himself but only an emissary to announce that Hadji Murád would come to meet him next day at the spot where a wood-cutting expedition had been arranged.

In the monotonous life of the fortress the young Vorontsóvs – both husband and wife – were glad of this occurrence, and it was already past two o’clock when, after speaking of the pleasure the news would give his father, they went to bed.

IV

AFTER the three sleepless nights he had passed flying from the murids Shamil had sent to capture him, Hadji Murád fell asleep as soon as Sado, having bid him good-night, had gone out of the sáklya. He slept fully dressed with his head on his hand, his elbow sinking deep into the red down-cushions his host had arranged for him.

At a little distance, by the wall, slept Eldár. He lay on his back, his strong young limbs stretched out so that his high chest, with the black cartridge-pouches sewn into the front of his white Circassian coat, was higher than his freshly shaven, blue-gleaming head, which had rolled off the pillow and was thrown back. His upper lip, on which a little soft down was just appearing, pouted like a child’s, now contracting and now expanding, as though he were sipping something. Like Hadji Murád he slept with pistol and dagger in his belt. The sticks in the grate burnt low, and a night-light in a niche in the wall gleamed faintly.

In the middle of the night the floor of the guest-chamber creaked, and Hadji Murád immediately rose, putting his hand to his pistol. Sado entered, treading softly on the earthen floor.

‘What is it?’ asked Hadji Murád, as if he had not been asleep at all.

‘We must think,’ replied Sado, squatting down in front of him. ‘A woman from her roof saw you arrive and told her husband, and now the whole aoul knows. A neighbour has just been to tell my wife that the Elders have assembled in the mosque and want to detain you.’

‘I must be off!’ said Hadji Murád.

‘The horses are saddled,’ said Sado, quickly leaving the sáklya.

‘Eldár!’ whispered Hadji Murád. And Eldár, hearing his name, and above all his master’s voice, leapt to his feet, setting his cap straight as he did so.

Hadji Murád put on his weapons and then his búrka. Eldár did the same, and they both went silently out of the sáklya into the penthouse. The black-eyed boy brought their horses. Hearing the clatter of hoofs on the hard-beaten road, someone stuck his head out of the door of a neighbouring sáklya, and a man ran up the hill towards the mosque, clattering with his wooden shoes. There was no moon, but the stars shone brightly in the black sky so that the outlines of the sáklya roofs could be seen in the darkness, the mosque with its minarets in the upper part of the village rising above the other buildings. From the mosque came a hum of voices.

Quickly seizing his gun, Hadji Murád placed his foot in the narrow stirrup, and silently and easily throwing his body across, swung himself on to the high cushion of the saddle.

‘May God reward you!’ he said, addressing his host while his right foot felt instinctively for the stirrup, and with his whip he lightly touched the lad who held his horse, as a sign that he should let go. The boy stepped aside, and the horse, as if it knew what it had to do, started at a brisk pace down the lane towards the principal street. Eldár rode behind him. Sado in his sheepskin followed, almost running, swinging his arms and crossing now to one side and now to the other of the narrow side-street. At the place where the streets met, first one moving shadow and then another appeared in the road.

‘Stop … who’s that? Stop!’ shouted a voice, and several men blocked the path.

Instead of stopping, Hadji Murád drew his pistol from his belt and increasing his speed rode straight at those who blocked the way. They separated, and without looking round he started down the road at a swift canter. Eldár followed him at a sharp trot. Two shots cracked behind them and two bullets whistled past without hitting either Hadji Murád or Eldár. Hadji Murád continued riding at the same pace, but having gone some three hundred yards he stopped his slightly panting horse and listened.

In front of him, lower down, gurgled rapidly running water. Behind him in the aoul cocks crowed, answering one another. Above these sounds he heard behind him the approaching tramp of horses and the voices of several men. Hadji Murád touched his horse and rode on at an even pace. Those behind him galloped and soon overtook him. They were some twenty mounted men, inhabitants of the aoul, who had decided to detain Hadji Murád or at least to make a show of detaining him in order to justify themselves in Shamil’s eyes. When they came near enough to be seen in the darkness, Hadji Murád stopped, let go his bridle, and with an accustomed movement of his left hand unbuttoned the cover of his rifle, which he drew forth with his right. Eldár did the same.

‘What do you want?’ cried Hadji Murád. ‘Do you wish to take me?… Take me, then!’ and he raised his rifle. The men from the aoul stopped, and Hadji Murád, rifle in hand, rode down into the ravine. The mounted men followed him but did not draw any nearer. When Hadji Murád had crossed to the other side of the ravine the men shouted to him that he should hear what they had to say. In reply he fired his rifle and put his horse to a gallop. When he reined it in his pursuers were no longer within hearing and the crowing of the cocks could also no longer be heard; only the murmur of the water in the forest sounded more distinctly and now and then came the cry of an owl. The black wall of the forest appeared quite close. It was in this forest that his murids awaited him.

On reaching it Hadji Murád paused, and drawing much air into his lungs he whistled and then listened silently. The next minute he was answered by a similar whistle from the forest. Hadji Murád turned from the road and entered it. When he had gone about a hundred paces he saw among the trunks of the trees a bonfire, the shadows of some men sitting round it, and, half lit-up by the firelight, a hobbled horse which was saddled. Four men were seated by the fire.

One of them rose quickly, and coming up to Hadji Murád took hold of his bridle and stirrup. This was Hadji Murád’s sworn brother who managed his household affairs for him.

‘Put out the fire,’ said Hadji Murád, dismounting.

The men began scattering the pile and trampling on the burning branches.

‘Has Bata been here?’ asked Hadji Murád, moving towards a búrka that was spread on the ground.

‘Yes, he went away long ago with Khan Mahomá.’

‘Which way did they go?’

‘That way,’ answered Khanéfi pointing in the opposite direction to that from which Hadji Murád had come.

‘All right,’ said Hadji Murád, and unslinging his rifle he began to load it.

‘We must take care – I have been pursued,’ he said to a man who was putting out the fire.

This was Gamzálo, a Chechen. Gamzálo approached the búrka, took up a rifle that lay on it wrapped in its cover, and without a word went to that side of the glade from which Hadji Murád had come.

When Eldár had dismounted he took Hadji Murád’s horse, and having reined up both horses’ heads high, tied them to two trees. Then he shouldered his rifle as Gamzálo had done and went to the other side of the glade. The bonfire was extinguished, the forest no longer looked as black as before, but in the sky the stars still shone, though faintly.

Lifting his eyes to the stars and seeing that the Pleiades had already risen half-way up the sky, Hadji Murád calculated that it must be long past midnight and that his nightly prayer was long overdue. He asked Khanéfi for a ewer (they always carried one in their packs), and putting on his búrka went to the water.

Having taken off his shoes and performed his ablutions, Hadji Murád stepped onto the búrka with bare feet and then squatted down on his calves, and having first placed his fingers in his ears and closed his eyes, he turned to the south and recited the usual prayer.

When he had finished he returned to the place where the saddle-bags lay, and sitting down on the búrka he leant his elbows on his knees and bowed his head and fell into deep thought.

Hadji Murád always had great faith in his own fortune. When planning anything he always felt in advance firmly convinced of success, and fate smiled on him. It had been so, with a few rare exceptions, during the whole course of his stormy military life; and so he hoped it would be now. He pictured to himself how – with the army Vorontsóv would place at his disposal – he would march against Shamil and take him prisoner, and revenge himself on him; and how the Russian Tsar would reward him and how he would again rule not only over Avaria, but over the whole of Chechnya, which would submit to him. With these thoughts he unwittingly fell asleep.

He dreamt how he and his brave followers rushed at Shamil with songs and with the cry, ‘Hadji Murád is coming!’ and how they seized him and his wives and how he heard the wives crying and sobbing. He woke up. The song, Lya-ilallysha, and the cry, ‘Hadji Murád is coming!’ and the weeping of Shamil’s wives, was the howling, weeping, and laughter of jackals that awoke him. Hadji Murád lifted his head, glanced at the sky which, seen between the trunks of the trees, was already growing light in the east, and inquired after Khan Mahomá of a murid who sat at some distance from him. On hearing that Khan Mahomá had not yet returned, Hadji Murád again bowed his head and at once fell asleep.

He was awakened by the merry voice of Khan Mahomá returning from his mission with Bata. Khan Mahomá at once sat down beside Hadji Murád and told him how the soldiers had met them and had led them to the prince himself, and how pleased the prince was and how he promised to meet them in the morning where the Russians would be felling trees beyond the Mitchík in the Shalín glade. Bata interrupted his fellow-envoy to add details of his own.

Hadji Murád asked particularly for the words with which Vorontsóv had answered his offer to go over to the Russians, and Khan Mahomá and Bata replied with one voice that the prince promised to receive Hadji Murád as a guest, and to act so that it should be well for him.

Then Hadji Murád questioned them about the road, and when Khan Mahomá assured him that he knew the way well and would conduct him straight to the spot, Hadji Murád took out some money and gave Bata the promised three rubles. Then he ordered his men to take out of the saddle-bags his gold-ornamented weapons and his turban, and to clean themselves up so as to look well when they arrived among the Russians.

While they cleaned their weapons, harness, and horses, the stars faded away, it became quite light, and an early morning breeze sprang up.

V

EARLY in the morning, while it was still dark, two companies carrying axes and commanded by Poltorátsky marched six miles beyond the Shahgirínsk Gate, and having thrown out a line of sharpshooters set to work to fell trees as soon as the day broke. Towards eight o’clock the mist which had mingled with the perfumed smoke of the hissing and crackling damp green branches on the bonfires began to rise and the wood-fellers – who till then had not seen five paces off but had only heard one another – began to see both the bonfires and the road through the forest, blocked with fallen trees. The sun now appeared like a bright spot in the fog and now again was hidden.

In the glade, some way from the road, Poltorátsky, his subaltern Tíkhonov, two officers of the Third Company, and Baron Freze, an ex-officer of the Guards and a fellow-student of Poltorátsky’s at the Cadet College, who had been reduced to the ranks for fighting a duel, were sitting on drums. Bits of paper that had contained food, cigarette stumps, and empty bottles, lay scattered around them. The officers had had some vodka and were now eating, and drinking porter. A drummer was uncorking their third bottle.

Poltorátsky, although he had not had enough sleep, was in that peculiar state of elation and kindly careless gaiety which he always felt when he found himself among his soldiers and with his comrades where there was a possibility of danger.

The officers were carrying on an animated conversation, the subject of which was the latest news: the death of General Sleptsóv. None of them saw in this death that most important moment of a life, its termination and return to the source whence it sprang – they saw in it only the valour of a gallant officer who rushed at the mountaineers sword in hand and hacked them desperately.

Though all of them – and especially those who had been in action – knew and could not help knowing that in those days in the Caucasus, and in fact anywhere and at any time, such hand-to-hand hacking as is always imagined and described never occurs (or if hacking with swords and bayonets ever does occur, it is only those who are running away that get hacked), that fiction of hand-to-hand fighting endowed them with the calm pride and cheerfulness with which they sat on the drums – some with a jaunty air, others on the contrary in a very modest pose, and drank and joked without troubling about death, which might overtake them at any moment as it had overtaken Sleptsóv. And in the midst of their talk, as if to confirm their expectations, they heard to the left of the road the pleasant stirring sound of a rifle-shot; and a bullet, merrily whistling somewhere in the misty air, flew past and crashed into a tree.

‘Hullo!’ exclaimed Poltorátsky in a merry voice; ‘why that’s at our line.… There now, Kóstya,’ and he turned to Freze, ‘now’s your chance. Go back to the company. I will lead the whole company to support the cordon and we’ll arrange a battle that will be simply delightful … and then we’ll make a report.’

Freze jumped to his feet and went at a quick pace towards the smoke-enveloped spot where he had left his company.

