"That's true indeed," the woman put in with animation, "for if you drive along the bank it's twenty-five miles out of the way."
"Thirty-five."
"You'll just catch the steamer at Ustyevo at two o'clock tomorrow," the woman decided finally.
But Stepan Trofimovitch was obstinately silent.
His questioners, too, sank into silence.
The peasant tugged at his horse at rare intervals; the peasant woman exchanged brief remarks with him.
Stepan Trofimovitch fell into a doze.
He was tremendously surprised when the woman, laughing, gave him a poke and he found himself in a rather large village at the door of a cottage with three windows.
"You've had a nap, sir?"
"What is it?
Where am I?
Ah, yes!
Well... never mind," sighed Stepan Trofimovitch, and he got out of the cart.
He looked about him mournfully; the village scene seemed strange to him and somehow terribly remote.
"And the half-rouble, I was forgetting it!" he said to the peasant, turning to him with an excessively hurried gesture; he was evidently by now afraid to part from them.
"We'll settle indoors, walk in," the peasant invited him.
"It's comfortable inside," the woman said reassuringly.
Stepan Trofimovitch mounted the shaky steps.
"How can it be?" he murmured in profound and apprehensive perplexity. He went into the cottage, however.
"Elle l'a voulu" he felt a stab at his heart and again he became oblivious of everything, even of the fact that he had gone into the cottage.
It was a light and fairly clean peasant's cottage, with three windows and two rooms; not exactly an inn, but a cottage at which people who knew the place were accustomed to stop on their way through the village.
Stepan Trofimovitch, quite unembarrassed, went to the foremost corner; forgot to greet anyone, sat down and sank into thought.
Meanwhile a sensation of warmth, extremely agreeable after three hours of travelling in the damp, was suddenly diffused throughout his person.
Even the slight shivers that spasmodically ran down his spine—such as always occur in particularly nervous people when they are feverish and have suddenly come into a warm room from the cold—became all at once strangely agreeable.
He raised his head and the delicious fragrance of the hot pancakes with which the woman of the house was busy at the stove tickled his nostrils.
With a childlike smile he leaned towards the woman and suddenly said:
"What's that?
Are they pancakes?
Mais... c'est charmant."
"Would you like some, sir?" the woman politely offered him at once.
"I should like some, I certainly should, and... may I ask you for some tea too," said Stepan Trofimovitch, reviving.
"Get the samovar?
With the greatest pleasure."
On a large plate with a big blue pattern on it were served the pancakes—regular peasant pancakes, thin, made half of wheat, covered with fresh hot butter, most delicious pancakes.
Stepan Trofimovitch tasted them with relish.
"How rich they are and how good!
And if one could only have un doigt d'eau de vie."
"It's a drop of vodka you would like, sir, isn't it?"
"Just so, just so, a little, un tout petit rien."
"Five farthings' worth, I suppose?"
"Five, yes, five, five, five, un tout petit rien," Stepan Trofimovitch assented with a blissful smile.
Ask a peasant to do anything for you, and if he can, and will, he will serve you with care and friendliness; but ask him to fetch you vodka—and his habitual serenity and friendliness will pass at once into a sort of joyful haste and alacrity; he will be as keen in your interest as though you were one of his family.
The peasant who fetches vodka—even though you are going to drink it and not he and he knows that beforehand—seems, as it were, to be enjoying part of your future gratification. Within three minutes (the tavern was only two paces away), a bottle and a large greenish wineglass were set on the table before Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Is that all for me!" He was extremely surprised.
"I've always had vodka but I never knew you could get so much for five farthings."
He filled the wineglass, got up and with a certain solemnity crossed the room to the other corner where his fellow-traveller, the black-browed peasant woman, who had shared the sack with him and bothered him with her questions, had ensconced herself.
The woman was taken aback, and began to decline, but after having said all that was prescribed by politeness, she stood up and drank it decorously in three sips, as women do, and, with an expression of intense suffering on her face, gave back the wineglass and bowed to Stepan Trofimovitch.
He returned the bow with dignity and returned to the table with an expression of positive pride on his countenance.
All this was done on the inspiration of the moment: a second before he had no idea that he would go and treat the peasant woman.
"I know how to get on with peasants to perfection, to perfection, and I've always told them so," he thought complacently, pouring out the rest of the vodka; though there was less than a glass left, it warmed and revived him, and even went a little to his head.