A man in a dress coat and a white waistcoat peeped into the little room and said:
"Miss Arabella has just gone on. After her—you."
Their master made no answer. He drew a small box from under the table, sat down, and waited. From his lips and his hands it could be seen that he was agitated, and Auntie could hear how his breathing came in gasps.
"Monsieur George, come on!" someone shouted behind the door. Their master got up and crossed himself three times, then took the cat from under the stool and put him in the box.
"Come, Auntie," he said softly.
Auntie, who could make nothing out of it, went up to his hands, he kissed her on the head, and put her beside Fyodor Timofeyitch. Then followed darkness. . . . Auntie trampled on the cat, scratched at the walls of the box, and was so frightened that she could not utter a sound, while the box swayed and quivered, as though it were on the waves. . . .
"Here we are again! " her master shouted aloud: "here we are again ! "
Auntie felt that after that shout the box struck against something hard and left off swaying. There was a loud deep roar, someone was being slapped, and that someone, prob- ably the monster with the tail instead of a nose, roared and laughed so loud that the locks of the box trembled. In response to the roar, there came a shrill, squeaky laugh from her mas- ter, such as he never laughed at home.
"Ha!" he shouted, trying to shout above the roar. "Hon- oured friends! I have only just come from the station! My granny's kicked the bucket and left me a fortune! There is something very heavy in the box, it must be gold, ha! ha! I bet there's a million here! We'll open it and look. . . ."
The lock of the box clicked. The bright light dazzled Auntie's eyes, she jumped out of the box, and, deafened by the roar, ran quickly round her master, and broke into a shrill bark.
"Ha!" exclaimed her master. "Uncle Fyodor Timofeyitch! Beloved Aunt, dear relations! The devil take you!"
He fell on his stomach on the sand, seized the cat and Auntie, and fell to embracing them. While he held Auntie tight in his arms, she glanced round into the world into which fate had brought her and, impressed by its immensity, was for a minute dumfounded with amazement and delight, then jumped out of her master's arms, and to express the intensity of her emotions, whirled round and round on one spot like a top. This new world was big and full of bright light; wherever she looked, on all sides, from floor to ceiling there were faces, faces, faces, and nothing else.
"Auntie, I beg you to sit down!" shouted her master. Re- membering what that meant, Auntie jumped on to a chair, and sat down. She looked at her master. His eyes looked at her gravely and kindly as always, but his face, especially his mouth and teeth, were made grotesque by a broad immovable grin. He laughed, skipped about, twitched his shoulders, and made a show of being very merry in the presence of the thou- sands of faces. Auntie believed in his merriment, all at once felt all over her that those thousands of faces were looking at her, lifted up her fox-like head, and howled joyously.
"You sit there, Auntie," her master said to her, "while Uncle and I will dance the Kamarinsky."
Fyodor Timofeyitch stood looking about him indifferently, waiting to be made to do something silly. He danced listlessly, carelessly, sullenly, and one could see from his movements, his tail and his ears, that he had a profound contempt for the crowd, the bright light, his master and himself. When he had performed his allotted task, he gave a yawn and sat down.
"Now, Auntie!" said her master, "we'll have first a song, and then a dance, shall we?"
He took a pipe out of his pocket, and began playing.
Auntie, who could not endure music, began moving uneasily in her chair and howled. A roar of applause rose from all side!.i. Her master bowed, and when all was still again, went on playing. . . . Just as he took one very high note, some- one high up among the audience uttered a loud exclamation:
"Auntie!" cried a child's voice, "why, it's Kashtanka!'
"Kashtanka it is!" declared a cracked drunken tenor. "Kashtanka! Strike me dead, Fedyushka, it is Kashtanka. Kashtankal here!"
Someone in the gallery gave a whistle, and two voices, one a boy's and one a man's, called loudly: "Kashtanka! Kash- tanka!'
Auntie started, and looked where the shouting came from. Two faces, one hairy, drunken and grinning, the other chubby, rosy-cheeked and frightened-looking, dazed her eyes as the bright light had dazed them before.. . . She remembered, fell off the chair, struggled on the sand, then jumped up, and with a delighted yap dashed towards those faces. There was a deafening roar, interspersed with whistles and a shrill child- ish shout: "Kashtanka! Kashtanka!"
Auntie leaped over the barrier, then across someone's shoulders. She found herself in a box: to get into the next tier she had to leap over a high wall. Auntie jumped, but did not jump high enough, and slipped back down the wall. Then she was passed from hand to hand, licked hands and faces, kept mounting higher and higher, and at last got into the gallery. . . .
Half an hour afterwards, Kashtanka was in the street, following the people who smelt of glue and varnish. Luka Alexandritch staggered and instinctively, taught by experi- ence, tried to keep as far from the gutter as possible.
"In sin my mother bore me," he muttered. "And you, Kashtanka, are a thing of little understanding. Beside a man, you are like a joiner beside a cabinetmaker."
Fedyushka walked beside him, wearing his father's cap.
Kashtanka looked at their backs, and it seemed to her that she had been following them for ages, and was glad that there had not been a break for a minute in her life.
She remembered the little room with dirty wall-paper, the gander, Fyodor Timofeyitch, the delicious dinners, the les- sons, the circus, but all that seemed to her now like a long, tangled oppressive dream.
ENEMIES
ABOUT ten o'clock of a dark September evening the Zemstvo doctor Kirilov's only son, six-year-old Andrey, died of diph- theria. As the doctor's wife dropped on to her knees before ihe dead child's cot and the first paroxysm of despair took hold of her, the bell rang sharply in the hall.
^^en the diphtheria came all the servants were sent away from the house, that very morning. Kirilov himself went to the door, just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves with his waistcoat unbuttoned, without wiping his wet face or hands, which had been burnt with carbolic acid. It was dark in the hall, and of the person who entered could be distinguished only his middle height, a iVhite scarf and a big, extraordinarily pale face, so pale that it seemed as though its appearance made the hall brighter. . . .
"Is the doctor in?" the visitor asked abruptly. "I'm at home," answered Kirilov. "What do you want?" ' "Oh, you're the donor? I'm so glad! The visitor was over- joyed and began to seek for the doctor's hand in the dark- ness. He found it and squeezed it hard in his own. "I'm very . . . very glad! We were introduced. ... I am Aboguin • . . had the pleasure of meeting you this summer at Mr. Gnouchev's. I am very glad to have found you at home. . .. For God's sake, don't say you won't come with me immedi- ately. . . . My wife has been taken dangerously ill . . . I have the carriage with me. . . ."
From the visitor's voice and movements it was evident that he had been in a state of violent agitation. Exactly as though he had been frightened by a fire or a mad dog, he could hardly restrain his hurried breathing, and he spoke
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quickly in a trembling voice. In his speech there sounded a note of real sincerity, of childish fright. Like all men who are frightened and dazed, he spoke in short, abrupt phrases and uttered many superfluous, quite unnecessary, words.
"I was afraid I shouldn't find you at home," he continued. "While I was coming to you I suffered terribly. . . . Dress yourself and let us go, for God's sake. ...It happened Iike this, Papchinsky came to me—Alexander Siemionovich, you know him. . , . We were chatting.. . . Then we sat down to tea. Suddenly my wife cries out, presses her hands to her heart, and falls back in her chair. We carried her off to her bed and ... and I rubbed her forehead with sal- volatile, and splashed her with water. . . . She lies like a corpse. . . . I'm afraid that her heart's failed. . . . Let us go. . . . Her father too died of heart-failure."