Pavel Ostapenko sat there, leaning over the still sleeping Wilfred, looking rather like the Doctor in Sir Luke Fildes’ picture, but not feeling like that at all. Pavel was haggard and cross. At the moment of his waking, the thought had broken on his brain like a clap of thunder: “What will happen when Chew wakes up—sober? What if he says the paper is not legal?” Pavel, of course, had not for a moment entertained the thought, “What if I were wrong?”—but only the much more torturing doubt—“What if he says I was wrong, and tells the others so?” He had spent an uncomfortable hour wondering whether the impossible could happen—whether Pavel Ostapenko could be accused of having made a mistake. Every voice in the house, except one, could now be depended on to say, “You were perfectly right, Pavel Nicholaievitch,” and that, of course, was just the same as being right. But, unfortunately, the one voice that remained, so far, silent in this necessary chorus was an indispensable one. And still more unfortunately, the lips that should form these vital words were sealed by intemperate sleep, and the understanding that should evolve the utterance could not be reached by Ostapenko logic, however eloquently expressed, even had it been awake. What on earth was the Almighty about, thought Pavel irritably, to create such a superfluity of human beings who were unfamiliar with the language that Pavel Ostapenko could use so skillfully. Unless something was done, an unthinkable emergency would arise—Pavel Ostapenko would be humiliated in the eyes of his inferiors. It followed that Pavel must somehow, in some language not yet invented, have a talk with Wilfred before anyone else had a chance to do so. Pavel must be ready with a sufficiently persuasive argument to induce Wilfred, the moment he awoke, to admit—“You were perfectly right, Pavel Nicholaievitch, in the course you took,” and to confirm this opinion triumphantly before the family.
Pavel sat with one elbow on his knee, glaring and breathing hotly at the innocent blank face of Wilfred. Beside him on a table were one hundred and fifty yen in notes, a Russian-English dictionary, an elementary English grammar, an illustrated history of the Russian Empire, several large sheets of paper covered with English words in wavering block letters, and the deed drawn up by Wilfred the night before.
“Tschah! Go away,” whispered Pavel, irascibly, to Seryozha and Tatiana as they came hungrily in. The foolish interfering creatures might awaken Wilfred prematurely, and Seryozha—the interpreter—would then have the dangerous first word.
Varvara, hearing the young people come in, joined them at the living-room door, carrying a tray. “Breakfast, Pavlik,” said Varvara. “It is .”
“Devil take you all!” said Pavel in a furious whisper that scraped his throat. “Who in the world wants breakfast at this time of day? Can’t you leave the poor devil to finish his sleep in peace?”
Varvara, carried forward by the slow impetus of her grave assumption that breakfast was needed, put the tray on the table before she turned to her husband in surprise. “Who wants breakfast, you say!” she echoed. “Why, Pavlik, everyone wants—”
Pavel rose to his feet in a shivering paroxysm of anger, and waved his clenched fists in the air. Varvara snatched the loaded tray up just in time to prevent him from seizing it and throwing it through the door. With the tray in her hands, she recovered her hard calm manner. “Pavel Nicholaievitch is rather tired this morning,” she said to Seryozha and, squaring her angular shoulders, she led the retreat from the room.
Pavel was left with the prostrate Wilfred, whose plaintive expression suggested that he was locked in a prison of disquieting dreams. One could almost see his teased brain beating at the closed shutters of his eyes.
“Should I not wake him?” Pavel asked himself. “He isn’t enjoying himself, wherever he is.”
But just as he leaned forward to say some urgent awakening word, the door opened and Katya, the servant, came in, with an expression of—“Leave him to me; I’ll manage him.” Seryozha’s dog bustled after her. It thought the stout kitchen-smelling Katya a most delightful woman, and innocently mistook her for its hostess.
“Pavel Nicholaievitch,” said Katya, “you must allow me to lay the table for breakfast. It is—”
Pavel rushed upon her with a roar, all his teeth showing, arms and legs sprawling across the air. The outraged old woman fled a few paces, then tried to make a stand in the passage. But Pavel slammed the door in her face with such a bang that the dog squeaked as it fled, believing itself shot.
The noise half roused Wilfred, yet, in spite of the discomfort of his dreams, he was reluctant to wake. He rolled about on the sofa and buried his face in the cushion, trying to drive his struggling consciousness back into the safe imprisoning corridors of sleep again. Pavel stood over him. “Curse him!” he cried. “He must be doing it on purpose.” He seized the cushion and dragged it from under Wilfred’s head. Wilfred substituted an arm for it. Pavel dragged the arm away, too.
“Awaken, Mistah Chew, awaken!” he shouted. He had looked the English word up in his dictionary.
An obstinate sealed look came into Wilfred’s face, then a look of petulance, then a distortion of the most unspeakable agony, then a light of beautiful resignation, then a recollection of the Reverend Oswald Fawcett. Wilfred opened his eyes, himself again, though rather a melancholy self. “Hrrgh?” he inquired in a strangled snort, disappointed with the waking world.
“Is time of breekfast,” shouted Pavel, feverishly consulting his English notes. “Mistah—quick—awaken.”
Wilfred lay with his eyes wet and callow in their puffed sockets, like newborn kittens in their lair. His gaze was fixed with a tranced expression on a spittoon; one would have said it was his dearest treasure.
Pavel thrust a sheet of paper between Wilfred’s eyes and the
