“Then you know better than I,” said Ilya, blinking at him across the table and munching the dry cake.
“You are drunk, and you dare come here in these times and put a fool’s cap on me—and the master!”
“True, I am drunk,” replied Ilya through a mouthful of dry cake. “And I hope I’ll die drunk and go to heaven. But do you think I’m fool enough to run my legs off and come here, risking bullets in my back when I might be sitting by the fire with my bottle? Do you think I come here just to look at your old mud-head? I cared nothing for your master before the revolution, but now that I’m as good as he, why should I not do him a good turn if I can—and he has a few spare rubles to make it worth my time?” Ilya blew crumbs of dry biscuit at Wassili with the words.
“Don’t come here and preach at me like a pope!” cautioned Wassili, who was puzzled by Ilya’s newly acquired attitude of independence. Ilya was evidently sure of his ground—or gone mad entirely.
“What!” cried Ilya. “You talk to me like that! And I have come to tell the master news! Very good. I know the way home again, and may your bones never know what it means to be buried.”
“Where are these Americans you talk about?” demanded Wassili, as he saw that it would be wiser to let Ilya have his say.
Ilya snorted, but showed his teeth in a grin of triumph. “I shall go and tell the American officer that Kirsakoff and his daughter have gone, eh? That is what you say. Very good. That will be all right, I suppose—till it happens that way, and then Excellence will kick you till you squeal. Then you will wish that you had listened to Ilya Andreitch and had not tried to make yourself into an Excellence with big manners.”
“Come, come,” protested Wassili amiably. “Let us not argue. Tell me what you know and——”
“I shall tell Excellence myself,” broke in Ilya. “I am a free man. What good is a revolution if one man cannot speak to another? Go and tell Excellence that Ilya Andreitch, who cut wood for him in the year of the pestilence, has come with news.”
Wassili laughed, and taking advantage of a fit of sneezing suffered by Ilya from having breathed particles of dry cake, helped himself to another draft from the bottle of vodka.