‘I don’t know whether it’s true; but the butler swore it was two
hundred years old. It smells just like an old cognac, and it’s as
yellow as amber.’
‘Ah, what are you doing with me?’ said the sergeant. ‘Who’ll hold my
horse?’
I really had some bottles of the old liqueur, though it was not
quite so old as I made out; but I thought that suggestion might
easily add a hundred years to its age.... At any rate it was the real
home-distilled, omnipotent stuff, the pride of a ruined magnate’s
cellar. (Evpsychyi Afrikanovich, who was the son of a parson,
immediately begged a bottle from me, in case, as he put it, he were to
catch a bad cold.) Besides, I had some very conducive _hors d’œuvre_:
young radishes, with fresh churned butter.
‘Now, what’s the little business?’ the sergeant asked after his fifth
glass, throwing himself back in the old chair which groaned under him.
I began to explain the position of the poor old woman; I dwelt on her
hopeless despair; spoke lightly of useless formalities. The sergeant
listened to me with his head bent down, methodically clearing the small
roots from the succulent red radishes, and chewing and crunching them
with relish. Now and then he gave me a quick glance with his cloudy,
indifferent, preposterously little blue eyes; but I could read nothing
on his great red face, neither sympathy nor opposition. When I finally
became silent, he only asked.
‘Well, what is it you want from me?’
‘What do you mean?’ I became agitated. ‘Look at their position,
please--two poor defenceless women living there----’
‘And one of them’s a perfect little bud!’ the sergeant put in
maliciously.
‘Bud or no bud--that doesn’t come into it. But why shouldn’t you take
some interest in them? As though you really need to turn them out in
such a hurry? Just wait a day or two until I’ve been to the landlord.
What do you stand to lose, even if you waited for a month?’
‘What do I stand to lose?’ The sergeant rose in his chair. ‘Good God!
I stand to lose everything--my job, first of all. Who knows what sort
of a man this new landlord, Ilyashevich is? Perhaps he’s an underhand
devil, one of the sort who get hold of a bit of paper and a pen on the
slightest provocation, and send a little report to Petersburg? There
are men of the kind!’