Seeing I was on good terms with Pugachev, he had thought to make use of it, but this wise intention had not succeeded. I was about to chide him for his misplaced zeal, but could not help laughing.
“Laugh, sir,” said Savelyich, “laugh; but when we have to set up your whole household again, we’ll see how funny it is.”
I hurried to the priest’s house to see Marya Ivanovna. The priest’s wife met me with sad news. During the night Marya Ivanovna had come down with a high fever. She lay unconscious and in delirium. The priest’s wife led me to her room. I quietly approached her bed. The change in her face shocked me. The sick girl did not recognize me. I stood by her for a long time, listening neither to Father Gerasim nor to his good wife, who seemed to be comforting me. Dark thoughts troubled me. The plight of the poor, defenseless orphan, left among malicious rebels, as well as my own powerlessness, horrified me. Shvabrin, Shvabrin most of all, tormented my imagination. Invested with power by the impostor, put in command of the fortress, where the unfortunate girl, the innocent object of his hatred, remained, he could resolve on anything. What was I to do? How could I help her? How deliver her from the villain’s hands? One means was left me: I decided to go at once to Orenburg, to hasten the deliverance of the Belogorsk fortress and contribute to it as much as possible. I took leave of the priest and Akulina Pamfilovna, ardently entrusting to them the one whom I already considered my wife. I took the poor girl’s hand and kissed it, wetting it with my tears.
“Good-bye,” the priest’s wife said to me, “good-bye, Pyotr Andreich. Maybe we’ll see each other in better times. Don’t forget us and write to us often. Apart from you, poor Marya Ivanovna now has neither comfort nor protection.”
Coming out to the square, I stopped for a moment, looked at the gallows, bowed to it, left the fortress, and went down the Orenburg road, accompanied by Savelyich, who never left my side.
I walked along, caught up in my reflections, when I suddenly heard the hoofbeats of a horse behind me. I turned to look; I saw a Cossack galloping from the fortress, holding a Bashkir horse by the bridle and gesturing to me from afar. I stopped and soon recognized our sergeant. Galloping up, he got off his horse and said, handing me the bridle of the other:
“Your Honor! Our father grants you a horse and the fur coat off his back” (a sheepskin coat was tied to the saddle). “And,” the sergeant added, faltering, “he also grants you…fifty kopecks…only I lost them on the way. Have the goodness to forgive me.”
Savelyich looked at him suspiciously and growled:
“Lost them on the way! And what’s that jingling under your shirt? Shame on you!”
“What’s jingling under my shirt?” the sergeant retorted, not embarrassed in the least. “God help you, good old man! It’s the bridle, not the fifty kopecks.”
“All right,” I said, interrupting the argument. “Give my thanks to the one who sent you; as for the lost fifty kopecks, try to pick them up on the way back and treat yourself to some vodka.”
“Many thanks, Your Honor,” he replied, turning his horse around. “I’ll forever pray to God for you.”
With those words he galloped back, holding one hand to his shirt front, and in a moment he was out of sight.
I put the coat on and mounted up, seating Savelyich behind me.
“So you see, sir,” said the old man, “it was not in vain that I gave the rascal my petition: the thief felt ashamed, though the lanky Bashkir nag and the sheepskin coat aren’t worth a half of what the rascals stole from us and what you gave him yourself; still, it’s something—a clump of fur from a vicious dog.”
CHAPTER TEN The Siege of the Town
Invading fields and hills around,
From high up, like an eagle, he surveyed the town.
Behind the camp he built a wooden gun-cart and installed
His thunderbolts within it, and by night came to the wall.
KHERASKOV29
As we approached Orenburg, we saw a crowd of convicts with shaved heads, their faces disfigured by the executioner’s pincers. They were working around the fortifications under the surveillance of the garrison veterans. Some were removing cartloads of the litter that filled the moat; others were digging the earth with spades; on the rampart masons were toting bricks and repairing the town wall. At the gate the sentries stopped us and demanded our passports. As soon as the sergeant heard that I was coming from the Belogorsk fortress, he led me straight to the general’s house.
I found him in the garden. He was looking over the apple trees, bared by the breath of autumn, and, with the help of an old gardener, was carefully wrapping them in warm straw. His face was the picture of calm, health, and good nature. He was glad to see me and started questioning me about the terrible events I had witnessed. I told him everything. The old man listened to me attentively, and meanwhile kept cutting back the dead branches.
