Chapter XVI

One day I came home by a side lane which I usually avoided as the house in which my enemy Trankvillitatin lodged was in it; but on this occasion Fate itself led me that way. Passing the open window of an eating-house, I suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a young man of free and easy manners, "a lazy fellow and a scamp," as my father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine.

"And what do you suppose they've been up to?" said Vassily, whom I could not see but heard distinctly; he was, most likely, sitting close by, near the window with a companion over the steaming tea--and as often happens with people in a closed room, spoke in a loud voice without suspecting that anyone passing in the street could hear every word: "They buried it in the ground!"

"Nonsense!" muttered another voice.

"I tell you they did, our young gentlemen are extraordinary! Especially that Davidka, he's a regular Aesop! I got up at daybreak and went to the window.... I looked out and, what do you think! Our two little dears were coming along the orchard bringing that same watch and they dug a hole under the apple-tree and there they buried it, as though it had been a baby! And they smoothed the earth over afterwards, upon my soul they did, the young rakes!"

"Ah! plague take them," Vassily's companion commented. "Too well off, I suppose. Well, did you dig up the watch?"

"To be sure I did. I have got it now. Only it won't do to show it for a time. There's been no end of a fuss over it. Davidka stole it that very night from under our old lady's back."

"Oh--oh!"

"I tell you, he did. He's a desperate fellow. So it won't do to show it. But when the officers come down I shall sell it or stake it at cards."

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?"