Five minutes later Ilyín, splashing through the mud, came running back to the shanty.
“Hurrah! Rostóv, come quick! I’ve found it! About two hundred yards away there’s a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can at least get dry there, and Márya Hendríkhovna’s there.”
Márya Hendríkhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a standing joke among the hussar officers.
Rostóv threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrúshka to follow with the things, and—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right through it—set off with Ilyín in the lessening rain and the darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.
“Rostóv, where are you?”
“Here. What lightning!” they called to one another.
XIII
In the tavern, before which stood the doctor’s covered cart, there were already some five officers. Márya Hendríkhovna, a plump little blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her. Rostóv and Ilyín, on entering the room, were welcomed with merry shouts and laughter.
“Dear me, how jolly we are!” said Rostóv laughing.
“And why do you stand there gaping?”