Poltorátsky’s little Kabardá dapple-bay was brought to him, and he mounted and drew up his company and led it in the direction whence the shots were fired. The outposts stood on the skirts of the forest in front of the bare descending slope of a ravine. The wind was blowing in the direction of the forest, and not only was it possible to see the slope of the ravine, but the opposite side of it was also distinctly visible. When Poltorátsky rode up to the line the sun came out from behind the mist, and on the other side of the ravine, by the outskirts of a young forest, a few horsemen could be seen at a distance of a quarter of a mile. These were the Chechens who had pursued Hadji Murád and wanted to see him meet the Russians. One of them fired at the line. Several soldiers fired back. The Chechens retreated and the firing ceased.

But when Poltorátsky and his company came up he nevertheless gave orders to fire, and scarcely had the word been passed than along the whole line of sharpshooters the incessant, merry, stirring rattle of our rifles began, accompanied by pretty dissolving cloudlets of smoke. The soldiers, pleased to have some distraction, hastened to load and fired shot after shot. The Chechens evidently caught the feeling of excitement, and leaping forward one after another fired a few shots at our men. One of these shots wounded a soldier. It was that same Avdéev who had lain in ambush the night before.

When his comrades approached him he was lying prone, holding his wounded stomach with both hands, and rocking himself with a rhythmic motion moaned softly. He belonged to Poltorátsky’s company, and Poltorátsky, seeing a group of soldiers collected, rode up to them.

‘What is it, lad? Been hit?’ said Poltorátsky. ‘Where?’

Avdéev did not answer.

‘I was just going to load, your honour, when I heard a click,’ said a soldier who had been with Avdéev; ‘and I look and see he’s dropped his gun.’

‘Tut, tut, tut!’ Poltorátsky clicked his tongue. ‘Does it hurt much, Avdéev?’

‘It doesn’t hurt but it stops me walking. A drop of vodka now, your honour!’

Some vodka (or rather the spirit drunk by the soldiers in the Caucasus) was found, and Panóv, severely frowning, brought Avdéev a can-lid full. Avdéev tried to drink it but immediately handed back the lid.

‘My soul turns against it,’ he said. ‘Drink it yourself.’

Panóv drank up the spirit.

Avdéev raised himself but sank back at once. They spread out a cloak and laid him on it.

‘Your honour, the Colonel is coming,’ said the sergeant-major to Poltorátsky.

‘All right. Then will you see to him?’ said Poltorátsky, and flourishing his whip he rode at a fast trot to meet Vorontsóv.

Vorontsóv was riding his thoroughbred English chestnut gelding, and was accompanied by the adjutant, a Cossack, and a Chechen interpreter.

‘What’s happening here?’ asked Vorontsóv.

‘Why, a skirmishing party attacked our advanced line,’ Poltorátsky answered.

‘Come, come – you arranged the whole thing yourself!’

‘Oh no, Prince, not I,’ said Poltorátsky with a smile; ‘they pushed forward of their own accord.’

‘I hear a soldier has been wounded?’

‘Yes, it’s a great pity. He’s a good soldier.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously, I believe … in the stomach.’

‘And do you know where I am going?’ Vorontsóv asked.

‘I don’t.’

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘No.’

‘Hadji Murád has surrendered and we are now going to meet him.’

‘You don’t mean to say so?’

‘His envoy came to me yesterday,’ said Vorontsóv, with difficulty repressing a smile of pleasure. ‘He will be waiting for me at the Shalín glade in a few minutes. Place sharpshooters as far as the glade, and then come and join me.’

‘I understand,’ said Poltorátsky, lifting his hand to his cap, and rode back to his company. He led the sharpshooters to the right himself, and ordered the sergeant-major to do the same on the left side.

The wounded Avdéev had meanwhile been taken back to the fort by some of the soldiers.

On his way back to rejoin Vorontsóv, Poltorátsky noticed behind him several horsemen who were overtaking him. In front on a white-maned horse rode a man of imposing appearance. He wore a turban and carried weapons with gold ornaments. This man was Hadji Murád. He approached Poltorátsky and said something to him in Tartar. Raising his eyebrows, Poltorátsky made a gesture with his arms to show that he did not understand, and smiled. Hadji Murád gave him smile for smile, and that smile struck Poltorátsky by its childlike kindliness. Poltorátsky had never expected to see the terrible mountain chief look like that. He had expected to see a morose, hard-featured man, and here was a vivacious person whose smile was so kindly that Poltorátsky felt as if he were an old acquaintance. He had only one peculiarity: his eyes, set wide apart, which gazed from under their black brows calmly, attentively, and penetratingly into the eyes of others.

Hadji Murád’s suite consisted of five men, among them Khan Mahomá, who had been to see Prince Vorontsóv that night. He was a rosy, round-faced fellow with black lashless eyes and a beaming expression, full of the joy of life. Then there was the Avar Khanéfi, a thick-set, hairy man, whose eyebrows met. He was in charge of all Hadji Murád’s property and led a stud-bred horse which carried tightly packed saddle-bags. Two men of the suite were particularly striking. The first was a Lesghian: a youth, broad-shouldered but with a waist as slim as a woman’s, beautiful ram-like eyes, and the beginnings of a brown beard. This was Eldár. The other, Gamzálo, was a Chechen with a short red beard and no eyebrows or eyelashes; he was blind in one eye and had a scar across his nose and face. Poltorátsky pointed out Vorontsóv, who had just appeared on the road. Hadji Murád rode to meet him, and putting his right hand on his heart said something in Tartar and stopped. The Chechen interpreter translated.

‘He says, “I surrender myself to the will of the Russian Tsar. I wish to serve him,” he says. “I wished to do so long ago but Shamil would not let me.’ ”

Having heard what the interpreter said, Vorontsóv stretched out his hand in its wash-leather glove to Hadji Murád. Hadji Murád looked at it hesitatingly for a moment and then pressed it firmly, again saying something and looking first at the interpreter and then at Vorontsóv.

‘He says he did not wish to surrender to anyone but you, as you are the son of the Sirdar and he respects you much.’

Vorontsóv nodded to express his thanks. Hadji Murád again said something, pointing to his suite.

‘He says that these men, his henchmen, will serve the Russians as well as he.’

Vorontsóv turned towards them and nodded to them too. The merry, black-eyed, lashless Chechen, Khan Mahomá, also nodded and said something which was probably amusing, for the hairy Avar drew his lips into a smile, showing his ivory-white teeth. But the red-haired Gamzálo’s one red eye just glanced at Vorontsóv and then was again fixed on the ears of his horse.

When Vorontsóv and Hadji Murád with their retinues rode back to the fort, the soldiers released from the lines gathered in groups and made their own comments.

‘What a lot of men that damned fellow has destroyed! And now see what a fuss they will make of him!’

‘Naturally. He was Shamil’s right hand, and now – no fear!’

‘Still there’s no denying it! he’s a fine fellow – a regular dzhigít!’

‘And the red one! He squints at you like a beast!’

‘Ugh! He must be a hound!’

They had all specially noticed the red one. Where the wood-felling was going on the soldiers nearest to the road ran out to look. Their officer shouted to them, but Vorontsóv stopped him.

‘Let them have a look at their old friend.’

‘You know who that is?’ he added, turning to the nearest soldier, and speaking the words slowly with his English accent.

‘No, your Excellency.’

‘Hadji Murád.… Heard of him?’

‘How could we help it, your Excellency? We’ve beaten him many a time!’

‘Yes, and we’ve had it hot from him too.’

‘Yes, that’s true, your Excellency,’ answered the soldier, pleased to be talking with his chief.

Hadji Murád understood that they were speaking about him, and smiled brightly with his eyes.

Vorontsóv returned to the fort in a very cheerful mood.

VI

YOUNG Vorontsóv was much pleased that it was he, and no one else, who had succeeded in winning over and receiving Hadji Murád – next to Shamil Russia’s chief and most active enemy. There was only one unpleasant thing about it: General Meller-Zakomélsky was in command of the army at Vozdvízhensk, and the whole affair ought to have been carried out through him. As Vorontsóv had done everything himself without reporting it there might be some unpleasantness, and this thought rather interfered with his satisfaction. On reaching his house he entrusted Hadji Murád’s henchmen to the regimental adjutant and himself showed Hadji Murád into the house.

Princess Márya Vasílevna, elegantly dressed and smiling, and her little son, a handsome curly-headed child of six, met Hadji Murád in the drawing-room. The latter placed his hands on his heart, and through the interpreter – who had entered with him – said with solemnity that he regarded himself as the prince’s kunák, since the prince had brought him into his own house; and that a kunák’s whole family was as sacred as the kunák himself.

Hadji Murád’s appearance and manners pleased Márya Vasílevna, and the fact that he flushed when she held out her large white hand to him inclined her still more in his favour. She invited him to sit down, and having asked him whether he drank coffee, had some served. He, however, declined it when it came. He understood a little Russian but could not speak it. When something was said which he could not understand he smiled, and his smile pleased Márya Vasílevna just as it had pleased Poltorátsky. The curly-haired, keen-eyed little boy (whom his mother called Búlka) standing beside her did not take his eyes off Hadji Murád, whom he had always heard spoken of as a great warrior.

Leaving Hadji Murád with his wife, Vorontsóv went to his office to do what was necessary about reporting the fact of Hadji Murád’s having come over to the Russians. When he had written a report to the general in command of the left flank – General Kozlóvsky – at Grózny, and a letter to his father, Vorontsóv hurried home, afraid that his wife might be vexed with him for forcing on her this terrible stranger, who had to be treated in such a way that he should not take offence, and yet not too kindly. But his fears were needless. Hadji Murád was sitting in an arm-chair with little Búlka, Vorontsóv’s stepson, on his knee, and with bent head was listening attentively to the interpreter who was translating to him the words of the laughing Márya Vasílevna. Márya Vasílevna was telling him that if every time a kunák admired anything of his he made him a present of it, he would soon have to go about like Adam.…

When the prince entered, Hadji Murád rose at once and, surprising and offending Búlka by putting him off his knee, changed the playful expression of his face to a stern and serious one. He only sat down again when Vorontsóv had himself taken a seat.

Continuing the conversation he answered Márya Vasílevna by telling her that it was a law among his people that anything your kunák admired must be presented to him.

‘Thy son, kunák!’ he said in Russian, patting the curly head of the boy who had again climbed on his knee.

‘He is delightful, your brigand!’ said Márya Vasílevna to her husband in French. ‘Búlka has been admiring his dagger, and he has given it to him.’

Búlka showed the dagger to his father. ‘C’est un objet de prix!’³ added she.

‘Il faudra trouver l’occasion de lui faire cadeau,’⁴ said Vorontsóv.

Hadji Murád, his eyes turned down, sat stroking the boy’s curly hair and saying: ‘Dzhigít, dzhigít!’

‘A beautiful, beautiful dagger,’ said Vorontsóv, half drawing out the sharpened blade which had a ridge down the centre. ‘I thank thee!’

‘Ask him what I can do for him,’ he said to the interpreter.

The interpreter translated, and Hadji Murád at once replied that he wanted nothing but that he begged to be taken to a place where he could say his prayers.

Vorontsóv called his valet and told him to do what Hadji Murád desired.

As soon as Hadji Murád was alone in the room allotted to him his face altered. The pleased expression, now kindly and now stately, vanished, and a look of anxiety showed itself. Vorontsóv had received him far better than Hadji Murád had expected. But the better the reception the less did Hadji Murád trust Vorontsóv and his officers. He feared everything: that he might be seized, chained, and sent to Siberia, or simply killed; and therefore he was on his guard. He asked Eldár, when the latter entered his room, where his murids had been put and whether their arms had been taken from them, and where the horses were. Eldár reported that the horses were in the prince’s stables; that the men had been placed in a barn; that they retained their arms, and that the interpreter was giving them food and tea.

Hadji Murád shook his head in doubt, and after undressing said his prayers and told Eldár to bring him his silver dagger. He then dressed, and having fastened his belt sat down on the divan with his legs tucked under him, to await what might befall him.

At four in the afternoon the interpreter came to call him to dine with the prince.

At dinner he hardly ate anything except some pilau, to which he helped himself from the very part of the dish from which Márya Vasílevna had helped herself.

