The captain looked at me with a queer sort of expression while I was talking.
"Well, now, I don't know how to reason this out with you," said he, filling his pipe, "but we have with us a junker, and he likes to philosophize. You talk with him. He also writes poetry."
I had only become intimate with the captain in the Caucasus, but I had known him before in Russia. His mother, Marya Ivanovna Khlopova, the owner of a small landed estate, lives about two versts[2] from my home. Before I went to the Caucasus I visited her. The old lady was greatly delighted that I was going to see her Páshenka[3] (thus she called the old gray-haired captain), and, like a living letter, could tell him about her circumstances and give him a little message. Having made me eat my fill of a glorious pie and roast chicken, Marya Ivanovna went to her sleeping-room and came back with a rather large black relic-bag,[4] to which was attached some kind of silken ribbon.
"Here is this image of our Mother-Intercessor from the September festival," she said, kissing the picture of the divine Mother attached to the cross, and putting it into my hand. "Please give it to him, bátiushka. You see, when he went to the Kaikaz, I had a Te Deum sung, and made a vow, that if he should be safe and sound, I would order this image of the divine Mother. And here it is seventeen years that the Mátushka and the saints have had him in their keeping; not once has he been wounded, and what battles he has been in, as it seems!... When Mikhailo, who was with him, told me about it, my hair actually stood on end. You see, all that I know about him I have to hear from others; he never writes me any thing about his doings, my dove,[5]—he is afraid of frightening me."
(I had already heard in the Caucasus, but not from the captain himself, that he had been severely wounded four times; and, as was to be expected, he had not written his mother about his wounds any more than about his campaigns.)
"Now let him wear this holy image," she continued. "I bless him with it. The most holy Intercessor protect him, especially in battle may she always look after him! And so tell him, my dear, friend,[6] that thy mother gave thee this message."
I promised faithfully to fulfil her commission.
"I know you will be fond of him, of my Páshenka," the old lady continued,—"he is such a splendid fellow! Would you believe me, not a year goes by without his sending me money, and he also helps Annushka my daughter, and all from his wages alone. Truly I shall always thank God," she concluded with tears in her eyes, "that he has given me such a child."
"Does he write you often?" I asked.
"Rarely, bátiushka,—not more than once a year; and sometimes when he sends money he writes a little word, and sometimes he doesn't. 'If I don't write you, mámenka,' he says, 'it means that I'm alive and well; but if any thing should happen,—which God forbid,—then they will write you for me.'"