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Now, after this candid avowal on the part of Nikolay Sergeitch, she could not remain another minute, and could not understand how she could have gone on living in the house before. "And it's nothing to wonder at," Nikolay Sergeitch went on after a pause. "It's an everyday story! I need money, and she . . . won't give it to me.
She was no less devout than Alexey Sergeitch, and was very fond of praying; but as, in her own words, she had never learned to repeat prayers well, she kept for the purpose a poor deacon's widow who prayed with such relish! Never stumbled over a word in her life!
'You tell him, your master, that I'm ...; say, not angry with him, but that ... She stammered. 'We understand, responded Onisim, and he got up from his seat. 'We understand. Thanks for the entertainment. 'Come in again some day. 'All right, all right. Onisim approached the door. The fat woman came into the room. 'Good evening to you, Onisim Sergeitch, she said in a peculiar chant.
Alexey Sergeitch himself was a stumpy, paunchy little old man, with a chubby face of one uniform tint, yet pleasant, with drawn-in lips, and very lively little eyes under high eyebrows. He wore his scanty locks combed to the back of his head; it was only since 1812 that he had given up wearing powder.
He was standing one day on guard indoors, in the palace he was only sixteen at the time and behold the empress comes walking past him; he salutes ... 'and she, Alexey Sergeitch would exclaim at this point with much feeling, 'smiling at my youth and my zeal, deigned to give me her hand to kiss and patted my cheek, and asked me "who I was? where I came from? of what family?" and then' ... here the old man's voice usually broke ... 'then she bade me greet my mother in her name and thank her for having brought up her children so well.
To a certain extent the neighbours were right: Alexey Sergeitch had lived in his Suhodol for almost seventy years on end, and had had hardly anything whatever to do with the existing authorities, with the police or the law-courts.
In his right hand he usually carried an enamelled snuff-box full of 'Spanish' snuff, and his left hand leaned on a cane with a silver-chased knob, worn smooth by long use. Alexey Sergeitch had a little nasal, piping voice, and an invariable smile kindly, but, as it were, condescending, and not without a certain self-complacent dignity.
Whoever's there of the men! Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, God forbid! And what used to surprise me was that whatever time Alexey Sergeitch called his valet, he always promptly made his appearance, as though he had sprung out of the earth, and with a scrape of his heels, his hands behind his back, would stand before his master, a surly, as it were angry, but devoted servant!
If she really had, as she said, caught her sleeve in it and upset everything, why had Nikolay Sergeitch dashed out of her room so excited and red in the face? Why was one drawer of the table pulled out a little way? The money-box, in which the governess put away ten kopeck pieces and old stamps, was open.
Alexey Sergeitch died in his eighty-eighth year in the year 1848, which apparently disturbed even him. His death, too, was rather strange. He had felt well the same morning, though by that time he never left his easy-chair.
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