'Asks us civilly and keeps poking with his elbows. Keep your hands to yourself! Though you are a head constable, you have no sort of right to make free with your fists!'
'He's trodden on my corn! Ah! I'll crush you!'
'Crushed? Who's crushed? Lads! a man's been crushed!
'What's the meaning of this crowd? What do you want?'
'A man's been crushed, please your honour!'
'Where? Pass on! I ask you civilly! I ask you civilly, you blockheads!'
'You may shove a peasant, but you daren't touch a gentleman! Hands off!'
'Did you ever know such people? There's no doing anything with them by fair words, the devils! Sidorov, run for Akim Danilitch! Look sharp! It'll be the worse for you, gentlemen! Akim Danilitch is coming, and he'll give it to you! You here, Parfen? A blind man, and at his age too! Can't see, but he must be like other people and won't do what he's told. Smirnov, put his name down!'
'Yes, sir! And shall I write down the men from Purov's? That man there with the swollen cheek, he's from Purov's works.'
'Don't put down the men from Purov's. It's Purov's birthday to-morrow.'
The starlings rose in a black cloud from the Father Prebendary's garden, but Potcheshihin and Optimov did not notice them. They stood staring into the air, wondering what could have attracted such a crowd, and what it was looking at.
Akim Danilitch appeared. Still munching and wiping his lips, he cut his way into the crowd, bellowing:
'Firemen, be ready! Disperse! Mr. Optimov, disperse, or it'll be the worse for you! Instead of writing all kinds of things about decent people in the papers, you had better try to behave yourself more conformably! No good ever comes of reading the papers!'
'Kindly refrain from reflections upon literature!' cried Optimov hotly. 'I am a literary man, and I will allow no one to make reflections upon literature! though, as is the duty of a citizen, I respect you as a father and benefactor!'
'Firemen, turn the hose on them!'
'There's no water, please your honour!'
'Don't answer me! Go and get some! Look sharp!'
'We've nothing to get it in, your honour. The major has taken the fire-brigade horses to drive his aunt to the station.
'Disperse! Stand back, damnation take you! Is that to your taste?
Put him down, the devil!'
'I've lost my pencil, please your honour!'
The crowd grew larger and larger. There is no telling what proportions it might have reached if the new organ just arrived from Moscow had not fortunately begun playing in the tavern close by. Hearing their favourite tune, the crowd gasped and rushed off to the tavern. So nobody ever knew why the crowd had assembled, and Potcheshihin and Optimov had by now forgotten the existence of the starlings who were innocently responsible for the proceedings.
An hour later the town was still and silent again, and only a solitary figure was to be seen—the fireman pacing round and round on the watch-tower.
The same evening Akim Danilitch sat in the grocer's shop drinking
'In addition to the official report, I venture, your Excellency, to append a few supplementary observations of my own. Father and benefactor! In very truth, but for the prayers of your virtuous spouse in her salubrious villa near our town, there's no knowing what might not have come to pass. What I have been through to-day I can find no words to express. The efficiency of Krushensky and of the major of the fire brigade are beyond all praise! I am proud of such devoted servants of our country! As for me, I did all that a weak man could do, whose only desire is the welfare of his neighbour; and sitting now in the bosom of my family, with tears in my eyes I thank Him Who spared us bloodshed! In absence of evidence, the guilty parties remain in custody, but I propose to release them in a week or so. It was their ignorance that led them astray!'
GONE ASTRAY
A COUNTRY village wrapped in the darkness of night. One o'clock strikes from the belfry. Two lawyers, called Kozyavkin and Laev, both in the best of spirits and a little unsteady on their legs, come out of the wood and turn towards the cottages.
'Well, thank God, we've arrived,' says Kozyavkin, drawing a deep breath. 'Tramping four miles from the station in our condition is a feat. I am fearfully done up! And, as ill-luck would have it, not a fly to be seen.'
'Petya, my dear fellow. . . . I can't. . . . I feel like dying if
I'm not in bed in five minutes.'
'In bed! Don't you think it, my boy! First we'll have supper and a glass of red wine, and then you can go to bed. Verotchka and I will wake you up. . . . Ah, my dear fellow, it's a fine thing to be married! You don't understand it, you cold-hearted wretch! I shall be home in a minute, worn out and exhausted. . . . A loving wife will welcome me, give me some tea and something to eat, and repay me for my hard work and my love with such a fond and loving look out of her darling black eyes that I shall forget how tired I am, and forget the burglary and the law courts and the appeal division . . . . It's glorious!'
'Yes—I say, I feel as though my legs were dropping off, I can scarcely get along. . . . I am frightfully thirsty. . . .'
'Well, here we are at home.'
The friends go up to one of the cottages, and stand still under the nearest window.
'It's a jolly cottage,' said Kozyavkin. 'You will see to-morrow what views we have! There's no light in the windows. Verotchka must have gone to bed, then; she must have got tired of sitting up. She's in bed, and must be worrying at my not having turned up.' (He pushes the window with his stick, and it opens.) 'Plucky girl! She goes to bed without bolting the window.' (He takes off his cape and flings it with his portfolio in at the window.) 'I am hot! Let us strike up a serenade and make her laugh!' (He sings.) 'The moon floats in the midnight sky. . . . Faintly stir the tender breezes . . . . Faintly rustle in the treetops. . . . Sing, sing, Alyosha! Verotchka, shall we sing you Schubert's Serenade?' (He sings.)
His performance is cut short by a sudden fit of coughing. 'Tphoo! Verotchka, tell Aksinya to unlock the gate for us!' (A pause.) 'Verotchka! don't be lazy, get up, darling!' (He stands on a stone and looks in at the window.) 'Verotchka, my dumpling; Verotchka, my poppet . . . my little angel, my wife beyond compare, get up and tell Aksinya to unlock the gate for us! You are not asleep, you know. Little wife, we are really so done up and exhausted that we're not in the mood for jokes. We've trudged all the way from the station! Don't you hear? Ah, hang it all!' (He makes an effort to climb up to the window and falls down.) 'You know this isn't a nice trick to play on a visitor! I see you are just as great a schoolgirl as ever, Vera, you are always up to mischief!'
'Perhaps Vera Stepanovna is asleep,' says Laev.
'She isn't asleep! I bet she wants me to make an outcry and wake up the whole neighbourhood. I'm beginning to get cross, Vera! Ach, damn it all! Give me a leg up, Alyosha; I'll get in. You are a naughty girl, nothing but a regular schoolgirl. . . Give me a hoist.'
Puffing and panting, Laev gives him a leg up, and Kozyavkin climbs in at the window and vanishes into the darkness within.
'Vera!' Laev hears a minute later, 'where are you? . . . D—damnation!
Tphoo! I've put my hand into something! Tphoo!'
There is a rustling sound, a flapping of wings, and the desperate cackling of a fowl.
'A nice state of things,' Laev hears. 'Vera, where on earth did these chickens come from? Why, the devil,
