The hands began to complain among themselves, asking to be paid fairly, and foolishly went to the police, though without much disturbance, for they were not so very much excited.
It was just at this moment that the manifestoes were brought to Andrey Antonovitch by the overseer.
Pyotr Stepanovitch popped into the study unannounced, like an intimate friend and one of the family; besides, he had a message from Yulia Mihailovna.
Seeing him, Lembke frowned grimly and stood still at the table without welcoming him.
Till that moment he had been pacing up and down the study and had been discussing something tete-a-tete with his clerk Blum, a very clumsy and surly German whom he had brought with him from Petersburg, in spite of the violent opposition of Yulia Mihailovna.
On Pyotr Stepanovitch's entrance the clerk had moved to the door, but had not gone out.
Pyotr Stepanovitch even fancied that he exchanged significant glances with his chief.
"Aha, I've caught you at last, you secretive monarch of the town!" Pyotr Stepanovitch cried out laughing, and laid his hand over the manifesto on the table.
"This increases your collection, eh?"
Andrey Antonovitch flushed crimson; his face seemed to twitch.
"Leave off, leave off at once!" he cried, trembling with rage. "And don't you dare... sir..."
"What's the matter with you?
You seem to be angry!"
"Allow me to inform you, sir, that I've no intention of putting up with your sans facon henceforward, and I beg you to remember..."
"Why, damn it all, he is in earnest!"
"Hold your tongue, hold your tongue"—Von Lembke stamped on the carpet—"and don't dare..."
God knows what it might have come to.
Alas, there was one circumstance involved in the matter of which neither Pyotr Stepanovitch nor even Yulia Mihailovna herself had any idea.
The luckless Andrey Antonovitch had been so greatly upset during the last few days that he had begun to be secretly jealous of his wife and Pyotr Stepanovitch.
In solitude, especially at night, he spent some very disagreeable moments.
"Well, I imagined that if a man reads you his novel two days running till after midnight and wants to hear your opinion of it, he has of his own act discarded official relations, anyway.... Yulia Mihailovna treats me as a friend; there's no making you out," Pyotr Stepanovitch brought out, with a certain dignity indeed.
"Here is your novel, by the way." He laid on the table a large heavy manuscript rolled up in blue paper.
Lembke turned red and looked embarrassed.
"Where did you find it?" he asked discreetly, with a rush of joy which he was unable to suppress, though he did his utmost to conceal it.
"Only fancy, done up like this, it rolled under the chest of drawers.
I must have thrown it down carelessly on the chest when I went out.
It was only found the day before yesterday, when the floor was scrubbed. You did set me a task, though!"
Lembke dropped his eyes sternly.
"I haven't slept for the last two nights, thanks to you.
It was found the day before yesterday, but I kept it, and have been reading it ever since. I've no time in the day, so I've read it at night.
Well, I don't like it; it's not my way of looking at things.
But that's no matter; I've never set up for being a critic, but I couldn't tear myself away from it, my dear man, though I didn't like it!
The fourth and fifth chapters are... they really are... damn it all, they are beyond words!
And what a lot of humour you've packed into it; it made me laugh!
How you can make fun of things sans que cela paraisse!
As for the ninth and tenth chapters, it's all about love; that's not my line, but it's effective though. I was nearly blubbering over Egrenev's letter, though you've shown him up so cleverly.... You know, it's touching, though at the same time you want to show the false side of him, as it were, don't you?
Have I guessed right?
But I could simply beat you for the ending.
For what are you setting up?
Why, the same old idol of domestic happiness, begetting children and making money; 'they were married and lived happy ever afterwards'—come, it's too much!
You will enchant your readers, for even I couldn't put the book down; but that makes it all the worse!
The reading public is as stupid as ever, but it's the duty of sensible people to wake them up, while you... But that's enough. Good-bye.
Don't be cross another time; I came in to you because I had a couple of words to say to you, but you are so unaccountable..."
Andrey Antonovitch meantime took his novel and locked it up in an oak bookcase, seizing the opportunity to wink to Blum to disappear.
The latter withdrew with a long, mournful face.
"I am not unaccountable, I am simply... nothing but annoyances," he muttered, frowning but without anger, and sitting down to the table. "Sit down and say what you have to say.
It's a long time since I've seen you, Pyotr Stepanovitch, only don't burst upon me in the future with such manners... sometimes, when one has business, it's..."
"My manners are always the same...."
"I know, and I believe that you mean nothing by it, but sometimes one is worried.... Sit down."
Pyotr Stepanovitch immediately lolled back on the sofa and drew his legs under him.