‘He is afraid we shall poison him,’ Márya Vasílevna remarked to her husband. ‘He has helped himself from the place where I took my helping.’ Then instantly turning to Hadji Murád she asked him through the interpreter when he would pray again. Hadji Murád lifted five fingers and pointed to the sun. ‘Then it will soon be time,’ and Vorontsóv drew out his watch and pressed a spring. The watch struck four and one quarter. This evidently surprised Hadji Murád, and he asked to hear it again and to be allowed to look at the watch.

‘Voilá l’occasion! Donnez-lui la montre,’⁵ said the princess to her husband.

Vorontsóv at once offered the watch to Hadji Murád.

The latter placed his hand on his breast and took the watch. He touched the spring several times, listened, and nodded his head approvingly.

After dinner, Meller-Zakomélsky’s aide-de-camp was announced.

The aide-de-camp informed the prince that the general, having heard of Hadji Murád’s arrival, was highly displeased that this had not been reported to him, and required Hadji Murád to be brought to him without delay. Vorontsóv replied that the general’s command should be obeyed, and through the interpreter informed Hadji Murád of these orders and asked him to go to Meller with him.

When Márya Vasílevna heard what the aide-de-camp had come about, she at once understood that unpleasantness might arise between her husband and the general, and in spite of all her husband’s attempts to dissuade her, decided to go with him and Hadji Murád.

‘Vous feriez bien mieux de rester – c’est mon affaire, non pas la vôtre.…’

‘Vous ne pouvez pas m’empěcher d’aller voir madame la générale!’⁶

‘You could go some other time.’

‘But I wish to go now!’

There was no help for it, so Vorontsóv agreed, and they all three went.

When they entered, Meller with sombre politeness conducted Márya Vasílevna to his wife and told his aide-de-camp to show Hadji Murád into the waiting-room and not let him out till further orders.

‘Please …’ he said to Vorontsóv, opening the door of his study and letting the prince enter before him.

Having entered the study he stopped in front of Vorontsóv and, without offering him a seat, said:

‘I am in command here and therefore all negotiations with the enemy have to be carried on through me! Why did you not report to me that Hadji Murád had come over?’

‘An emissary came to me and announced his wish to capitulate only to me,’ replied Vorontsóv growing pale with excitement, expecting some rude expression from the angry general and at the same time becoming infected with his anger.

‘I ask you why I was not informed?’

‘I intended to inform you, Baron, but …’

‘You are not to address me as “Baron”, but as “Your Excellency”!’ And here the baron’s pent-up irritation suddenly broke out and he uttered all that had long been boiling in his soul.

‘I have not served my sovereign twenty-seven years in order that men who began their service yesterday, relying on family connexions, should give orders under my very nose about matters that do not concern them!’

‘Your Excellency, I request you not to say things that are incorrect!’ interrupted Vorontsóv.

‘I am saying what is correct, and I won’t allow …’ said the general, still more irritably.

But at that moment Márya Vasílevna entered, rustling with her skirts and followed by a modest-looking little lady, Meller-Zakomélsky’s wife.

‘Come, come, Baron! Simon did not wish to displease you,’ began Márya Vasílevna.

‘I am not speaking about that, Princess.…’

‘Well, well, let’s forget it all!… You know, “A bad peace is better than a good quarrel!” … Oh dear, what am I saying?’ and she laughed.

The angry general capitulated to the enchanting laugh of the beauty. A smile hovered under his moustache.

‘I confess I was wrong,’ said Vorontsóv, ‘but—’

‘And I too got rather carried away,’ said Meller, and held out his hand to the prince.

Peace was re-established, and it was decided to leave Hadji Murád with the general for the present, and then to send him to the commander of the left flank.

Hadji Murád sat in the next room and though he did not understand what was said, he understood what it was necessary for him to understand – namely, that they were quarrelling about him, that his desertion of Shamil was a matter of immense importance to the Russians, and that therefore not only would they not exile or kill him, but that he would be able to demand much from them. He also understood that though Meller-Zakomélsky was the commanding-officer, he had not as much influence as his subordinate Vorontsóv, and that Vorontsóv was important and Meller-Zakomélsky unimportant; and therefore when Meller-Zakomélsky sent for him and began to question him, Hadji Murád bore himself proudly and ceremoniously, saying that he had come from the mountains to serve the White Tsar and would give account only to his Sirdar, meaning the commander-in-chief, Prince Vorontsóv senior, in Tiflis.

VII

THE wounded Avdéev was taken to the hospital – a small wooden building roofed with boards at the entrance of the fort – and was placed on one of the empty beds in the common ward. There were four patients in the ward: one ill with typhus and in high fever; another, pale, with dark shadows under his eyes, who had ague, was just expecting another attack and yawned continually; and two more who had been wounded in a raid three weeks before: one in the hand – he was up – and the other in the shoulder. The latter was sitting on a bed. All of them except the typhus patient surrounded and questioned the newcomer and those who had brought him.

‘Sometimes they fire as if they were spilling peas over you, and nothing happens … and this time only about five shots were fired,’ related one of the bearers.

‘Each man gets what fate sends!’

‘Oh!’ groaned Avdéev loudly, trying to master his pain when they began to place him on the bed; but he stopped groaning when he was on it, and only frowned and moved his feet continually. He held his hands over his wound and looked fixedly before him.

The doctor came, and gave orders to turn the wounded man over to see whether the bullet had passed out behind.

‘What’s this?’ the doctor asked, pointing to the large white scars that crossed one another on the patient’s back and loins.

‘That was done long ago, your honour!’ replied Avdéev with a groan.

They were scars left by the flogging Avdéev had received for the money he drank.

Avdéev was again turned over, and the doctor probed in his stomach for a long time and found the bullet, but failed to extract it. He put a dressing on the wound, and having stuck plaster over it went away. During the whole time the doctor was probing and bandaging the wound Avdéev lay with clenched teeth and closed eyes, but when the doctor had gone he opened them and looked around as though amazed. His eyes were turned on the other patients and on the surgeon’s orderly, though he seemed to see not them but something else that surprised him.

His friends Panóv and Serógin came in, but Avdéev continued to lie in the same position looking before him with surprise. It was long before he recognized his comrades, though his eyes gazed straight at them.

‘I say, Peter, have you no message to send home?’ said Panóv.

Avdéev did not answer, though he was looking Panóv in the face.

‘I say, haven’t you any orders to send home?’ again repeated Panóv, touching Avdéev’s cold, large-boned hand.

Avdéev seemed to come to.

‘Ah!… Panóv!’

‘Yes, I’m here … I’ve come! Have you nothing for home? Serógin would write a letter.’

‘Serógin …’ said Avdéev moving his eyes with difficulty towards Serógin, ‘will you write?… Well then, write so: “Your son,” say, “Peter, has given orders that you should live long.⁷ He envied his brother” … I told you about that today … “and now he is himself glad. Don’t worry him.… Let him live. God grant it him. I am glad!” Write that.’

Having said this he was silent for some time with his eyes fixed on Panóv.

‘And did you find your pipe?’ he suddenly asked.

Panóv did not reply.

‘Your pipe … your pipe! I mean, have you found it?’ Avdéev repeated.

‘It was in my bag.’

‘That’s right!… Well, and now give me a candle to hold … I am going to die,’ said Avdéev.

Just then Poltorátsky came in to inquire after his soldier.

‘How goes it, my lad! Badly?’ said he.

Avdéev closed his eyes and shook his head negatively. His broad-cheeked face was pale and stern. He did not reply, but again said to Panóv:

‘Bring a candle.… I am going to die.’

A wax taper was placed in his hand but his fingers would not bend, so it was placed between them and held up for him.

Poltorátsky went away, and five minutes later the orderly put his ear to Avdéev’s heart and said that all was over.

Avdéev’s death was described in the following manner in the report sent to Tiflis:

‘23rd Nov. – Two companies of the Kurín regiment advanced from the fort on a wood-felling expedition. At midday a considerable number of mountaineers suddenly attacked the wood-fellers. The sharpshooters began to retreat, but the 2nd Company charged with the bayonet and overthrew the mountaineers. In this affair two privates were slightly wounded and one killed. The mountaineers lost about a hundred men killed and wounded.’

VIII

ON the day Peter Avdéev died in the hospital at Vozdvízhensk, his old father with the wife of the brother in whose stead he had enlisted, and that brother’s daughter – who was already approaching womanhood and almost of age to get married – were threshing oats on the hard-frozen threshing-floor.

There had been a heavy fall of snow the previous night, followed towards morning by a severe frost. The old man woke when the cocks were crowing for the third time, and seeing the bright moonlight through the frozen window-panes got down from the stove, put on his boots, his sheepskin coat and cap, and went out to the threshing-floor. Having worked there for a couple of hours he returned to the hut and awoke his son and the women. When the woman and the girl came to the threshing-floor they found it ready swept, with a wooden shovel sticking in the dry white snow, beside which were birch brooms with the twigs upwards and two rows of oat-sheaves laid ears to ears in a long line the whole length of the clean threshing-floor. They chose their flails and started threshing, keeping time with their triple blows. The old man struck powerfully with his heavy flail, breaking the straw, the girl struck the ears from above with measured blows, and the daughter-in-law turned the oats over with her flail.

The moon had set, dawn was breaking, and they were finishing the line of sheaves when Akím, the eldest son, in his sheepskin and cap, joined the threshers.

‘What are you lazing about for?’ shouted his father to him, pausing in his work and leaning on his flail.

‘The horses had to be seen to.’

‘ “Horses seen to!” ’ the father repeated, mimicking him. ‘The old woman will look after them.… Take your flail! You’re getting too fat, you drunkard!’

‘Have you been standing me treat?’ muttered the son.

‘What?’ said the old man, frowning sternly and missing a stroke.

The son silently took a flail and they began threshing with four flails.

‘Trak, tapatam … trak, tapatam … trak …’ came down the old man’s heavy flail after the three others.

‘Why, you’ve got a nape like a goodly gentleman!… Look here, my trousers have hardly anything to hang on!’ said the old man, omitting his stroke and only swinging his flail in the air so as not to get out of time.

They had finished the row, and the women began removing the straw with rakes.

‘Peter was a fool to go in your stead. They’d have knocked the nonsense out of you in the army, and he was worth five of such as you at home!’

‘That’s enough, father,’ said the daughter-in-law, as she threw aside the binders that had come off the sheaves.

‘Yes, feed the six of you and get no work out of a single one! Peter used to work for two. He was not like …’

Along the trodden path from the house came the old man’s wife, the frozen snow creaking under the new bark shoes she wore over her tightly wound woollen leg-bands. The men were shovelling the unwinnowed grain into heaps, the woman and the girl sweeping up what remained.

‘The Elder has been and orders everybody to go and work for the master, carting bricks,’ said the old woman. I’ve got breakfast ready.… Come along, won’t you?’

‘All right.… Harness the roan and go,’ said the old man to Akím, ‘and you’d better look out that you don’t get me into trouble as you did the other day!… I can’t help regretting Peter!’

‘When he was at home you used to scold him,’ retorted Akím. ‘Now he’s away you keep nagging at me.’

‘That shows you deserve it,’ said his mother in the same angry tones. ‘You’ll never be Peter’s equal.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said the son.

‘ “All right,” indeed! You’ve drunk the meal, and now you say “all right!” ’

‘Let bygones be bygones!’ said the daughter-in-law.

The disagreements between father and son had begun long ago – almost from the time Peter went as a soldier. Even then the old man felt that he had parted with an eagle for a cuckoo. It is true that it was right – as the old man understood it – for a childless man to go in place of a family man. Akím had four children and Peter had none; but Peter was a worker like his father, skilful, observant, strong, enduring, and above all industrious. He was always at work. If he happened to pass by where people were working he lent a helping hand as his father would have done, and took a turn or two with the scythe, or loaded a cart, or felled a tree, or chopped some wood. The old man regretted his going away, but there was no help for it. Conscription in those days was like death. A soldier was a severed branch, and to think about him at home was to tear one’s heart uselessly. Only occasionally, to prick his elder son, did the father mention him, as he had done that day. But his mother often thought of her younger son, and for a long time – more than a year now – she had been asking her husband to send Peter a little money, but the old man had made no response.

