Chapter 8 - Page 2

"No, of course I cannot tell, barin," he repeated.

His voice seemed to me so kind that I decided to edify him by
relating the cause of my expedition, and even telling him of the
feeling which I had experienced.

"Shall I tell you?" I said. "Well, you see,"--and I told him all,
as well as inflicted upon him a description of my fine
sentiments. To this day I blush at the recollection.

"Well, well!" said the cabman non-committally, and for a long
while afterwards he remained silent and motionless, except that
at intervals he adjusted the skirt of his coat each time that it
was jerked from beneath his leg by the joltings of his huge boot
on the drozhki's step. I felt sure that he must be thinking of me
even as the priest had done. That is to say, that he must be
thinking that no such fine-spirited young man existed in the
world as I. Suddenly he shot at me:

"I tell you what, barin. You ought to keep God's affairs to
yourself."

"What?" I said.

"Those affairs of yours--they are God's business," he repeated,
mumbling the words with his toothless lips.

"No, he has not understood me," I thought to myself, and said no
more to him till we reached home.

Although it was not my original sense of reconciliation and
reverence, but only a sort of complacency at having experienced
such a sense, that lasted in me during the drive home (and that,
too, despite the distraction of the crowds of people who now
thronged the sunlit streets in every direction), I had no sooner
reached home than even my spurious complacency was shattered, for
I found that I had not the forty copecks wherewith to pay the
cabman! To the butler, Gabriel, I already owed a small debt, and
he refused to lend me any more. Seeing me twice run across the
courtyard in quest of the money, the cabman must have divined the
reason, for, leaping from his drozhki, he--notwithstanding that
he had seemed so kind--began to bawl aloud (with an evident
desire to punch my head) that people who do not pay for their
cab-rides are swindlers.

None of my family were yet out of bed, so that, except for the
servants, there was no one from whom to borrow the forty copecks.
At length, on my most sacred, sacred word of honour to repay (a
word to which, as I could see from his face, he did not
altogether trust), Basil so far yielded to his fondness for me
and his remembrance of the many services I had done him as to pay
the cabman. Thus all my beautiful feelings ended in smoke. When I
went upstairs to dress for church and go to Communion with the
rest I found that my new clothes had not yet come home, and so I
could not wear