’No, it’s not he; it’s not my darling!
He would have broken his neck before he would have
betrayed me!’
What finally ‘did for,’ as they say, Tchertop-hanov
was the following circumstance. One day he sauntered,
riding on Malek-Adel, about the back-yards of the
priest’s quarters round about the church of the
parish in which is Bezsonovo. Huddled up, with
his Cossack fur cap pulled down over his eyes, and
his hands hanging loose on the saddle-bow, he jogged
slowly on, a vague discontent in his heart. Suddenly
someone called him.
He stopped his horse, raised his head, and saw his
correspondent, the deacon. With a brown, three-cornered
hat on his brown hair, which was plaited in a pig-tail,
attired in a yellowish nankin long coat, girt much
below the waist by a strip of blue stuff, the servant
of the altar had come out into his back-garden, and,
catching sight of Panteley Eremyitch, he thought it
his duty to pay his respects to him, and to take the
opportunity of doing so to ask him a question about
something. Without some such hidden motive, as
we know, ecclesiastical persons do not venture to
address temporal ones.
But Tchertop-hanov was in no mood for the deacon;
he barely responded to his bow, and, muttering something
between his teeth, he was already cracking his whip,
when....
‘What a magnificent horse you have!’ the
deacon made haste to add: ’and really you
can take credit to yourself for it. Truly you’re
a man of amazing cleverness, simply a lion indeed!’
His reverence the deacon prided himself on his fluency,
which was a great source of vexation to his reverence
the priest, to whom the gift of words had not been
vouchsafed; even vodka did not loosen his tongue.
‘After losing one animal by the cunning of evil
men,’ continued the deacon, ’you did not
lose courage in repining; but, on the other hand,
trusting the more confidently in Divine Providence,
procured yourself another, in no wise inferior, but
even, one may say, superior, since....’
‘What nonsense are you talking?’ Tchertop-hanov
interrupted gloomily; ’what other horse do you
mean? This is the same one; this is Malek-Adel....
I found him. The fellow’s raving!’....
‘Ay! ay! ay!’ responded the deacon emphatically
with a sort of drawl, drumming with his fingers in
his beard, and eyeing Tchertop-hanov with his bright
eager eyes: ’How’s that, sir?
Your horse, God help my memory, was stolen a fortnight
before Intercession last year, and now we’re
near the end of November.’
‘Well, what of that?’
The deacon still fingered his beard.
’Why, it follows that more than a year’s
gone by since then, and your horse was a dapple grey
then, just as it is now; in fact, it seems even darker.
How’s that? Grey horses get a great deal
lighter in colour in a year.’
Tchertop-hanov started... as though someone had driven
a dagger into his heart. It was true: the
grey colour did change! How was it such a simple
reflection had never occurred to him?
