With Nikiphorov-Pavlenko did I serve.
Who made the name for Legunov-Pochainin?
I!
But no-ow … ”
He sniveled, and sought to kiss the sub-professor.
“Yes!
Despise me, brand me, ye honest folk.
I play the tom-fool. I drink … I have sold and spilt the sacred ointment!
I sit in a dive with vendable merchandise.
While my wife … she is a saint, and pure, my little dove! … Oh, if she knew, if she only knew! she works hard, she runs a modiste’s shop; her fingers— the fingers of an angel— are pricked with the needle, but I!
Oh, sainted woman!
And I— the scoundrel!— whom do I exchange thee for!
Oh, horror!” The actor seized his hair. “Professor, let me, I’ll kiss your scholarly hand.
You alone understand me.
Let us go, I’ll introduce you, you’ll see what an angel this is! … She awaits me, she does not sleep nights, she folds the tiny hands of my little ones and together with them whispers: ’Lord, save and preserve papa.’”
“You’re lying about it all, you ham!” said the drunken Little White Manka suddenly, looking with hatred upon Egmont-Lavretzki. “She isn’t whispering anything, but most peacefully sleeping with a man in your bed.”
“Be still, you w—!” vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. “Hold me, or else I’ll brain this carrion.
Don’t you dare besmirch with your foul tongue… ”
“My tongue isn’t foul— I take communion,” impudently replied the woman. “But you, you fool, wear horns.
You go traipsing around with prostitutes yourself, and yet want your wife not to play you false.
And look where the dummy’s found a place to slaver, till he looks like he had reins in his mouth.
And what did you mix the children in for, you miserable papa you!
Don’t you roll your eyes and gnash your teeth at me.
You won’t frighten me!
W— yourself!”
It required many efforts and much eloquence on the part of Yarchenko in order to quiet the actor and Little White Manka, who always after Benedictine ached for a row.
The actor in the end burst into copious and unbecoming tears and blew his nose, like an old man; he grew weak, and Henrietta led him away to her room.
Fatigue had already overcome everybody.
The students, one after another, returned from the bedrooms; and separately from them, with an indifferent air, came their chance mistresses.
And truly, both these and the others resembled flies, males and females, just flown apart on the window pane.
They yawned, stretched, and for a long time an involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion did not leave their faces, pale from sleeplessness, unwholesomely glossy.
And when they, before going their ways, said good-bye to each other, in their eyes twinkled some kind of an inimical feeling, just as with the participants of one and the same filthy and unnecessary crime.
“Where are you going right now?” Lichonin asked the reporter in a low voice.
“Well, really, I don’t know myself.
I did want to spend the night in the cabinet of Isaiah Savvich, but it’s a pity to lose such a splendid morning.
I’m thinking of taking a bath, and then I’ll get on a steamer and ride to the Lipsky monastery to a certain tippling black friar I know.
But why?”
“I would ask you to remain a little while and sit the others out.
I must have a very important word or two with you.”
“It’s a go.”
Yarchenko was the last to go.
He averred a headache and fatigue.
But scarcely had he gone out of the house when the reporter seized Lichonin by the hand and quickly dragged him into the glass vestibule of the entrance.
“Look!” he said, pointing to the street.
And through the orange glass of the little coloured window Lichonin saw the sub-professor, who was ringing at Treppel’s.
After a minute the door opened and Yarchenko disappeared through it.
“How did you find out?” asked Lichonin with astonishment.
“A mere trifle!
I saw his face, and saw his hands smoothing Verka’s tights.
The others were less restrained.