Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories Part 25

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"Well, it isn't that.... But if I were you, I would not take any sort of present from Nastasey."

"Why?"

"Because he is a contemptible person; and you ought not to be under an obligation to a contemptible person. And to say thank you to him, too.

I suppose you kissed his hand?"

"Yes, Aunt made me."

David grinned--a peculiar grin--to himself. That was his way. He never laughed aloud; he considered laughter a sign of feebleness.

David's words, his silent grin, wounded me deeply. "So he inwardly despises me," I thought. "So I, too, am contemptible in his eyes. He would never have stooped to this himself! He would not have accepted presents from Nastasey. But what am I to do now?"

Give back the watch? Impossible!

I did try to talk to David, to ask his advice. He told me that he never gave advice to anyone and that I had better do as I thought best. As I thought best!! I remember I did not sleep all night afterwards: I was in agonies of indecision. I was sorry to lose the watch--I had laid it on the little table beside my bed; its ticking was so pleasant and amusing ... but to feel that David despised me (yes, it was useless to deceive myself, he did despise me) ... that seemed to me unbearable. Towards morning a determination had taken shape in me ... I wept, it is true--but I fell asleep upon it, and as soon as I woke up, I dressed in haste and ran out into the street. I had made up my mind to give my watch to the first poor person I met.

IV

I had not run far from home when I hit upon what I was looking for. I came across a barelegged boy of ten, a ragged urchin, who was often hanging about near our house. I dashed up to him at once and, without giving him or myself time to recover, offered him my watch.

The boy stared at me round-eyed, put one hand before his mouth, as though he were afraid of being scalded--and held out the other.

"Take it, take it," I muttered, "it's mine, I give it you, you can sell it, and buy yourself ... something you want.... Good-bye."

I thrust the watch into his hand--and went home at a gallop. Stopping for a moment at the door of our common bedroom to recover my breath, I went up to David who had just finished dressing and was combing his hair.

"Do you know what, David?" I said in as unconcerned a tone as I could, "I have given away Nastasey's watch."

David looked at me and pa.s.sed the brush over his temples.

"Yes," I added in the same businesslike voice, "I have given it away.

There is a very poor boy, a beggar, you know, so I have given it to him."

David put down the brush on the was.h.i.+ng-stand.

"He can buy something useful," I went on, "with the money he can get for it. Anyway, he will get something for it."

I paused.

"Well," David said at last, "that's a good thing," and he went off to the schoolroom. I followed him.

"And if they ask you what you have done with it?" he said, turning to me.

"I shall tell them I've lost it," I answered carelessly.

No more was said about the watch between us that day; but I had the feeling that David not only approved of what I had done but ... was to some extent surprised by it. He really was!

V

Two days more pa.s.sed. It happened that no one in the house thought of the watch. My father was taken up with a very serious unpleasantness with one of his clients; he had no attention to spare for me or my watch. I, on the other hand, thought of it without ceasing! Even the approval ... the presumed approval of David did not quite comfort me.

He did not show it in any special way: the only thing he said, and that casually, was that he hadn't expected such recklessness of me.

Certainly I was a loser by my sacrifice: it was not counter-balanced by the gratification afforded me by my vanity.

And what is more, as ill-luck would have it, another schoolfellow of ours, the son of the town doctor, must needs turn up and begin boasting of a new watch, a present from his grandmother, and not even a silver, but a pinch-back one....

I could not bear it, at last, and, without a word to anyone, slipped out of the house and proceeded to hunt for the beggar boy to whom I had given my watch.

I soon found him; he was playing knucklebones in the churchyard with some other boys.

I called him aside--and, breathless and stammering, told him that my family were angry with me for having given away the watch--and that if he would consent to give it back to me I would gladly pay him for it.... To be ready for any emergency, I had brought with me an old-fas.h.i.+oned rouble of the reign of Elizabeth, which represented the whole of my fortune.

"But I haven't got it, your watch," answered the boy in an angry and tearful voice; "my father saw it and took it away from me; and he was for thras.h.i.+ng me, too. 'You must have stolen it from somewhere,' he said. 'What fool is going to make you a present of a watch?'"

"And who is your father?"

"My father? Trofimitch."

"But what is he? What's his trade?"

"He is an old soldier, a sergeant. And he has no trade at all. He mends old shoes, he re-soles them. That's all his trade. That's what he lives by."

"Where do you live? Take me to him."

"To be sure I will. You tell my father that you gave me the watch. For he keeps pitching into me, and calling me a thief! And my mother, too.

'Who is it you are taking after,' she says, 'to be a thief?'"

I set off with the boy to his home. They lived in a smoky hut in the back-yard of a factory, which had long ago been burnt down and not rebuilt. We found both Trofimitch and his wife at home. The discharged sergeant was a tall old man, erect and sinewy, with yellowish grey whiskers, an unshaven chin and a perfect network of wrinkles on his cheeks and forehead. His wife looked older than he. Her red eyes, which looked buried in her unhealthily puffy face, kept blinking dejectedly. Some sort of dark rags hung about them by way of clothes.

I explained to Trofimitch what I wanted and why I had come. He listened to me in silence without once winking or moving from me his stupid and strained--typically soldierly--eyes.

"Whims and fancies!" he brought out at last in a husky, toothless ba.s.s. "Is that the way gentlemen behave? And if Petka really did not steal the watch--then I'll give him one for that! To teach him not to play the fool with little gentlemen! And if he did steal it, then I would give it to him in a very different style, whack, whack, whack!

With the flat of a sword; in horseguard's fas.h.i.+on! No need to think twice about it! What's the meaning of it? Eh? Go for them with sabres!

Here's a nice business! Tfoo!"

This last interjection Trofimitch p.r.o.nounced in a falsetto. He was obviously perplexed.

"If you are willing to restore the watch to me," I explained to him--I did not dare to address him familiarly in spite of his being a soldier--"I will with pleasure pay you this rouble here. The watch is not worth more, I imagine."

"Well!" growled Trofimitch, still amazed and, from old habit, devouring me with his eyes as though I were his superior officer.

"It's a queer business, eh? Well, there it is, no understanding it.

Ulyana, hold your tongue!" he snapped out at his wife who was opening her mouth. "Here's the watch," he added, opening the table drawer; "if it really is yours, take it by all means; but what's the rouble for?

Eh?"

"Take the rouble, Trofimitch, you senseless man," wailed his wife. "You have gone crazy in your old age! We have not a half-rouble between us, and then you stand on your dignity! It was no good their cutting off your pigtail, you are a regular old woman just the same! How can you go on like that--when you know nothing about it? ... Take the money, if you have a fancy to give back the watch!"

"Ulyana, hold your tongue, you dirty s.l.u.t!" Trofimitch repeated.