over! There’s no end to this dog’s life! Where have we come?” he asked, dropping his voice and raising his eyes to the sexton’s wife.
“To the Gulyaevsky Hill on General Kalinovsky’s estate,” she answered, startled and blushing.
“Do you hear, Stepan?” The postman turned to the driver, who was wedged in the doorway with a huge mail-bag on his shoulders. “We’ve got to Gulyaevsky Hill.”
“Yes… we’re a long way out.” Jerking out these words like a hoarse sigh, the driver went out and soon after returned with another bag, then went out once more and this time brought the postman’s sword on a big belt, of the pattern of that long flat blade with which Judith is portrayed by the bedside of Holofernes in cheap woodcuts. Laying the bags along the wall, he went out into the outer room, sat down there and lighted his pipe.
“Perhaps you’d like some tea after your journey?” Raïssa inquired.
“How can we sit drinking tea?” said the postman, frowning. “We must make haste and get warm, and then set off, or we shall be late for the mail train. We’ll stay ten minutes and then get on our way. Only be so good as to show us the way.”
“What an infliction it is, this weather!” sighed Raïssa.
“H’m, yes…. Who may you be?”
“We? We live here, by the church…. We belong to the clergy…. There lies my husband. Savély, get up and say good-evening! This used to be a separate parish till eighteen months ago. Of course, when the gentry lived here there were more people, and it was worth while to have the services. But now the gentry have gone, and I need not tell you there’s nothing for the clergy to live on. The nearest village is Markovka, and that’s over three miles away. Savély is on the retired list now, and has got the watchman’s job; he has to look after the church… .”
And the postman was immediately informed that if Savély were to go to the General’s lady and ask her for a letter to the bishop, he would be given a good berth. “But he doesn’t go to the General’s lady because he is lazy and afraid of people. We belong to the clergy all the same …” added Raïssa.
“What do you live on?” asked the postman.
“There’s a kitchen garden and a meadow belonging to the church. Only we don’t get much from that,” sighed Raïssa. “The old skinflint, Father Nikodim, from the next village celebrates here on St. Nicolas’ Day in the winter and on St. Nicolas’ Day in the summer, and for that he takes almost all the crops for himself. There’s no one to stick up for us!”
“You are lying,” Savély growled hoarsely. “Father Nikodim is a saintly soul, a luminary of the Church; and if he does take it, it’s the regulation!”
“You’ve a cross one!” said the postman, with a grin. “Have you been married long?”
“It was three years ago the last Sunday before Lent. My father was sexton here in the old days, and when the time came for him to die, he went to the Consistory and asked them to send some unmarried man to marry me that I might keep the place. So I married him.”
“Aha, so you killed two birds with one stone!” said the postman, looking at Savély’s back. “Got wife and job together.”
Savély wriggled his leg impatiently and moved closer to the wall. The postman moved away from the table, stretched, and sat down on the mail-bag. After a moment’s thought he squeezed the bags with his hands, shifted his sword to the other side, and lay down with one foot touching the floor.
“It’s a dog’s life,” he muttered, putting his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. “I wouldn’t wish a wild Tatar such a life.”
Soon everything was still. Nothing was audible except the sniffing of Savély and the slow, even breathing of the sleeping postman, who uttered a deep prolonged “h-h-h” at every breath. From time to time there was a sound like a creaking wheel in his throat, and his twitching foot rustled against the bag.
Savély fidgeted under the quilt and looked round slowly. His wife was sitting on the stool, and with her hands pressed against her cheeks was gazing at the postman’s face. Her face was immovable, like the face of some one frightened and astonished.
“Well, what are you gaping at?” Savély whispered angrily.
“What is it to you? Lie down!” answered his wife without taking her eyes off the flaxen head.
Savély angrily puffed all the air out of his chest and turned abruptly to the wall. Three minutes later he turned over restlessly again, knelt up on the bed, and with his hands on the pillow looked askance at his wife. She was still sitting motionless, staring at the visitor. Her cheeks were pale and her eyes were glowing with a strange fire. The sexton cleared his throat, crawled on his stomach off the bed, and going up to the postman, put a handkerchief over his face.
“What’s that for?” asked his wife.
“To keep the light out of his eyes.”
“Then put out the light!”
Savély looked distrustfully at his wife, put out his lips towards the lamp, but at once thought better of it and clasped his hands.
“Isn’t that devilish cunning?” he exclaimed. “Ah! Is there any creature slyer than womenkind?”
“Ah, you long-skirted devil!” hissed his wife, frowning with vexation. “You wait a bit!”
And settling herself more comfortably, she stared at the postman again.
It did not matter to her that his face was covered. She was not so much interested in his face as in his whole appearance, in the novelty of this man. His chest was broad and powerful, his hands were slender and well formed, and his graceful, muscular legs were much comelier than Savély’s stumps. There could be no comparison, in fact.
“Though I am a long-skirted devil,” Savély said after a brief interval, “they’ve no business to sleep here…. It’s government work; we shall have to answer for keeping them. If you carry the letters, carry them, you can’t go to sleep…. Hey! you!” Savély shouted into the outer room. “You, driver. What’s your name? Shall I show you the way? Get up; postmen mustn’t sleep!”
And Savély, thoroughly roused, ran up to the postman and tugged him by the sleeve.
“Hey, your honour, if you must go, go; and if you don’t, it’s not the thing…. Sleeping won’t do.”
The postman jumped up, sat down, looked with blank eyes round the hut, and lay down again.
“But when are you going?” Savély pattered away. “That’s what the post is for — to get there in good time, do you hear? I’ll take you.”
The postman opened his eyes. Warmed and relaxed by his first sweet sleep, and not yet quite awake, he saw as through a mist the white neck and the immovable, alluring eyes of the sexton’s wife. He closed his eyes and smiled as though he had been dreaming it all.
“Come, how can you go in such weather!” he heard a soft feminine voice; “you ought to have a sound sleep and it would do you good!”
“And
