It was a terrible business to bring all this about. We had rehearsals every day at Bessy's house. I was very busy just then. I ought to have been working as an articled clerk, but I'm quite sure I never looked at a law-book. At last, however, it was possible to fix the day on which the concert would come off.
Meanwhile, the time was approaching when I ought to have passed my patvaria, and gone through my jurateria. My elder brother Charles wrote to a well-known lawyer at Pest, who had a large practice, to take me into his office as a juratus. And as winter was also drawing nigh, and I was about to go far, far away into a strange world, my good and ever-blessed mother was busying herself about my outfit. Nowadays people will regard it as a fable, but say it I must, that all the linen I wore during the time when I was a juratus was spun by my mother's own hands. I verily believe that that shirt, spun by a mother's hand, and worn by me, was the magic web which turned aside so many of the blows of fate.
A tailor and a weaver lived in some of the smaller houses we possessed; we had no need of the help of strangers. My mother also provided me with a good winter overcoat.
It was really a capital overcoat, which covered me down to the very heels, a real Menshikov overcoat, very fashionable forty years later, but in those days worn by nobody but the porters of the Benedictine Order.
When I appeared at the amateur rehearsals at Bessy's house in this prematurely born Menshikov, a circle was instantly formed round me, and every one asked me, with ironical congratulations, where I had had it made. Was it possible to get the fellow of it? Bessy even remarked that there was room for two in it, and I was not a bit offended with her.
When I withdrew (a letter, just arrived from Pest, called me home), I scarcely had time to close the door behind me, when I heard an outburst of merriment inside. When, however, I had got out into the street and turned round to have a last look at the house I had left behind me, lo and behold! all the windows were filled with groups of smiling faces, amongst which I saw Bessy's face also. "They are all in a very good humour to-day," I thought to myself.
Hastening home, I found there the letter from the Pest lawyer, in which he informed me, with official brevity, that there was a vacant place for a juratus in his office, which I might occupy. If, however, I did not come and claim it within three days, the vacant place would be given to some one else. The amateur entertainment had been fixed for Sunday, and it was now Tuesday. If I am not there by Friday, another will sit in my place. But what will become of the concert? Ought I to leave Bessy in the lurch—so faithlessly?
And how about the poor slaves?
Perhaps the lawyer at Pest would make a bargain with me and give me a couple of days' grace? I sat down to reply to him: "Worshipful Mr. Advocate—I feel in duty bound to say, in reply to your honourable communication——" Yes, but what? I must tell him some lie or other. Nay, not a lie, only a freak of fancy. A sudden illness? No, that's no joke. An uncompleted piece of law business, which I must finish for my old chief? The Pest lawyer will never believe that. What pretext could I hit upon to steal a little more time?
While I was still biting my pen, my mother came into the room, and said to me: "Where have you been, my dear son?"