Chapter III

At the station for horses Koseltzoff found a crowd of people, and the first figure he perceived was the postmaster in person, very young and very thin, quarrelling with two officers.

“You will not only wait twenty-four hours but ten times twenty-four hours. Generals wait too,” he said, with the evident wish to stir them up in a lively manner. “And I am not going to hitch myself in, you understand!”

“If this is so, if there are no horses, they can’t be given to any one. Why, then, are they given to a servant who is carrying baggage?” shouted one of the two soldiers, holding a glass of tea in his hand.

Although he carefully avoided using personal pronouns, it could easily be guessed that he would have liked to say thee and thou to his interlocutor.

“I want you to understand, Mr. Postmaster,” hesitatingly said the other officer, “that we are not travelling for our pleasure. If we have been summoned it is because we are necessary. You can be sure I will tell the general, for it really seems as if you have no respect for the rank of officer.”

“You spoil my work every time, and you are in my way,” rejoined his comrade, half vexed. “Why do you talk to him about respect? You have to speak to him in another manner. Horses!” he suddenly shouted, “horses, this instant!”

“I wouldn’t ask better than to give them to you, but where can I get them? I understand very well, my friend,” continued the postmaster, after a moment of silence, and warming up by degrees as he gesticulated, “but what do you want me to do? Let me just”--and the officers’ faces at once had a hopeful expression--“keep soul and body together to the end of the month, and then I won’t be seen any longer. I would rather go to the Malakoff than remain here, God knows! Do what you like--but I haven’t a single wagon in good condition, and for three days the horses haven’t seen a handful of hay.”

At these words he disappeared. Koseltzoff and the two officers entered the house.

“So!” said the elder to the younger with a calm tone, which strongly contrasted with his recent wrath. “We are already three months on the road. Let’s wait. It is no misfortune; there isn’t any hurry.”

Koseltzoff with difficulty found in the room of the post-house, all smoky, dirty, and filled with officers and trunks, an empty corner near the window. He sat down there, and, rolling a cigarette, began to examine faces and to listen to conversations. The chief group was placed on the right of the entrance door, around a shaky and greasy table on which two copper tea-urns, stained here and there with verdigris, were boiling; lump-sugar was strewn about in several paper wrappings. A young officer without a mustache, in a new Circassian coat, was pouring water into a teapot; four others of about his own age were scattered in different corners of the room. One of them, his head placed on a cloak which served him as a pillow, was sleeping on a divan; another, standing near a table, was cutting roast mutton into small mouthfuls for a one-armed comrade. Two officers, one in an aide-de-camp’s overcoat, the other in a fine cloth infantry overcoat, and carrying a saddle-bag, were sitting beside the stove; and it could be readily divined by the way they looked at the others, by the manner the one with the saddle-bag was smoking, that they were not officers of the line, and that they were very glad of it. Their manner did not betray scorn but a certain satisfaction with themselves, founded partly on their relations with the generals, and on a feeling of superiority developed to such a point that they tried to conceal it from others. There was also in the place a doctor with fleshy lips, and an artilleryman with a German physiognomy, seated almost on the feet of the sleeper, busily counting money. Four men-servants, some dozing, some fumbling in the trunks and the packets heaped up near the door, completed the number of those present, among whom Koseltzoff found not a face he knew. The young officers pleased him. He guessed at once from their appearance that they had just come out of school, and this called to his mind that his young brother was also coming straight therefrom to serve in one of the Sebastopol batteries. On the other hand, the officer with the saddle-bag, whom he believed he had met somewhere, altogether displeased him. He found him to have an expression of face so antipathetic and so insolent that he was going to sit down on the large base of the stove, with the intention of putting him in his proper place if he happened to say anything disagreeable. In his quality of brave and honorable officer at the front he did not like the staff-officers, and for such he took these at the first glance.