The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“The horses are at the porch, dear lady, I was just going to call you … And this brigand … God has saved us, dear lady!” Boris babbled quickly, seizing my and my cousin’s hands and gathering up all he could on his way. We all rushed out the door, jumped into the carriage, and went galloping off as fast as the horses could go. Selivan seemed painfully disconcerted and followed us with his eyes. He obviously knew that this would not go without consequences.

Outside it was now getting light, and before us in the east glowed the red, frosty Christmas dawn.

XVII

We reached home in no more than half an hour, talking incessantly all the way about the frights we had lived through. My aunt, the nanny, the coachman, and Boris kept interrupting each other and constantly crossing themselves, thanking God for our amazing salvation. My aunt told us she hadn’t slept all night, because she kept hearing someone approaching the door and trying to open it. That had prompted her to block it with whatever she could find. She had also heard some suspicious whispering behind Selivan’s partition, and it had seemed to her that he had quietly opened his door more than once, come out to the front hall, and quietly touched the latch of our door. Our nanny had also heard all that, though she, by her own admission, had fallen asleep on and off. The coachman and Boris had seen more than anyone else. Fearing for the horses, the coachman had never left them for a moment, but Borisushka had come to our door more than once, and each time he had come, Selivan had appeared in his doorway at the same moment. When the blizzard had died down towards dawn, the coachman and Boris had quietly harnessed the horses and quietly driven out through the gate, having opened it themselves; but when Boris had just as quietly come to our door again to lead us out, Selivan, seeing that the booty was slipping through his fingers, had fallen upon Boris and begun to choke him. Thank God, of course, he had not succeeded, and now he was no longer going to get off with suspicions alone, as he had so far: his evil intentions were all too clear and all too obvious, and everything had taken place not eye to eye with some one person, but before six witnesses, of whom my aunt alone was worth several owing to her importance, because the whole town knew her for an intelligent woman, and, despite her modest fortune, the governor visited her, and our then police chief owed her the arranging of his family happiness. At one word from her, he would, of course, immediately start investigating the matter while the trail was hot, and Selivan would not escape the noose he had thought to throw around our necks.

The circumstances themselves seemed to fall together so that everything pointed to immediate revenge for us on Selivan and to his punishment for the brutal attempt on our lives and property.

As we approached our house, beyond the spring on the hill, we met a fellow on horseback, who was extremely glad to see us, swung his legs against his horse’s flanks, and, taking off his hat while still some distance away, rode up to us with a beaming face and began reporting to my aunt about the worry we had caused everybody at home.