The Kúrenkovs were a well-to-do family and the old man had some savings hidden away, but he would on no account have consented to touch what he had laid by. Now however the old woman having heard him mention their younger son, made up her mind to ask him again to send him at least a ruble after selling the oats. This she did. As soon as the young people had gone to work for the proprietor and the old folk were left alone together, she persuaded him to send Peter a ruble out of the oats-money.

So when ninety-six bushels of the winnowed oats had been packed onto three sledges lined with sacking carefully pinned together at the top with wooden skewers, she gave her husband a letter the church clerk had written at her dictation, and the old man promised when he got to town to enclose a ruble and send it off to the right address.

The old man, dressed in a new sheepskin with a homespun cloak over it, his legs wrapped round with warm white woollen leg-bands, took the letter, placed it in his wallet, said a prayer, got into the front sledge, and drove to town. His grandson drove in the last sledge. When he reached town the old man asked the inn-keeper to read the letter to him, and listened to it attentively and approvingly.

In her letter Peter’s mother first sent him her blessing, then greetings from everybody and the news of his godfather’s death, and at the end she added that Aksínya (Peter’s wife) had not wished to stay with them but had gone into service, where they heard she was living honestly and well. Then came a reference to the present of a ruble, and finally a message which the old woman, yielding to her sorrow, had dictated with tears in her eyes and the church clerk had taken down exactly, word for word:

‘One thing more, my darling child, my sweet dove, my own Peterkin! I have wept my eyes out lamenting for thee, thou light of my eyes. To whom hast thou left me?…’ At this point the old woman had sobbed and wept, and said: ‘That will do!’ So the words stood in the letter; but it was not fated that Peter should receive the news of his wife’s having left home, nor the present of the ruble, nor his mother’s last words. The letter with the money in it came back with the announcement that Peter had been killed in the war, ‘defending his Tsar, his Fatherland, and the Orthodox Faith’. That is how the army clerk expressed it.

The old woman, when this news reached her, wept for as long as she could spare time, and then set to work again. The very next Sunday she went to church and had a requiem chanted and Peter’s name entered among those for whose souls prayers were to be said, and she distributed bits of holy bread to all the good people in memory of Peter, the servant of God.

Aksínya, his widow, also lamented loudly when she heard of the death of her beloved husband with whom she had lived but one short year. She regretted her husband and her own ruined life, and in her lamentations mentioned Peter’s brown locks and his love, and the sadness of her life with her little orphaned Vánka, and bitterly reproached Peter for having had pity on his brother but none on her – obliged to wander among strangers!

But in the depth of her soul Aksínya was glad of her husband’s death. She was pregnant a second time by the shopman with whom she was living, and no one would now have a right to scold her, and the shopman could marry her as he had said he would when he was persuading her to yield.

IX

MICHAEL Semënovich Vorontsóv, being the son of the Russian Ambassador, had been educated in England and possessed a European education quite exceptional among the higher Russian officials of his day. He was ambitious, gentle and kind in his manner with inferiors, and a finished courtier with superiors. He did not understand life without power and submission. He had obtained all the highest ranks and decorations and was looked upon as a clever commander, and even as the conqueror of Napoleon at Krásnoe.⁸

In 1852 he was over seventy, but young for his age, he moved briskly, and above all was in full possession of a facile, refined, and agreeable intellect which he used to maintain his power and strengthen and increase his popularity. He possessed large means – his own and his wife’s (who had been a Countess Branítski) – and received an enormous salary as Viceroy, and he spent a great part of his means on building a palace and laying out a garden on the south coast of the Crimea.

On the evening of December the 4th, 1852, a courier’s troyka drew up before his palace in Tiflis. An officer, tired and black with dust, sent by General Kozlóvski with the news of Hadji Murád’s surrender to the Russians, entered the wide porch, stretching the stiffened muscles of his legs as he passed the sentinel. It was six o’clock, and Vorontsóv was just going in to dinner when he was informed of the courier’s arrival. He received him at once, and was therefore a few minutes late for dinner.

When he entered the drawing-room the thirty persons invited to dine, who were sitting beside Princess Elizabeth Ksavérevna Vorontsóva, or standing in groups by the windows, turned their faces towards him. Vorontsóv was dressed in his usual black military coat, with shoulder-straps but no epaulettes, and wore the White Cross of the Order of St George at his neck.

His clean-shaven, foxlike face wore a pleasant smile as, screwing up his eyes, he surveyed the assembly. Entering with quick soft steps he apologized to the ladies for being late, greeted the men, and approaching Princess Manana Orbelyáni – a tall, fine, handsome woman of Oriental type about forty-five years of age – he offered her his arm to take her in to dinner. Princess Elizabeth Ksavérevna Vorontsóva gave her arm to a red-haired general with bristly moustaches who was visiting Tiflis. A Georgian prince offered his arm to Princess Vorontsóva’s friend, Countess Choiseuil. Doctor Andréevsky, the aide-de-camp, and others, with ladies or without, followed these first couples. Footmen in livery and knee-breeches drew back and replaced the guests’ chairs when they sat down, while the major-domo ceremoniously ladled out steaming soup from a silver tureen.

Vorontsóv took his place in the centre of one side of the long table, and his wife sat opposite, with the general on her right. On the prince’s right sat his lady, the beautiful Orbelyáni; and on his left was a graceful, dark, red-cheeked Georgian woman, glittering with jewels and incessantly smiling.

‘Excellentes, chère amie!’⁹ replied Vorontsóv to his wife’s inquiry about what news the courier had brought him. ‘Simon a eu de la chance!’¹⁰ And he began to tell aloud, so that everyone could hear, the striking news (for him alone not quite unexpected, because negotiations had long been going on) that Hadji Murád, the bravest and most famous of Shamil’s officers, had come over to the Russians and would in a day or two be brought to Tiflis.

Everybody – even the young aides-de-camp and officials who sat at the far ends of the table and who had been quietly laughing at something among themselves – became silent and listened.

‘And you, General, have you ever met this Hadji Murád?’ asked the princess of her neighbour, the carroty general with the bristly moustaches, when the prince had finished speaking.

‘More than once, Princess.’

And the general went on to tell how Hadji Murád, after the mountaineers had captured Gergebel in 1843, had fallen upon General Pahlen’s detachment and killed Colonel Zolotúkhin almost before their very eyes.

Vorontsóv listened to the general and smiled amiably, evidently pleased that the latter had joined in the conversation. But suddenly his face assumed an absent-minded and depressed expression.

The general, having started talking, had begun to tell of his second encounter with Hadji Murád.

‘Why, it was he, if your Excellency will please remember,’ said the general, ‘who arranged the ambush that attacked the rescue party in the “Biscuit” expedition.’

‘Where?’ asked Vorontsóv, screwing up his eyes.

What the brave general spoke of as the ‘rescue’ was the affair in the unfortunate Dargo campaign in which a whole detachment, including Prince Vorontsóv who commanded it, would certainly have perished had it not been rescued by the arrival of fresh troops. Everyone knew that the whole Dargo campaign under Vorontsóv’s command – in which the Russians lost many killed and wounded and several cannon – had been a shameful affair, and therefore if anyone mentioned it in Vorontsóv’s presence they did so only in the aspect in which Vorontsóv had reported it to the Tsar – as a brilliant achievement of the Russian army. But the word ‘rescue’ plainly indicated that it was not a brilliant victory but a blunder costing many lives. Everybody understood this and some pretended not to notice the meaning of the general’s words, others nervously waited to see what would follow, while a few exchanged glances and smiled. Only the carroty general with the bristly moustaches noticed nothing, and carried away by his narrative quietly replied:

‘At the rescue, your Excellency.’

Having started on his favourite theme, the general recounted circumstantially how Hadji Murád had so cleverly cut the detachment in two that if the rescue party had not arrived (he seemed to be particularly fond of repeating the word ‘rescue’) not a man in the division would have escaped, because … He did not finish his story, for Manana Orbelyáni having understood what was happening, interrupted him by asking if he had found comfortable quarters in Tiflis. The general, surprised, glanced at everybody all round and saw his aides-de-camp from the end of the table looking fixedly and significantly at him, and he suddenly understood! Without replying to the princess’s question, he frowned, became silent, and began hurriedly swallowing the delicacy that lay on his plate, the appearance and taste of which both completely mystified him.

Everybody felt uncomfortable, but the awkwardness of the situation was relieved by the Georgian prince – a very stupid man but an extraordinarily refined and artful flatterer and courtier – who sat on the other side of Princess Vorontsóva. Without seeming to have noticed anything he began to relate how Hadji Murád had carried off the widow of Akhmet Khan of Mekhtulí.

‘He came into the village at night, seized what he wanted, and galloped off again with the whole party.’

‘Why did he want that particular woman?’ asked the princess.

‘Oh, he was her husband’s enemy, and pursued him but could never once succeed in meeting him right up to the time of his death, so he revenged himself on the widow.’

The princess translated this into French for her old friend Countess Choiseuil, who sat next to the Georgian prince.

‘Quelle horreur!’¹¹ said the countess, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

‘Oh no!’ said Vorontsóv, smiling. ‘I have been told that he treated his captive with chivalrous respect and afterwards released her.’

‘Yes, for a ransom!’

‘Well, of course. But all the same he acted honourably.’

These words of Vorontsóv’s set the tone for the further conversation. The courtiers understood that the more importance was attributed to Hadji Murád the better the prince would be pleased.

‘The man’s audacity is amazing. A remarkable man!’

‘Why, in 1849 he dashed into Temir Khan Shurá and plundered the shops in broad daylight.’

An Armenian sitting at the end of the table, who had been in Temir Khan Shurá at the time, related the particulars of that exploit of Hadji Murád’s.

In fact, Hadji Murád was the sole topic of conversation during the whole dinner.

Everybody in succession praised his courage, his ability, and his magnanimity. Someone mentioned his having ordered twenty-six prisoners to be killed, but that too was met by the usual rejoinder, ‘What’s to be done? À la guerre, comme à la guerre!’¹²

‘He is a great man.’

‘Had he been born in Europe he might have been another Napoleon,’ said the stupid Georgian prince with a gift of flattery.

He knew that every mention of Napoleon was pleasant to Vorontsóv, who wore the White Cross at his neck as a reward for having defeated him.

‘Well, not Napoleon perhaps, but a gallant cavalry general if you like,’ said Vorontsóv.

‘If not Napoleon, then Murat.’

‘And his name is Hadji Murád!’

‘Hadji Murád has surrendered and now there’ll be an end to Shamil too,’ someone remarked.

‘They feel that now’ (this ‘now’ meant under Vorontsóv) ‘they can’t hold out,’ remarked another.

‘Tout cela est grâce à vous!’¹³ said Manana Orbelyáni.

Prince Vorontsóv tried to moderate the waves of flattery which began to flow over him. Still, it was pleasant, and in the best of spirits he led his lady back into the drawing-room.

After dinner, when coffee was being served in the drawing-room, the prince was particularly amiable to everybody, and going up to the general with the red bristly moustaches he tried to appear not to have noticed his blunder.

Having made a round of the visitors he sat down to the card-table. He only played the old-fashioned game of ombre. His partners were the Georgian prince, an Armenian general (who had learnt the game of ombre from Prince Vorontsóv’s valet), and Doctor Andréevsky, a man remarkable for the great influence he exercised.

Placing beside him his gold snuff-box with a portrait of Alexander I on the lid, the prince tore open a pack of highly glazed cards and was going to spread them out, when his Italian valet, Giovanni, brought him a letter on a silver tray.

‘Another courier, your Excellency.’

Vorontsóv laid down the cards, excused himself, opened the letter, and began to read.

The letter was from his son, who described Hadji Murád’s surrender and his own encounter with Meller-Zakomélsky.

