The Daughter of the Commandant | Page 6

The horses went at a walk, and
soon stopped altogether.
"Why don't you go on?" I said, impatiently, to the driver.
"But where to?" he replied, getting out of the sledge. "Heaven only
knows where we are now. There is no longer any road, and it is all
dark."
I began to scold him, but Savéliitch took his part.
"Why did you not listen to him?" he said to me, angrily. "You would
have gone back to the post-house; you would have had some tea; you
could have slept till morning; the storm would have blown over, and
we should have started. And why such haste? Had it been to get
married, now!"
Savéliitch was right. What was there to do? The snow continued to
fall--a heap was rising around the kibitka. The horses stood motionless,
hanging their heads and shivering from time to time.
The driver walked round them, settling their harness, as if he had
nothing else to do. Savéliitch grumbled. I was looking all round in
hopes of perceiving some indication of a house or a road; but I could
not see anything but the confused whirling of the snowstorm.
All at once I thought I distinguished something black.
"Hullo, driver!" I exclaimed, "what is that black thing over there?"
The driver looked attentively in the direction I was pointing out.
"Heaven only knows, excellency," replied he, resuming his seat.
"It is not a sledge, it is not a tree, and it seems to me that it moves. It
must be a wolf or a man."
I ordered him to move towards the unknown object, which came also to
meet us. In two minutes I saw it was a man, and we met.

"Hey, there, good man," the driver hailed him, "tell us, do you happen
to know the road?"
"This is the road," replied the traveller. "I am on firm ground; but what
the devil good does that do you?"
"Listen, my little peasant," said I to him, "do you know this part of the
country? Can you guide us to some place where we may pass the
night?"
"Do I know this country? Thank heaven," rejoined the stranger, "I have
travelled here, on horse and afoot, far and wide. But just look at this
weather! One cannot keep the road. Better stay here and wait; perhaps
the hurricane will cease and the sky will clear, and we shall find the
road by starlight."
His coolness gave me courage, and I resigned myself to pass the night
on the steppe, commending myself to the care of Providence, when
suddenly the stranger, seating himself on the driver's seat, said--
"Grace be to God, there is a house not far off. Turn to the right, and go
on."
"Why should I go to the right?" retorted my driver, ill-humouredly.
"How do you know where the road is that you are so ready to say,
'Other people's horses, other people's harness--whip away!'"
It seemed to me the driver was right.
"Why," said I to the stranger, "do you think a house is not far off?"
"The wind blew from that direction," replied he, "and I smelt smoke, a
sure sign that a house is near."
His cleverness and the acuteness of his sense of smell alike astonished
me. I bid the driver go where the other wished. The horses ploughed
their way through the deep snow. The kibitka advanced slowly,
sometimes upraised on a drift, sometimes precipitated into a ditch, and

swinging from side to side. It was very like a boat on a stormy sea.
Savéliitch groaned deeply as every moment he fell upon me. I lowered
the tsinofka,[16] I rolled myself up in my cloak and I went to sleep,
rocked by the whistle of the storm and the lurching of the sledge. I had
then a dream that I have never forgotten, and in which I still see
something prophetic, as I recall the strange events of my life. The
reader will forgive me if I relate it to him, as he knows, no doubt, by
experience how natural it is for man to retain a vestige of superstition
in spite of all the scorn for it he may think proper to assume.
I had reached the stage when the real and unreal begin to blend into the
first vague visions of drowsiness. It seemed to me that the snowstorm
continued, and that we were wandering in the snowy desert. All at once
I thought I saw a great gate, and we entered the courtyard of our house.
My first thought was a fear that my father would be angry at my
involuntary return to the paternal roof, and would attribute it to a
premeditated disobedience. Uneasy, I got out of my kibitka, and I saw
my mother