The Kiss

At eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six
batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in
the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the general
commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily occupied
around the guns, while others, gathered together in the square near the
church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters, a man in
civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight round the
church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck and a short tail
came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort
of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When he
reached the officers the man on the horse took off his hat and said:

"His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen to
drink tea with him this minute..."

The horse turned, danced, and retired sideways; the messenger raised his
hat once more, and in an instant disappeared with his strange horse
behind the church.

"What the devil does it mean?" grumbled some of the officers, dispersing
to their quarters. "One is sleepy, and here this Von Rabbek with his
tea! We know what tea means."

The officers of all the six batteries remembered vividly an incident of
the previous year, when during manoeuvres they, together with the
officers of a Cossack regiment, were in the same way invited to tea by a
count who had an estate in the neighbourhood and was a retired army
officer: the hospitable and genial count made much of them, fed them,
and gave them drink, refused to let them go to their quarters in the
village and made them stay the night. All that, of course, was very
nice--nothing better could be desired, but the worst of it was, the old
army officer was so carried away by the pleasure of the young men's
company that till sunrise he was telling the officers anecdotes of his
glorious past, taking them over the house, showing them expensive
pictures, old engravings, rare guns, reading them autograph letters from
great people, while the weary and exhausted officers looked and
listened, longing for their beds and yawning in their sleeves; when at
last their host let them go, it was too late for sleep.

Might not this Von Rabbek be just such another? Whether he were or not,
there was no help for it. The officers changed their uniforms, brushed
themselves, and went all together in search of the gentleman's house. In
the square by the church they were told they could get to His
Excellency's by the lower path--going down behind the church to the
river, going along the bank to the garden, and there an avenue would
taken them to the house; or by the upper way--straight from the church
by the road which, half a mile from the village, led right up to His
Excellency's granaries. The officers decided to go by the upper way.

"What Von Rabbek is it?" they wondered on the way. "Surely not the one
who was in command of the N---- cavalry division at Plevna?"

"No, that was not Von Rabbek, but simply Rabbe and no 'von.'"