I didn’t stay to hear more: I rushed headlong
home and straight to David.
“Brother!” I began, “brother, forgive
me! I have wronged you! I suspected you!
I blamed you! You see how agitated I am!
Forgive me!”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked
David. “Explain!”
“I suspected that you had dug up our watch under
the apple-tree.”
“The watch again! Why, isn’t it there?”
“It’s not there; I thought you had taken
it, to help your friends. And it was all Vassily.”
I repeated to David all that I had overheard under
the window of the eating-house.
But how to describe my amazement! I had, of course,
expected David to be indignant, but I had not for
a moment anticipated the effect it produced on him!
I had hardly finished my story when he flew into an
indescribable fury! David, who had always taken
up a scornful attitude to the whole “vulgar,”
as he called it, business of the watch; David, who
had more than once declared that it wasn’t worth
a rotten egg, jumped up from his seat, got hot all
over, ground his teeth and clenched his fists.
“We can’t let this pass!” he said
at last; “how dare he take someone else’s
property? Wait a bit, I’ll show him.
I won’t let thieves off so easily!”
I confess I don’t understand to this day what
can have so infuriated David. Whether he had
been irritated before and Vassily’s action had
simply poured oil on the flames, or whether my suspicions
had wounded him, I cannot say, but I had never seen
him in such excitement. I stood before him with
my mouth open merely wondering how it was that his
breathing was so hard and laboured.
“What do you intend to do?” I asked at
last.
“You shall see after dinner, when your father
lies down. I’ll find this scoffer, I’ll
talk to him.”
“Well,” thought I, “I should not
care to be in that scoffer’s shoes! What
will happen? Merciful heavens?”
This is what did happen:
As soon as that drowsy, stifling stillness prevailed,
which to this day lies like a feather bed on the Russian
household and the Russian people in the middle of
the day after dinner is eaten, David went to the servants’
rooms (I followed on his heels with a sinking heart)
and called Vassily out. The latter was at first
unwilling to come, but ended by obeying and following
us into the garden.
David stood close in front of him. Vassily was
a whole head taller.
“Vassily Terentyev,” my comrade began
in a firm voice, “six weeks ago you took from
under this very apple-tree the watch we hid there.
You had no right to do so; it does not belong to you.
Give it back at once!”
Vassily was taken aback, but at once recovered himself.
“What watch? What are you talking about?
God bless you! I have no watch!”
“I know what I am saying and don’t tell
lies. You’ve got the watch, give it back.”
