Six weeks later, the groom Perfishka thought it his duty to stop the
commissioner of police as he happened to be passing Bezsonovo.
'What do you want?' inquired the guardian of order.
'If you please, your excellency, come into our house,' answered the
groom with a low bow.
'Panteley Eremyitch, I fancy, is about to die; so that I'm afraid of
getting into trouble.'
'What? die?' queried the commissioner.
'Yes, sir. First, his honour drank vodka every day, and now he's taken
to his bed and got very thin. I fancy his honour does not understand
anything now. He's lost his tongue completely.'
The commissioner got out of his trap.
'Have you sent for the priest, at least? Has your master been confessed?
Taken the sacrament?'
'No, sir!'
The commissioner frowned. 'How is that, my boy? How can that be--hey?
Don't you know that for that... you're liable to have to answer
heavily--hey?'
'Indeed, and I did ask him the day before yesterday, and yesterday
again,' protested the intimidated groom. "Wouldn't you, Panteley
Eremyitch," says I, "let me run for the priest, sir?" "You hold your
tongue, idiot," says he; "mind your own business." But to-day, when I
began to address him, his honour only looked at me, and twitched his
moustache.'
'And has he been drinking a great deal of vodka?' inquired the
commissioner.
'Rather! But if you would be so good, your honour, come into his room.'
'Well, lead the way!' grumbled the commissioner, and he followed
Perfishka.
An astounding sight was in store for him. In a damp, dark back-room, on
a wretched bedstead covered with a horsecloth, with a rough felt cloak
for a pillow, lay Tchertop-hanov. He was not pale now, but yellowish
green, like a corpse, with sunken eyes under leaden lids and a sharp,
pinched nose--still reddish--above his dishevelled whiskers. He lay
dressed in his invariable Caucasian coat, with the cartridge pockets on
the breast, and blue Circassian trousers. A Cossack cap with a crimson
crown covered his forehead to his very eyebrows. In one hand
Tchertop-hanov held his hunting whip, in the other an embroidered
tobacco pouch--Masha's last gift to him. On a table near the bed stood
an empty spirit bottle, and at the head of the bed were two water-colour
sketches pinned to the wall; one represented, as far as could be made
out, a fat man with a guitar in his hand--probably Nedopyuskin; the
other portrayed a horseman galloping at full speed.... The horse was
like those fabulous animals which are sketched by children on walls and
fences; but the carefully washed-in dappling of the horse's grey coat,
and the cartridge pocket on the rider's breast, the pointed toes of his
boots, and the immense moustaches, left no room for doubt--this sketch
was meant to represent Panteley Eremyitch riding on Malek-Adel.
The astonished commissioner of police did not know how to proceed. The
silence of death reigned in the room. 'Why, he's dead already!' he
thought, and raising his voice, he said, 'Panteley Eremyitch! Eh,
Panteley Eremyitch!'
Then something extraordinary occurred. Tchertop-hanov's eyelids slowly
opened, the eyes, fast growing dim, moved first from right to left, then
from left to right, rested on the commissioner--saw him.... Something
gleamed in their dull whites, the semblance of a flash came back to
them, the blue lips were gradually unglued, and a hoarse, almost
sepulchral, voice was heard.
'Panteley Eremyitch of the ancient hereditary nobility is dying: who can
hinder him? He owes no man anything, asks nothing from any one.... Leave
him, people! Go!'
The hand holding the whip tried to lift it... In vain! The lips cleaved
together again, the eyes closed, and as before Tchertop-hanov lay on his
comfortless bed, flat as an empty sack, and his feet close together.
'Let me know when he dies,' the commissioner whispered to Perfishka as
he went out of the room; 'and I suppose you can send for the priest now.
You must observe due order; give him extreme unction.'
Perfishka went that same day for the priest, and the following morning
he had to let the commissioner know: Panteley Eremyitch had died in the
night.
When they buried him, two men followed his coffin; the groom Perfishka
and Moshel Leyba. The news of Tchertop-hanov's death had somehow reached
the Jew, and he did not fail to pay this last act of respect to his
benefactor.