The princess came up and inquired what their son had written.

‘It’s all about the same matter.… Il a eu quelques désagréments avec le commandant de la place. Simon a eu tort.¹⁴ … But “All’s well that ends well”,’ he added in English, handing the letter to his wife; and turning to his respectfully waiting partners he asked them to draw cards.

When the first round had been dealt Vorontsóv did what he was in the habit of doing when in a particularly pleasant mood: with his white, wrinkled old hand he took out a pinch of French snuff, carried it to his nose, and released it.

X

WHEN Hadji Murád appeared at the prince’s palace next day, the waiting-room was already full of people. Yesterday’s general with the bristly moustaches was there in full uniform with all his decorations, having come to take leave. There was the commander of a regiment who was in danger of being court-martialled for misappropriating commissariat money, and there was a rich Armenian (patronized by Doctor Andréevsky) who wanted to obtain from the Government a renewal of his monopoly for the sale of vodka. There, dressed in black, was the widow of an officer who had been killed in action. She had come to ask for a pension, or for free education for her children. There was a ruined Georgian prince in a magnificent Georgian costume who was trying to obtain for himself some confiscated church property. There was an official with a large roll of paper containing a new plan for subjugating the Caucasus. There was also a Khan who had come solely to be able to tell his people at home that he had called on the prince.

They all waited their turn and were one by one shown into the prince’s cabinet and out again by the aide-de-camp, a handsome, fair-haired youth.

When Hadji Murád entered the waiting-room with his brisk though limping step all eyes were turned towards him and he heard his name whispered from various parts of the room.

He was dressed in a long white Circassian coat over a brown beshmét trimmed round the collar with fine silver lace. He wore black leggings and soft shoes of the same colour which were stretched over his instep as tight as gloves. On his head he wore a high cap draped turban-fashion – that same turban for which, on the denunciation of Akhmet Khan, he had been arrested by General Klügenau and which had been the cause of his going over to Shamil.

He stepped briskly across the parquet floor of the waiting-room, his whole slender figure swaying slightly in consequence of his lameness in one leg which was shorter than the other. His eyes, set far apart, looked calmly before him and seemed to see no one.

The handsome aide-de-camp, having greeted him, asked him to take a seat while he went to announce him to the prince, but Hadji Murád declined to sit down and, putting his hand on his dagger, stood with one foot advanced, looking round contemptuously at all those present.

The prince’s interpreter, Prince Tarkhánov, approached Hadji Murád and spoke to him. Hadji Murád answered abruptly and unwillingly. A Kumýk prince, who was there to lodge a complaint against a police official, came out of the prince’s room, and then the aide-de-camp called Hadji Murád, led him to the door of the cabinet, and showed him in.

The Commander-in-Chief received Hadji Murád standing beside his table, and his old white face did not wear yesterday’s smile but was rather stern and solemn.

On entering the large room with its enormous table and great windows with green venetian blinds, Hadji Murád placed his small sunburnt hands on his chest just where the front of his white coat overlapped, and lowering his eyes began, without hurrying, to speak distinctly and respectfully, using the Kumýk dialect which he spoke well.

‘I place myself under the powerful protection of the great Tsar and of yourself,’ said he, ‘and promise to serve the White Tsar in faith and truth to the last drop of my blood, and I hope to be useful to you in the war with Shamil who is my enemy and yours.’

Having heard the interpreter out, Vorontsóv glanced at Hadji Murád and Hadji Murád glanced at Vorontsóv.

The eyes of the two men met, and expressed to each other much that could not have been put into words and that was not at all what the interpreter said. Without words they told each other the whole truth. Vorontsóv’s eyes said that he did not believe a single word Hadji Murád was saying, and that he knew he was and always would be an enemy to everything Russian and had surrendered only because he was obliged to. Hadji Murád understood this and yet continued to give assurances of his fidelity. His eyes said, ‘That old man ought to be thinking of his death and not of war, but though he is old he is cunning, and I must be careful.’ Vorontsóv understood this also, but nevertheless spoke to Hadji Murád in the way he considered necessary for the success of the war.

‘Tell him’, said Vorontsóv, ‘that our sovereign is as merciful as he is mighty and will probably at my request pardon him and take him into his service.… Have you told him?’ he asked, looking at Hadji Murád.… ‘Until I receive my master’s gracious decision, tell him I take it on myself to receive him and make his sojourn among us pleasant.’

Hadji Murád again pressed his hands to the centre of his chest and began to say something with animation.

‘He says’, the interpreter translated, ‘that formerly, when he governed Avaria in 1839, he served the Russians faithfully and would never have deserted them had not his enemy, Akhmet Khan, wishing to ruin him, calumniated him to General Klügenau.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Vorontsóv (though if he had ever known he had long forgotten it). ‘I know,’ he repeated, sitting down and motioning Hadji Murád to the divan that stood beside the wall. But Hadji Murád did not sit down. Shrugging his powerful shoulders as a sign that he could not bring himself to sit in the presence of so important a man, he went on, addressing the interpreter:

‘Akhmet Khan and Shamil are both my enemies. Tell the prince that Akhmet Khan is dead and I cannot revenge myself on him, but Shamil lives and I will not die without taking vengeance on him,’ said he, knitting his brows and tightly closing his mouth.

‘Yes, yes; but how does he want to revenge himself on Shamil?’ said Vorontsóv quietly to the interpreter. ‘And tell him he may sit down.’

Hadji Murád again declined to sit down, and in answer to the question replied that his object in coming over to the Russians was to help them to destroy Shamil.

‘Very well, very well,’ said Vorontsóv; ‘but what exactly does he wish to do?… Sit down, sit down!’

Hadji Murád sat down, and said that if only they would send him to the Lesghian line and would give him an army, he would guarantee to raise the whole of Daghestan and Shamil would then be unable to hold out.

‘That would be excellent.… I’ll think it over,’ said Vorontsóv.

The interpreter translated Vorontsóv’s words to Hadji Murád.

Hadji Murád pondered.

‘Tell the Sirdar one thing more,’ Hadji Murád began again, ‘that my family are in the hands of my enemy, and that as long as they are in the mountains I am bound and cannot serve him. Shamil would kill my wife and my mother and my children if I went openly against him. Let the prince first exchange my family for the prisoners he has, and then I will destroy Shamil or die!’

‘All right, all right,’ said Vorontsóv. ‘I will think it over.… Now let him go to the chief of the staff and explain to him in detail his position, intentions, and wishes.’

Thus ended the first interview between Hadji Murád and Vorontsóv.

That evening an Italian opera was performed at the new theatre, which was decorated in Oriental style. Vorontsóv was in his box when the striking figure of the limping Hadji Murád wearing a turban appeared in the stalls. He came in with Lóris-Mélikov,¹⁵ Vorontsóv’s aide-de-camp, in whose charge he was placed, and took a seat in the front row. Having sat through the first act with Oriental Mohammedan dignity, expressing no pleasure but only obvious indifference, he rose and looking calmly round at the audience went out, drawing to himself everybody’s attention.

The next day was Monday and there was the usual evening party at the Vorontsóvs’. In the large brightly lighted hall a band was playing, hidden among trees. Young women and women not very young wearing dresses that displayed their bare necks, arms, and breasts, turned round and round in the embrace of men in bright uniforms. At the buffet, footmen in red swallow-tail coats and wearing shoes and knee-breeches, poured out champagne and served sweetmeats to the ladies. The ‘Sirdar’s’ wife also, in spite of her age, went about half-dressed among the visitors smiling affably, and through the interpreter said a few amiable words to Hadji Murád who glanced at the visitors with the same indifference he had shown yesterday in the theatre. After the hostess, other half-naked women came up to him and all of them stood shamelessly before him and smilingly asked him the same question: How he liked what he saw? Vorontsóv himself, wearing gold epaulettes and gold shoulder-knots with his white cross and ribbon at his neck, came up and asked him the same question, evidently feeling sure, like all the others, that Hadji Murád could not help being pleased at what he saw. Hadji Murád replied to Vorontsóv as he had replied to them all, that among his people nothing of the kind was done, without expressing an opinion as to whether it was good or bad that it was so.

Here at the ball Hadji Murád tried to speak to Vorontsóv about buying out his family, but Vorontsóv, pretending that he had not heard him, walked away, and Lóris-Mélikov afterwards told Hadji Murád that this was not the place to talk about business.

When it struck eleven Hadji Murád, having made sure of the time by the watch the Vorontsóvs had given him, asked Lóris-Mélikov whether he might now leave. Lóris-Mélikov said he might, though it would be better to stay. In spite of this Hadji Murád did not stay, but drove in the phaeton placed at his disposal to the quarters that had been assigned to him.

XI

ON the fifth day of Hadji Murád’s stay in Tiflis Lóris-Mélikov, the Viceroy’s aide-de-camp, came to see him at the latter’s command.

‘My head and my hands are glad to serve the Sirdar,’ said Hadji Murád with his usual diplomatic expression, bowing his head and putting his hands to his chest. ‘Command me!’ said he, looking amiably into Lóris-Mélikov’s face.

Lóris-Mélikov sat down in an arm-chair placed by the table and Hadji Murád sank onto a low divan opposite and, resting his hands on his knees, bowed his head and listened attentively to what the other said to him.

Lóris-Mélikov, who spoke Tartar fluently, told him that though the prince knew about his past life, he yet wanted to hear the whole story from himself.

‘Tell it me, and I will write it down and translate it into Russian and the prince will send it to the Emperor.’

Hadji Murád remained silent for a while (he never interrupted anyone but always waited to see whether his collocutor had not something more to say), then he raised his head, shook back his cap, and smiled the peculiar childlike smile that had captivated Márya Vasílevna.

‘I can do that,’ said he, evidently flattered by the thought that his story would be read by the Emperor.

‘Thou must tell me’ (in Tartar nobody is addressed as ‘you’) ‘everything, deliberately from the beginning,’ said Lóris-Mélikov drawing a notebook from his pocket.

‘I can do that, only there is much – very much – to tell! Many events have happened!’ said Hadji Murád.

‘If thou canst not do it all in one day thou wilt finish it another time,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

‘Shall I begin at the beginning?’

‘Yes, at the very beginning … where thou wast born and where thou didst live.’

Hadji Murád’s head sank and he sat in that position for a long time. Then he took a stick that lay beside the divan, drew a little knife with an ivory gold-inlaid handle, sharp as a razor, from under his dagger, and started whittling the stick with it and speaking at the same time.

‘Write: Born in Tselméss, a small aoul, “the size of an ass’s head”, as we in the mountains say,’ he began. ‘Not far from it, about two cannon-shots, lies Khunzákh where the Khans lived. Our family was closely connected with them.

‘My mother, when my eldest brother Osman was born, nursed the eldest Khan, Abu Nutsal Khan. Then she nursed the second son of the Khan, Umma Khan, and reared him; but Akhmet my second brother died, and when I was born and the Khansha bore Bulách Khan, my mother would not go as wet-nurse again. My father ordered her to, but she would not. She said: “I should again kill my own son, and I will not go.” Then my father, who was passionate, struck her with a dagger and would have killed her had they not rescued her from him. So she did not give me up, and later on she composed a song … but I need not tell that.’

‘Yes, you must tell everything. It is necessary,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

Hadji Murád grew thoughtful. He remembered how his mother had laid him to sleep beside her under a fur coat on the roof of the sáklya, and he had asked her to show him the place in her side where the scar of her wound was still visible.

He repeated the song, which he remembered:

‘My white bosom was pierced by the blade of bright steel,

But I laid my bright sun, my dear boy, close upon it

Till his body was bathed in the stream of my blood.

And the wound healed without aid of herbs or of grass.

As I feared not death, so my boy will ne’er fear it.’

‘My mother is now in Shamil’s hands,’ he added, ‘and she must be rescued.’

