Chapter 11

Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing,
and having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging,
pacified the old woman and satisfied Vanyusha's demands.

Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved
into the winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for
three rubles a month. Olenin had something to eat and went to
sleep. Towards evening he woke up, washed and made himself tidy,
dined, and having lit a cigarette sat down by the window that
looked onto the street. It was cooler. The slanting shadow of the
hut with its ornamental gables fell across the dusty road and even
bent upwards at the base of the wall of the house opposite. The
steep reed-thatched roof of that house shone in the rays of the
setting sun. The air grew fresher. Everything was peaceful in the
village. The soldiers had settled down and become quiet. The herds
had not yet been driven home and the people had not returned from
their work.

Olenin's lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At
rare intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Terek in those parts
whence Olenin had just come (the Chechen or the Kumytsk plain),
came muffled sounds of firing. Olenin was feeling very well
contented after three months of bivouac life. His newly washed
face was fresh and his powerful body clean (an unaccustomed
sensation after the campaign) and in all his rested limbs he was
conscious of a feeling of tranquillity and strength. His mind,
too, felt fresh and clear. He thought of the campaign and of past
dangers. He remembered that he had faced them no worse than other
men, and that he was accepted as a comrade among valiant
Caucasians. His Moscow recollections were left behind Heaven knows
how far! The old life was wiped out and a quite new life had begun
in which there were as yet no mistakes. Here as a new man among
new men he could gain a new and good reputation. He was conscious
of a youthful and unreasoning joy of life. Looking now out of the
window at the boys spinning their tops in the shadow of the house,
now round his neat new lodging, he thought how pleasantly he would
settle down to this new Cossack village life. Now and then he
glanced at the mountains and the blue sky, and an appreciation of
the solemn grandeur of nature mingled with his reminiscences and
dreams. His new life had begun, not as he imagined it would when
he left Moscow, but unexpectedly well. 'The mountains, the
mountains, the mountains!' they permeated all his thoughts and
feelings.

'He's kissed his dog and licked the jug! ... Daddy Eroshka has
kissed his dog!' suddenly the little Cossacks who had been
spinning their tops under the window shouted, looking towards the
side