Not driving the two hundred steps that remained, Polikéï straightened himself up, tightened his belt, adjusted his collar, took off his cap, smoothed his hair, and with confidence thrust his hand under the lining. His hand moved more and more nervously; he inserted the other also. His face grew paler and paler. One hand came out on the other side.... Polikéï fell on his knees, stopped the horse, and began to search all over the telyéga, the hay, the bundle of purchases, to feel in his bosom, in his overalls. The money was nowhere to be found.
"Mercy on me![15] What does this mean? What will be done to me?" he roared, tearing his hair.
But just then, remembering that he might be seen, he turned Barabán around, put on his cap, and drove the astonished and reluctant animal up the road again.
"I can't bear to have Polikéï drive me," Barabán must have said to himself. "Once in my life he has fed me and watered me in time, and just for the sake of deceiving me in the most unpleasant manner. How I put myself out to get home! He stopped me, and just as I smelled our hay, he drives me back again."
"You devilish good-for-nothing beast!" cried Polikéï through his tears, standing up in the telyéga, and sawing on Barabán's mouth, and plying the whip.
[15] bátiushki.
X.
That whole day no one at Pokrovskoé saw Polikéï. The mistress several times after dinner made inquiries, and Aksiutka flew down to Akulína: but Akulína said that he had not come; that the merchant must have detained him, or something had happened to the horse. "Can't he have gone lame?" she suggested. "The last time Maksim was gone four and twenty hours,—walked the whole way." And Aksiutka's pendulums brought back the message to the house; and Akulína thought over all the reasons for her husband's delay, and tried hard to calm her fears, but she did not succeed. Her heart was heavy, and her preparations for the next day's festival made little progress in her hands. She tormented herself all the more because the joiner's wife was convinced that she had seen him.
"A man just like Ilyitch had driven up the proshpect, and then turned back again."