He remembered the fountain below the hill, when holding on to his mother’s sharováry (loose Turkish trousers) he had gone with her for water. He remembered how she had shaved his head for the first time, and how the reflection of his round bluish head in the shining brass vessel that hung on the wall had astonished him. He remembered a lean dog that had licked his face. He remembered the strange smell of the lepéshki (a kind of flat cake) his mother had given him – a smell of smoke and of sour milk. He remembered how his mother had carried him in a basket on her back to visit his grandfather at the farmstead. He remembered his wrinkled grandfather with his grey hairs, and how he had hammered silver with his sinewy hands.

‘Well, so my mother did not go as nurse,’ he said with a jerk of his head, ‘and the Khansha took another nurse but still remained fond of my mother, and my mother used to take us children to the Khansha’s palace, and we played with her children and she was fond of us.

‘There were three young Khans: Abu Nutsal Khan my brother Osman’s foster-brother; Umma Khan my own sworn brother; and Bulách Khan the youngest – whom Shamil threw over the precipice. But that happened later.

‘I was about sixteen when murids began to visit the aouls. They beat the stones with wooden scimitars and cried, “Mussulmans, Ghazavát!” The Chechens all went over to Muridism and the Avars began to go over too. I was then living in the palace like a brother of the Khans. I could do as I liked, and I became rich. I had horses and weapons and money. I lived for pleasure and had no care, and went on like that till the time when Kazi-Mulla, the Imám, was killed and Hamzád succeeded him. Hamzád sent envoys to the Khans to say that if they did not join the Ghazavát he would destroy Khunzákh.

‘This needed consideration. The Khans feared the Russians, but were also afraid to join in the Holy War. The old Khansha sent me with her second son, Umma Khan, to Tiflis to ask the Russian Commander-in-Chief for help against Hamzád. The Commander-in-Chief at Tiflis was Baron Rosen. He did not receive either me or Umma Khan. He sent word that he would help us, but did nothing. Only his officers came riding to us and played cards with Umma Khan. They made him drunk with wine and took him to bad places, and he lost all he had to them at cards. His body was as strong as a bull’s and he was as brave as a lion, but his soul was weak as water. He would have gambled away his last horses and weapons if I had not made him come away.

‘After visiting Tiflis my ideas changed and I advised the old Khansha and the Khans to join the Ghazavát.…’

‘What made you change your mind?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov. ‘Were you not pleased with the Russians?’

Hadji Murád paused.

‘No, I was not pleased,’ he answered decidedly, closing his eyes. ‘And there was also another reason why I wished to join the Ghazavát.’

‘What was that?’

‘Why, near Tselméss the Khan and I encountered three murids, two of whom escaped but the third one I shot with my pistol.

‘He was still alive when I approached to take his weapons. He looked up at me, and said, “Thou hast killed me … I am happy; but thou art a Mussulman, young and strong. Join the Ghazavát! God wills it!’ ”

‘And did you join it?’

‘I did not, but it made me think,’ said Hadji Murád, and he went on with his tale.

‘When Hamzád approached Khunzákh we sent our Elders to him to say that we would agree to join the Ghazavát if the Imám would send a learned man to explain it to us. Hamzád had our Elders’ moustaches shaved off, their nostrils pierced, and cakes hung to their noses, and in that condition he sent them back to us.

‘The Elders brought word that Hamzád was ready to send a sheik to teach us the Ghazavát, but only if the Khansha sent him her youngest son as a hostage. She took him at his word and sent her youngest son, Bulách Khan. Hamzád received him well and sent to invite the two elder brothers also. He sent word that he wished to serve the Khans as his father had served their father.… The Khansha was a weak, stupid, and conceited woman, as all women are when they are not under control. She was afraid to send away both sons and sent only Umma Khan. I went with him. We were met by murids about a mile before we arrived and they sang and shot and caracoled around us, and when we drew near, Hamzád came out of his tent and went up to Umma Khan’s stirrup and received him as a Khan. He said, “I have not done any harm to thy family and do not wish to do any. Only do not kill me and do not prevent my bringing the people over to the Ghazavát, and I will serve you with my whole army as my father served your father! Let me live in your house and I will help you with my advice, and you shall do as you like!”

‘Umma Khan was slow of speech. He did not know how to reply and remained silent. Then I said that if this was so, let Hamzád come to Khunzákh and the Khansha and the Khans would receive him with honour.… But I was not allowed to finish – and here I first encountered Shamil, who was beside the Imám. He said to me, “Thou hast not been asked.… It was the Khan!”

‘I was silent, and Hamzád led Umma Khan into his tent. Afterwards Hamzád called me and ordered me to go to Khunzákh with his envoys. I went. The envoys began persuading the Khansha to send her eldest son also to Hamzád. I saw there was treachery and told her not to send him; but a woman has as much sense in her head as an egg has hair. She ordered her son to go. Abu Nutsal Khan did not wish to. Then she said, “I see thou art afraid!” Like a bee she knew where to sting him most painfully. Abu Nutsal Khan flushed and did not speak to her any more, but ordered his horse to be saddled. I went with him.

‘Hamzád met us with even greater honour than he had shown Umma Khan. He himself rode out two rifle-shot lengths down the hill to meet us. A large party of horsemen with their banners followed him, and they too sang, shot, and caracoled.

‘When we reached the camp, Hamzád led the Khan into his tent and I remained with the horses.…

‘I was some way down the hill when I heard shots fired in Hamzád’s tent. I ran there and saw Umma Khan lying prone in a pool of blood, and Abu Nutsal was fighting the murids. One of his cheeks had been hacked off and hung down. He supported it with one hand and with the other stabbed with his dagger at all who came near him. I saw him strike down Hamzád’s brother and aim a blow at another man, but then the murids fired at him and he fell.’

Hadji Murád stopped and his sunburnt face flushed a dark red and his eyes became bloodshot.

‘I was seized with fear and ran away.’

‘Really?… I thought thou never wast afraid,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

‘Never after that.… Since then I have always remembered that shame, and when I recalled it I feared nothing!’

XII

‘BUT enough! It is time for me to pray,’ said Hadji Murád drawing from an inner breast-pocket of his Circassian coat Vorontsóv’s repeater watch and carefully pressing the spring. The repeater struck twelve and a quarter. Hadji Murád listened with his head on one side, repressing a childlike smile.

‘Kunák Vorontsóv’s present,’ he said, smiling.

‘It is a good watch,’ said Lóris-Mélikov. ‘Well then, go thou and pray, and I will wait.’

‘Yakshi. Very well,’ said Hadji Murád and went to his bedroom.

Left by himself, Lóris-Mélikov wrote down in his notebook the chief things Hadji Murád had related, and then lighting a cigarette began to pace up and down the room. On reaching the door opposite the bedroom he heard animated voices speaking rapidly in Tartar. He guessed that the speakers were Hadji Murád’s murids, and opening the door he went in to them.

The room was impregnated with that special leathery acid smell peculiar to the mountaineers. On a búrka spread out on the floor sat the one-eyed, red-haired Gamzálo, in a tattered greasy beshmét, plaiting a bridle. He was saying something excitedly, speaking in a hoarse voice, but when Lóris-Mélikov entered he immediately became silent and continued his work without paying any attention to him.

In front of Gamzálo stood the merry Khan Mahomá showing his white teeth, his black lashless eyes glittering, and saying something over and over again. The handsome Eldár, his sleeves turned up on his strong arms, was polishing the girths of a saddle suspended from a nail. Khanéfi, the principal worker and manager of the household, was not there, he was cooking their dinner in the kitchen.

‘What were you disputing about?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov after greeting them.

‘Why, he keeps on praising Shamil,’ said Khan Mahomá giving his hand to Lóris-Mélikov. ‘He says Shamil is a great man, learned, holy, and a dzhigít.’

‘How is it that he has left him and still praises him?’

‘He has left him and still praises him,’ repeated Khan Mahomá, his teeth showing and his eyes glittering.

‘And does he really consider him a saint?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov.

‘If he were not a saint the people would not listen to him,’ said Gamzálo rapidly.

‘Shamil is no saint, but Mansúr was!’ replied Khan Mahomá. ‘He was a real saint. When he was Imám the people were quite different. He used to ride through the aouls and the people used to come out and kiss the hem of his coat and confess their sins and vow to do no evil. Then all the people – so the old men say – lived like saints: not drinking, nor smoking, nor neglecting their prayers, and forgiving one another their sins even when blood had been spilt. If anyone then found money or anything, he tied it to a stake and set it up by the roadside. In those days God gave the people success in everything – not as now.’

‘In the mountains they don’t smoke or drink now,’ said Gamzálo.

‘Your Shamil is a lamorey,’ said Khan Mahomá, winking at Lóris-Mélikov. (Lamorey was a contemptuous term for a mountaineer.)

‘Yes, lamorey means mountaineer,’ replied Gamzálo. ‘It is in the mountains that the eagles dwell.’

‘Smart fellow! Well hit!’ said Khan Mahomá with a grin, pleased at his adversary’s apt retort.

Seeing the silver cigarette-case in Lóris-Mélikov’s hand, Khan Mahomá asked for a cigarette, and when Lóris-Mélikov remarked that they were forbidden to smoke, he winked with one eye and jerking his head in the direction of Hadji Murád’s bedroom replied that they could do it as long as they were not seen. He at once began smoking – not inhaling – and pouting his red lips awkwardly as he blew out the smoke.

‘That is wrong!’ said Gamzálo severely, and left the room. Khan Mahomá winked in his direction, and while smoking asked Lóris-Mélikov where he could best buy a silk beshmét and a white cap.

‘Why, hast thou so much money?’

‘I have enough,’ replied Khan Mahomá with a wink.

‘Ask him where he got the money,’ said Eldár, turning his handsome smiling face towards Lóris-Mélikov.

‘Oh, I won it!’ said Khan Mahomá quickly, and related how while walking in Tiflis the day before he had come upon a group of men – Russians and Armenians – playing at orlyánka (a kind of heads-and-tails). The stake was a large one: three gold pieces and much silver. Khan Mahomá at once saw what the game consisted in, and jingling the coppers he had in his pocket he went up to the players and said he would stake the whole amount.

‘How couldst thou do it? Hadst thou so much?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov.

‘I had only twelve kopeks,’ said Khan Mahomá, grinning.

‘But if thou hadst lost?’

‘Why, this!’ said Khan Mahomá pointing to his pistol.

‘Wouldst thou have given that?’

‘Give it indeed! I should have run away, and if anyone had tried to stop me I should have killed him – that’s all!’

‘Well, and didst thou win?’

‘Aye, I won it all and went away!’

Lóris-Mélikov quite understood what sort of men Khan Mahomá and Eldár were. Khan Mahomá was a merry fellow, careless and ready for any spree. He did not know what to do with his superfluous vitality. He was always gay and reckless, and played with his own and other people’s lives. For the sake of that sport with life he had now come over to the Russians, and for the same sport he might go back to Shamil to-morrow.

Eldár was also quite easy to understand. He was a man entirely devoted to his murshid; calm, strong, and firm.

The red-haired Gamzálo was the only one Lóris-Mélikov did not understand. He saw that that man was not only loyal to Shamil but felt an insuperable aversion, contempt, repugnance, and hatred for all Russians, and Lóris-Mélikov could therefore not understand why he had come over to them. It occurred to him that, as some of the higher officials suspected, Hadji Murád’s surrender and his tales of hatred of Shamil might be false, and that perhaps he had surrendered only to spy out the Russians’ weak spots that, after escaping back to the mountains, he might be able to direct his forces accordingly. Gamzálo’s whole person strengthened this suspicion.

‘The others, and Hadji Murád himself, know how to hide their intentions, but this one betrays them by his open hatred,’ thought he.

Lóris-Mélikov tried to speak to him. He asked whether he did not feel dull. ‘No, I don’t!’ he growled hoarsely without stopping his work, and glancing at his questioner out of the corner of his one eye. He replied to all Lóris-Mélikov’s other questions in a similar manner.

While Lóris-Mélikov was in the room Hadji Murád’s fourth murid came in, the Avar Khanéfi; a man with a hairy face and neck and an arched chest as rough as if it were overgrown with moss. He was strong and a hard worker, always engrossed in his duties, and like Eldár unquestioningly obedient to his master.

