He made his toilet hastily and impatiently, put on his elegant new tunic, and sprinkled a few drops of eau-de-Cologne on a clean handkerchief; but when he was dressed, and ready to go, he was stopped suddenly by Hainán.
“Your Honour,” said the Circassian, in an unusually meek and supplicating tone, as he began to execute a most curious sort of dance before his master. Whilst he was performing a kind of “march on the spot” he lifted his knees right up, one after the other, rocking his shoulders, nodding his head, and making a series of convulsive movements in the air with his arms and fingers. Hainán was in the habit of giving vent to his excited feelings by curious gestures of that sort.
“What do you want now?”
“Your Honour,” stammered Hainán, “I want to ask you something; please give me the white gentleman.”
“The white gentleman? What white gentleman?”
“The one you ordered me to throw away—the one standing in that corner.”
Hainán pointed with his fingers to the stove-corner, where a bust of Pushkin was standing on the floor. This bust, which Romashov had obtained from a wandering pedlar, really did not represent the famous poet, but merely reproduced the forbidding features of an old Jew broker. Badly modelled, so covered with dust and fly dirt as to be unrecognizable, the stone image aroused Romashov’s aversion to such an extent that he had at last made up his mind to order Hainán to throw it into the yard.
“What do you want with it?” asked Romashov, laughing. “But take it by all means, take it, I am only too pleased. I don’t want it, only I should like to know what you are going to do with it.”
Hainán smiled and changed from one foot to the other.
“Well, take him, then; I wish you joy of it. By the way, do you know who it is?”