"She'll eat me up alive," repeated Stepan Vladimirych, with such conviction that the innkeeper involuntarily lowered his eyes.
With these words Golovliov turned sharply along the country road, walking in a shuffle and leaning on a gnarled stick which he had cut off a tree.
Ivan Mikhailych followed him with his eyes for a while, and then ran after him.
"Listen, master," he said. "When I was cleaning your uniform a few minutes ago, I saw three rubles in your side pocket. Please don't lose them."
Stepan Vladimirych was visibly irresolute and could not make up his mind how to act in this contingency. Finally, he stretched out his hand to the peasant and said, with tears in his eyes:
"I understand--to buy tobacco for the old trooper? Thanks. But she'll eat me up alive, friend. Sure as hell."
Golovliov found the country road again and several minutes later his grey soldier's cap showed afar off, now vanishing, now appearing above the young wood. It was early in the day. The morning mist, touched into gold by the first rays of the sun, hovered above the country road. The grass glistened with the dew, and the air was redolent of fir-trees, mushrooms, and wild berries. The road meandered across a plain swarming with birds.
Stepan Vladimirych, however, noticed nothing of the beauty about him. All his frivolity had suddenly gone, and he walked as if to the Last Judgment. One thought filled his mind to the exclusion of everything else. In three or four hours he would have reached his goal. He recalled his life at Golovliovo, and he felt as if the doors of a damp cellar were opening to let him in, and no sooner would he penetrate into the gloomy interior than the doors would close behind him and everything would be over. Memories prophetic of what awaited him at Golovliovo surged in his mind. There had been uncle Mikhail Petrovich, popularly known as Mishka the Squabbler, one of the "horrid" members of the family, whom grandfather Piotr Ivanych had exiled to Golovliovo, where he had lived in the servants' quarters and eaten out of the same dish with Trezorka, the house dog. There had been Aunt Vera Mikhailovna, who had lived on the estate by her brother's favor and died of "moderate living"; for Arina Petrovna had begrudged her every mouthful at dinner and every billet of wood for the stove in her room. And a similar fate awaited him.