When he entered the room to fetch some rice, Lóris-Mélikov stopped him and asked where he came from and how long he had been with Hadji Murád.

‘Five years,’ replied Khanéfi. ‘I come from the same aoul as he. My father killed his uncle and they wished to kill me,’ he said calmly, looking from under his joined eyebrows straight into Lóris-Mélikov’s face. ‘Then I asked them to adopt me as a brother.’

‘What do you mean by “adopt as a brother”?’

‘I did not shave my head nor cut my nails for two months, and then I came to them. They let me in to Patimát, his mother, and she gave me the breast and I became his brother.’

Hadji Murád’s voice could be heard from the next room and Eldár, immediately answering his call, promptly wiped his hands and went with large strides into the drawing-room.

‘He asks thee to come,’ said he, coming back.

Lóris-Mélikov gave another cigarette to the merry Khan Mahomá and went into the drawing-room.

XIII

WHEN Lóris-Mélikov entered the drawing-room Hadji Murád received him with a bright face.

‘Well, shall I continue?’ he asked, sitting down comfortably on the divan.

‘Yes, certainly,’ said Lóris-Mélikov. ‘I have been in to have a talk with thy henchmen.… One is a jolly fellow!’ he added.

‘Yes, Khan Mahomá is a frivolous fellow,’ said Hadji Murád.

‘I liked the young handsome one.’

‘Ah, that’s Eldár. He’s young but firm – made of iron!’

They were silent for a while.

‘So I am to go on?’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘I told thee how the Khans were killed.… Well, having killed them Hamzád rode into Khunzákh and took up his quarters in their palace. The Khansha was the only one of the family left alive. Hamzád sent for her. She reproached him, so he winked to his murid Aseldár, who struck her from behind and killed her.’

‘Why did he kill her?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov.

‘What could he do?… Where the forelegs have gone the hind legs must follow! He killed off the whole family. Shamil killed the youngest son – threw him over a precipice.…

‘Then the whole of Avaria surrendered to Hamzád. But my brother and I would not surrender. We wanted his blood for the blood of the Khans. We pretended to yield, but our only thought was how to get his blood. We consulted our grandfather and decided to await the time when he would come out of his palace, and then to kill him from an ambush. Someone overheard us and told Hamzád, who sent for grandfather and said, “Mind, if it be true that thy grandsons are planning evil against me, thou and they shall hang from one rafter. I do God’s work and cannot be hindered.… Go, and remember what I have said!”

‘Our grandfather came home and told us.

‘Then we decided not to wait but to do the deed on the first day of the feast in the mosque. Our comrades would not take part in it but my brother and I remained firm.

‘We took two pistols each, put on our búrkas, and went to the mosque. Hamzád entered the mosque with thirty murids. They all had drawn swords in their hands. Aseldár, his favourite murid (the one who had cut off the Khansha’s head), saw us, shouted to us to take off our búrkas, and came towards me. I had my dagger in my hand and I killed him with it and rushed at Hamzád; but my brother Osman had already shot him. He was still alive and rushed at my brother dagger in hand, but I gave him a finishing blow on the head. There were thirty murids and we were only two. They killed my brother Osman, but I kept them at bay, leapt through the window, and escaped.

‘When it was known that Hamzád had been killed all the people rose. The murids fled and those of them who did not flee were killed.’

Hadji Murád paused, and breathed heavily.

‘That was very good,’ he continued, ‘but afterwards everything was spoilt.

‘Shamil succeeded Hamzád. He sent envoys to me to say that I should join him in attacking the Russians, and that if I refused he would destroy Khunzákh and kill me.

‘I answered that I would not join him and would not let him come to me.…’

‘Why didst thou not go with him?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov.

Hadji Murád frowned and did not reply at once.

‘I could not. The blood of my brother Osman and of Abu Nutsal Khan was on his hands. I did not go to him. General Rosen sent me an officer’s commission and ordered me to govern Avaria. All this would have been well but that Rosen appointed as Khan of Kazi-Kumúkh, first Mahómet-Murza, and afterwards Akhmet Khan, who hated me. He had been trying to get the Khansha’s daughter, Sultanetta, in marriage for his son, but she would not give her to him, and he believed me to be the cause of this.… Yes, Akhmet Khan hated me and sent his henchmen to kill me, but I escaped from them. Then he spoke ill of me to General Klügenau. He said that I told the Avars not to supply wood to the Russian soldiers, and he also said that I had donned a turban – this one’ (Hadji Murád touched his turban) ‘and that this meant that I had gone over to Shamil. The general did not believe him and gave orders that I should not be touched. But when the general went to Tiflis, Akhmet Khan did as he pleased. He sent a company of soldiers to seize me, put me in chains, and tied me to a cannon.

‘So they kept me six days,’ he continued. ‘On the seventh day they untied me and started to take me to Temir-Khan-Shurá. Forty soldiers with loaded guns had me in charge. My hands were tied and I knew that they had orders to kill me if I tried to escape.

‘As we approached Mansokha the path became narrow, and on the right was an abyss about a hundred and twenty yards deep. I went to the right – to the very edge. A soldier wanted to stop me, but I jumped down and pulled him with me. He was killed outright but I, as you see, remained alive.

‘Ribs, head, arms, and leg – all were broken! I tried to crawl but grew giddy and fell asleep. I awoke wet with blood. A shepherd saw me and called some people who carried me to an aoul. My ribs and head healed, and my leg too, only it has remained short,’ and Hadji Murád stretched out his crooked leg. ‘It still serves me, however, and that is well,’ said he.

‘The people heard the news and began coming to me. I recovered and went to Tselméss. The Avars again called on me to rule over them,’ he went on, with tranquil, confident pride, ‘and I agreed.’

He rose quickly and taking a portfolio out of a saddle-bag, drew out two discoloured letters and handed one of them to Lóris-Mélikov. They were from General Klügenau. Lóris-Mélikov read the first letter, which was as follows:

‘Lieutenant Hadji Murád, thou hast served under me and I was satisfied with thee and considered thee a good man.

‘Recently Akhmet Khan informed me that thou art a traitor, that thou hast donned a turban and hast intercourse with Shamil, and that thou hast taught the people to disobey the Russian Government. I ordered thee to be arrested and brought before me but thou fledst. I do not know whether this is for thy good or not, as I do not know whether thou art guilty or not.

‘Now hear me. If thy conscience is pure, if thou art not guilty in anything towards the great Tsar, come to me, fear no one. I am thy defender. The Khan can do nothing to thee, he is himself under my command, so thou hast nothing to fear.’

Klügenau added that he always kept his word and was just, and he again exhorted Hadji Murád to appear before him.

When Lóris-Mélikov had read this letter Hadji Murád, before handing him the second one, told him what he had written in reply to the first.

‘I wrote that I wore a turban not for Shamil’s sake but for my soul’s salvation; that I neither wished nor could go over to Shamil, because he had caused the death of my father, my brothers, and my relations; but that I could not join the Russians because I had been dishonoured by them. (In Khunzákh, a scoundrel had spat on me while I was bound, and I could not join your people until that man was killed.) But above all I feared that liar, Akhmet Khan.

‘Then the general sent me this letter,’ said Hadji Murád, handing Lóris-Mélikov the other discoloured paper.

‘Thou hast answered my first letter and I thank thee,’ read Lóris-Mélikov. ‘Thou writest that thou art not afraid to return but that the insult done thee by a certain giaour prevents it, but I assure thee that the Russian law is just and that thou shalt see him who dared to offend thee punished before thine eyes. I have already given orders to investigate the matter.

‘Hear me, Hadji Murád! I have a right to be displeased with thee for not trusting me and my honour, but I forgive thee, for I know how suspicious mountaineers are in general. If thy conscience is pure, if thou hast put on a turban only for thy soul’s salvation, then thou art right and mayst look me and the Russian Government boldly in the eye. He who dishonoured thee shall, I assure thee, be punished and thy property shall be restored to thee, and thou shalt see and know what Russian law is. Moreover we Russians look at things differently, and thou hast not sunk in our eyes because some scoundrel has dishonoured thee.

‘I myself have consented to the Chimrints wearing turbans, and I regard their actions in the right light, and therefore I repeat that thou hast nothing to fear. Come to me with the man by whom I am sending thee this letter. He is faithful to me and is not the slave of thy enemies, but is the friend of a man who enjoys the special favour of the Government.’

Further on Klügenau again tried to persuade Hadji Murád to come over to him.

‘I did not believe him,’ said Hadji Murád when Lóris-Mélikov had finished reading, ‘and did not go to Klügenau. The chief thing for me was to revenge myself on Akhmet Khan, and that I could not do through the Russians. Then Akhmet Khan surrounded Tselméss and wanted to take me or kill me. I had too few men and could not drive him off, and just then came an envoy with a letter from Shamil promising to help me to defeat and kill Akhmet Khan and making me ruler over the whole of Avaria. I considered the matter for a long time and then went over to Shamil, and from that time I have fought the Russians continually.’

Here Hadji Murád related all his military exploits, of which there were very many and some of which were already familiar to Lóris-Mélikov. All his campaigns and raids had been remarkable for the extraordinary rapidity of his movements and the boldness of his attacks, which were always crowned with success.

‘There never was any friendship between me and Shamil,’ said Hadji Murád at the end of his story, ‘but he feared me and needed me. But it so happened that I was asked who should be Imám after Shamil, and I replied: “He will be Imám whose sword is sharpest!”

‘This was told to Shamil and he wanted to get rid of me. He sent me into Tabasarán. I went, and captured a thousand sheep and three hundred horses, but he said I had not done the right thing and dismissed me from being Naïb, and ordered me to send him all the money. I sent him a thousand gold pieces. He sent his murids and they took from me all my property. He demanded that I should go to him, but I knew he wanted to kill me and I did not go. Then he sent to take me. I resisted and went over to Vorontsóv. Only I did not take my family. My mother, my wives, and my son are in his hands. Tell the Sirdar that as long as my family is in Shamil’s power I can do nothing.’

‘I will tell him,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

‘Take pains, try hard!… What is mine is thine, only help me with the prince! I am tied up and the end of the rope is in Shamil’s hands,’ said Hadji Murád concluding his story.

XIV

ON the 20th of December Vorontsóv wrote to Chernyshóv, the Minister of War. The letter was in French:

‘I did not write to you by the last post, dear Prince, as I wished first to decide what we should do with Hadji Murád, and for the last two or three days I have not been feeling quite well.

‘In my last letter I informed you of Hadji Murád’s arrival here. He reached Tiflis on the 8th, and next day I made his acquaintance, and during the following seven or eight days have spoken to him and considered what use we can make of him in the future, and especially what we are to do with him at present, for he is much concerned about the fate of his family, and with every appearance of perfect frankness says that while they are in Shamil’s hands he is paralysed and cannot render us any service or show his gratitude for the friendly reception and forgiveness we have extended to him.

