To him the captain repeated his question.
“I—I—” began the peasant.
“We came here together,” put in Drexel. “Neither of us saw anyone.”
The captain thrust his toe into Drexel’s side by way of thanks, and walked out.
Soon the train arrived. Drexel, with his guide, hurried out upon the platform, when to his surprise and vast concern he saw come out of the first-class waiting-room the imposing person of General Valenko, and leaning upon him and half supported by his arm, a well-wrapped, half-tottering figure. He needed not the company of the general to tell him who she was.
He was torn with keenest apprehension over Sonya’s obvious illness. What was the cause of this sudden seizure? Was it a distemper, prostrating while it lasted, but harmless and swift to run its course? Or did it promise to be dangerous and of a long duration?—and was she hastening away in this its incipient stage that she might have the superior care of home and St. Petersburg?
And since she was ill, should he see her again?
The train started up. Drexel slipped aboard, leaving the captain standing on the platform looking for a fugitive dressed in clothes that were now ashes in a peasant’s earthen stove.
A Russian train is a creature with a fine disdain for speed, and a third-class coach makes each mile seem five—but at length, toward morning, the train drew into St. Petersburg. All the suffocating journey Drexel had thought of little else but Sonya’s weak figure swaying across the platform upon her father’s arm; and when he got off the train, it was to hasten to where stood the coach that he had seen her enter. He saw her limp body carried out, placed in a wheeled chair and pushed swiftly away. He followed, and saw her lifted into a closed carriage, and saw the horses tear away at full gallop. Of a certainty, it was a serious illness indeed.
Drexel sat in the third-class waiting-room till a sullen dawn began to creep over the city. Having arranged that his companion was to remain in the station, his cap wrongside out upon his left knee as a sign whereby a messenger might know him, he started for the house where lived Ivan and Nicolai in obedience to Sonya’s command. Weary as he was, he dared not ride the long four miles; no peasant such as he looked would spend forty kopeks for a sleigh.