Persidsky's shining face stood out among them.
As they lay in wait, the concessionaires could hear him shouting:
"Yes, I'll come to Moscow immediately.
I've already sent a telegram.
And do you know which one?
'Celebrating with you.'
Let them guess who it's from."
Then Persidsky got into a hired car, having first inspected it thoroughly, and drove off, accompanied for some reason by shouts of
"Hooray!"
As soon as the hydraulic press had been unloaded, the scenic effects were brought ashore.
Darkness had already fallen by the time they unloaded the chairs.
The troupe piled into five two-horse carts and, gaily shouting, went straight to the station.
"I don't think they're going to play in Stalingrad," said Ippolit Matveyevich.
Ostap was in a quandary.
"We'll have to travel with them," he decided. "But where's the money?
Let's go to the station, anyway, and see what happens."
At the station it turned out that the theatre was going to Pyatigorsk via Tikhoretsk.
The concessionaires only had enough money for one ticket.
"Do you know how to travel without a ticket?" Ostap asked Vorobyaninov.
"I'll try," said Vorobyaninov timidly.
"Damn you!
Better not try.
I'll forgive you once more.
Let it be. I'll do the bilking."
Ippolit Matveyevich was bought a ticket in an upholstered coach and with it travelled to the station Mineral Waters on the North Caucasus Railway.
Keeping out of sight of the troupe alighting at the station (decorated with oleander shrubs in green tubs), the former marshal went to look for Ostap.
Long after the theatre had left for Pyatigorsk in new little local-line coaches, Ostap was still not to be seen.
He finally arrived in the evening and found Vorobyaninov completely distraught.
"Where were you?" whimpered the marshal. "I was in such a state?"
"You were in a state, and you had a ticket in your pocket!
And I wasn't, I suppose!
Who was kicked off the buffers of the last coach of your train?
Who spent three hours waiting like an idiot for a goods train with empty mineral-water bottles?
You're a swine, citizen marshal!
Where's the theatre? "
"In Pyatigorsk."
"Let's go.
I managed to pick up something on the way.
The net income is three roubles.
It isn't much, of course, but enough for the first purchase of mineral water and railway tickets."
Creaking like a cart, the train left for Pyatigorsk and, fifty minutes later, passing Zmeika and Beshtau, brought the concessionaires to the foot of Mashuk.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A VIEW OF THE MALACHITE PUDDLE
It was Sunday evening.
Everything was clean and washed.
Even Mashuk, overgrown with shrubbery and small clumps of trees, was carefully combed and exuded a smell of toilet water.
White trousers of the most varied types flashed up and down the toy platform: there were trousers made of twill, moleskin, calamanco, duck and soft flannel.
People were walking about in sandals and Apache shirts.
In their heavy, dirty boots, heavy dusty trousers, heated waistcoats and scorching jackets, the concessionaires felt very out of place.
Among the great variety of gaily coloured cottons in which the girls of the resort were parading themselves, the brightest and most elegant was the uniform of the stationmaster.