‘His uncertainty about those dear to him makes him restless, and the persons I have appointed to live with him assure me that he does not sleep at night, eats hardly anything, prays continually, and asks only to be allowed to ride out accompanied by several Cossacks – the sole recreation and exercise possible for him and made necessary to him by lifelong habit. Every day he comes to me to know whether I have any news of his family, and to ask me to have all the prisoners in our hands collected and offered to Shamil in exchange for them. He would also give a little money. There are people who would let him have some for the purpose. He keeps repeating to me: “Save my family and then give me a chance to serve thee” (preferably, in his opinion, on the Lesghian line), “and if within a month I do not render you great service, punish me as you think fit.” I reply that to me all this appears very just, and that many among us would even not trust him so long as his family remain in the mountains and are not in our hands as hostages, and that I will do everything possible to collect the prisoners on our frontier, that I have no power under our laws to give him money for the ransom of his family in addition to the sum he may himself be able to raise, but that I may perhaps find some other means of helping him. After that I told him frankly that in my opinion Shamil would not in any case give up the family, and that Shamil might tell him so straight out and promise him a full pardon and his former posts, and might threaten if Hadji Murád did not return, to kill his mother, his wives, and his six children. I asked him whether he could say frankly what he would do if he received such an announcement from Shamil. He lifted his eyes and arms to heaven, and said that everything is in God’s hands, but that he would never surrender to his foe, for he is certain Shamil would not forgive him and he would therefore not have long to live. As to the destruction of his family, he did not think Shamil would act so rashly: firstly, to avoid making him a yet more desperate and dangerous foe, and secondly, because there were many people, and even very influential people, in Daghestan, who would dissuade Shamil from such a course. Finally, he repeated several times that whatever God might decree for him in the future, he was at present interested in nothing but his family’s ransom, and he implored me in God’s name to help him and allow him to return to the neighbourhood of the Chechnya, where he could, with the help and consent of our commanders, have some intercourse with his family and regular news of their condition and of the best means to liberate them. He said that many people, and even some Naïbs in that part of the enemy’s territory, were more or less attached to him, and that among the whole of the population already subjugated by Russia or neutral it would be easy with our help to establish relations very useful for the attainment of the aim which gives him no peace day or night, and the attainment of which would set him at ease and make it possible for him to act for our good and win our confidence.

‘He asks to be sent back to Grózny with a convoy of twenty or thirty picked Cossacks who would serve him as a protection against foes and us as a guarantee of his good faith.

‘You will understand, dear Prince, that I have been much perplexed by all this, for do what I will a great responsibility rests on me. It would be in the highest degree rash to trust him entirely, yet in order to deprive him of all means of escape we should have to lock him up, and in my opinion that would be both unjust and impolitic. A measure of that kind, the news of which would soon spread over the whole of Daghestan, would do us great harm by keeping back those who are now inclined more or less openly to oppose Shamil (and there are many such), and who are keenly watching to see how we treat the Imám’s bravest and most adventurous officer now that he has found himself obliged to place himself in our hands. If we treat Hadji Murád as a prisoner all the good effect of the situation will be lost. Therefore I think that I could not act otherwise than as I have done, though at the same time I feel that I may be accused of having made a great mistake if Hadji Murád should take it into his head to escape again. In the service, and especially in a complicated situation such as this, it is difficult, not to say impossible, to follow any one straight path without risking mistakes and without accepting responsibility, but once a path seems to be the right one I must follow it, happen what may.

‘I beg of you, dear Prince, to submit this to his Majesty the Emperor for his consideration; and I shall be happy if it pleases our most august monarch to approve my action.

‘All that I have written above I have also written to Generals Zavodóvsky and Kozlóvsky, to guide the latter when communicating direct with Hadji Murád whom I have warned not to act or go anywhere without Kozlóvsky’s consent. I also told him that it would be all the better for us if he rode out with our convoy, as otherwise Shamil might spread a rumour that we were keeping him prisoner, but at the same time I made him promise never to go to Vozdvízhensk, because my son, to whom he first surrendered and whom he looks upon as his kunák (friend), is not the commander of that place and some unpleasant misunderstanding might easily arise. In any case Vozdvízhensk lies too near a thickly populated hostile settlement, while for the intercourse with his friends which he desires, Grózny is in all respects suitable.

‘Besides the twenty chosen Cossacks who at his own request are to keep close to him, I am also sending Captain Lóris-Mélikov – a worthy, excellent, and highly intelligent officer who speaks Tartar, and knows Hadji Murád well and apparently enjoys his full confidence. During the ten days that Hadji Murád has spent here, he has, however, lived in the same house with Lieutenant-Colonel Prince Tarkhánov, who is in command of the Shoushín District and is here on business connected with the service. He is a truly worthy man whom I trust entirely. He also has won Hadji Murád’s confidence, and through him alone – as he speaks Tartar perfectly – we have discussed the most delicate and secret matters. I have consulted Tarkhánov about Hadji Murád, and he fully agrees with me that it was necessary either to act as I have done, or to put Hadji Murád in prison and guard him in the strictest manner (for if we once treat him badly he will not be easy to hold), or else to remove him from the country altogether. But these two last measures would not only destroy all the advantage accruing to us from Hadji Murád’s quarrel with Shamil, but would inevitably check any growth of the present insubordination, and possible future revolt, of the people against Shamil’s power. Prince Tarkhánov tells me he himself has no doubt of Hadji Murád’s truthfulness, and that Hadji Murád is convinced that Shamil will never forgive him but would have him executed in spite of any promise of forgiveness. The only thing Tarkhánov has noticed in his intercourse with Hadji Murád that might cause any anxiety, is his attachment to his religion. Tarkhánov does not deny that Shamil might influence Hadji Murád from that side. But as I have already said, he will never persuade Hadji Murád that he will not take his life sooner or later should the latter return to him.

‘This, dear Prince, is all I have to tell you about this episode in our affairs here.’

XV

THE report was dispatched from Tiflis on the 24th of December 1851, and on New Year’s Eve a courier, having overdriven a dozen horses and beaten a dozen drivers till they bled, delivered it to Prince Chernyshóv who at that time was Minister of War; and on the 1st of January 1852 Chernyshov took Vorontsóv’s report, among other papers, to the Emperor Nicholas.

Chernyshóv disliked Vorontsóv because of the general respect in which the latter was held and because of his immense wealth, and also because Vorontsóv was a real aristocrat while Chernyshóv, after all, was a parvenu, but especially because the Emperor was particularly well disposed towards Vorontsóv. Therefore at every opportunity Chernyshóv tried to injure Vorontsóv.

When he had last presented a report about Caucasian affairs he had succeeded in arousing Nicholas’s displeasure against Vorontsóv because – through the carelessness of those in command – almost the whole of a small Caucasian detachment had been destroyed by the mountaineers. He now intended to present the steps taken by Vorontsóv in relation to Hadji Murád in an unfavourable light. He wished to suggest to the Emperor that Vorontsóv always protected and even indulged the natives to the detriment of the Russians, and that he had acted unwisely in allowing Hadji Murád to remain in the Caucasus for there was every reason to suspect that he had only come over to spy on our means of defence, and that it would therefore be better to transport him to Central Russia and make use of him only after his family had been rescued from the mountaineers and it had become possible to convince ourselves of his loyalty.

Chernyshóv’s plan did not succeed merely because on that New Year’s Day Nicholas was in particularly bad spirits, and out of perversity would not have accepted any suggestion whatever from anyone, least of all from Chernyshóv whom he only tolerated – regarding him as indispensable for the time being but looking upon him as a blackguard, for Nicholas knew of his endeavours at the trial of the Decembrists¹⁶ to secure the conviction of Zacháry Chernyshóv, and of his attempt to obtain Zacháry’s property for himself. So thanks to Nicholas’s ill temper Hadji Murád remained in the Caucasus, and his circumstances were not changed as they might have been had Chernyshóv presented his report at another time.

* * *

It was half-past nine o’clock Mwhen through the mist of the cold morning (the thermometer showed 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit) Chernyshóv’s fat, bearded coachman, sitting on the box of a small sledge (like the one Nicholas drove about in) with a sharp-angled, cushion-shaped azure velvet cap on his head, drew up at the entrance of the Winter Palace and gave a friendly nod to his chum, Prince Dolgoruky’s coachman – who having brought his master to the palace had himself long been waiting outside, in his big coat with the thickly wadded skirts, sitting on the reins and rubbing his numbed hands together. Chernyshóv had on a long cloak with a large cape and a fluffy collar of silver beaver, and a regulation three-cornered hat with cocks’ feathers. He threw back the bearskin apron of the sledge and carefully disengaged his chilled feet, on which he had no over-shoes (he prided himself on never wearing any). Clanking his spurs with an air of bravado he ascended the carpeted steps and passed through the hall door which was respectfully opened for him by the porter, and entered the hall. Having thrown off his cloak which an old Court lackey hurried forward to take, he went to a mirror and carefully removed the hat from his curled wig. Looking at himself in the mirror, he arranged the hair on his temples and the tuft above his forehead with an accustomed movement of his old hands, and adjusted his cross, the shoulder-knots of his uniform, and his large-initialled epaulettes, and then went up the gently ascending carpeted stairs, his not very reliable old legs feebly mounting the shallow steps. Passing the Court lackeys in gala livery who stood obsequiously bowing, Chernyshov entered the waiting-room. He was respectfully met by a newly appointed aide-de-camp of the Emperor’s in a shining new uniform with epaulettes and shoulder-knots, whose face was still fresh and rosy and who had a small black moustache, and the hair on his temples brushed towards his eyes in the same way as the Emperor.

Prnice Vasíli Dolgorúky, Assistant-Minister of War, with an expression of ennui on his dull face – which was ornamented with similar whiskers, moustaches, and temple tufts brushed forward like Nicholas’s – greeted him.

‘L’empereur?’ said Chernyshóv, addressing the aide-de-camp and looking inquiringly towards the door leading to the cabinet.

‘Sa majesté vient de rentrer,’¹⁷ replied the aide-de-camp, evidently enjoying the sound of his own voice, and stepping so softly and steadily that had a tumbler of water been placed on his head none of it would have been spilt, he approached the door and disappeared, his whole body evincing reverence for the spot he was about to visit.

Dolgorúky meanwhile opened his portfolio to see that it contained the necessary papers, while Chernyshóv, frowning, paced up and down to restore the circulation in his numbed feet, and thought over what he was about to report to the Emperor. He was near the door of the cabinet when it opened again and the aide-de-camp, even more radiant and respectful than before, came out and with a gesture invited the minister and his assistant to enter.

The Winter Palace had been rebuilt after a fire some considerable time before this, but Nicholas was still occupying rooms in the upper storey. The cabinet in which he received the reports of his ministers and other high officials was a very lofty apartment with four large windows. A big portrait of the Emperor Alexander I hung on the front side of the room. Two bureaux stood between the windows, and several chairs were ranged along the walls. In the middle of the room was an enormous writing-table, with an arm-chair before it for Nicholas, and other chairs for those to whom he gave audience.

Nicholas sat at the table in a black coat with shoulder-straps but no epaulettes, his enormous body – with his overgrown stomach tightly laced in – was thrown back, and he gazed at the newcomers with fixed, lifeless eyes. His long pale face, with its enormous receding forehead between the tufts of hair which were brushed forward and skilfully joined to the wig that covered his bald patch, was specially cold and stony that day. His eyes, always dim, looked duller than usual, the compressed lips under his upturned moustaches, the high collar which supported his chin, and his fat freshly shaven cheeks on which symmetrical sausage-shaped bits of whiskers had been left, gave his face a dissatisfied and even irate expression. His bad mood was caused by fatigue, due to the fact that he had been to a masquerade the night before, and while walking about as was his wont in his Horse Guards’ uniform with a bird on the helmet, among the public which crowded round and timidly made way for his enormous, self-assured figure, he had again met the mask who at the previous masquerade had aroused his senile sensuality by her whiteness, her beautiful figure, and her tender voice. At that former masquerade she had disappeared after promising to meet him at the next one.

At yesterday’s masquerade she had come up to him, and this time he had not let her go, but had led her to the box specially kept ready for that purpose, where he could be alone with her. Having arrived in silence at the door of the box Nicholas looked round to find the attendant, but he was not there. He frowned and pushed the door open himself, letting the lady enter first.

‘Il y a quelqu’un!’¹⁸ said the mask, stopping short.

And the box actually was occupied. On the small velvet-covered sofa, close together, sat an Uhlan officer and a pretty, fair curly-haired young woman in a domino, who had removed her mask. On catching sight of the angry figure of Nicholas drawn up to its full height, she quickly replaced her mask, but the Uhlan officer, rigid with fear, gazed at Nicholas with fixed eyes without rising from the sofa.

Used as he was to the terror he inspired in others, that terror always pleased Nicholas, and by way of contrast he sometimes liked to astound those plunged in terror by addressing kindly words to them. He did so on this occasion.

‘Well, friend,’ said he to the officer, ‘you are younger than I and might give up your place to me!’