Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/162

 knots. The other actors parted them, and by a majority of votes gave the part to Netsvetaev, not because he was better looking and more presentable than the other and so looked more like a gentleman, but because Netsvetaev assured them that he would come on with a cane and would wave it about and draw patterns on the ground with it like a real gentleman and tiptop swell, which Vanka Otpety could not do, for he had never seen any real gentlemen. And, indeed, when Netsvetaev came on the stage with his lady, he kept on rapidly drawing patterns on the floor with a thin reedy cane which he had picked up somewhere, no doubt considering this a sign of the highest breeding, foppishness and fashion. Probably at some time in his childhood, as a barefoot servant boy, he had happened to see a finely dressed gentleman with a cane and been fascinated by his dexterity with it, and the impression had remained printed indelibly on his memory, so that now at thirty he remembered it exactly as it was, for the enchantment and delectation of the whole prison. Netsvetaev was so absorbed in his occupation that he looked at no one; he even spoke without raising his eyes, he simply watched the tip of his cane. “The benevolent country lady,” too, was a remarkable conception in its way she came on in a shabby old muslin dress which looked no better than a rag. with her neck and arms bare, and her face horribly rouged and powdered, with a cotton nightcap tied under her chin, carrying a parasol in one hand and in the other a painted paper fan with which she continually fanned herself. A roar of laughter greeted this lady’s appearance; the lady herself could not refrain from laughing several times. A convict called Ivanov took the part. Sirotkin dressed up as a girl looked very charming. The verses, too, went off very well. In fact the play gave complete satisfaction to all. There was no criticism, and indeed there could not be.

The orchestra played the song, “My porch, my new porch,” by way of overture, and the curtain rose again. The second piece was “Kedril,” a play somewhat in the style of Don Juan; at least the master and servant are both carried off to hell by devils at the end. They acted all they had, but it was obviously a fragment, of which the beginning and the end were lost. There was no meaning or consistency in it. The action takes place in Russia, at an inn. The innkeeper brings a gentleman in an overcoat and a battered round hat into the room. He is followed by his servant Kedril carrying a trunk and a fowl wrapped