The Diamond Chariot Read Online Free Page A

government business.’
    The conductor dragged Astralov, in floods of tears, out into the corridor.
    The train set off. There was a despairing shout from the platform:
    ‘Lycia! I’ll do away with myself! Forgive me!’
    ‘Never!’ the flushed lady passenger shouted, and flung the magnificent bouquet out of the window, showering the little table with scarlet petals.
    She fell back limply on to the seat, covered her face with her fingers and burst into sobs.
    ‘You are a noble man,’ she said through her sobbing. ‘You refused his money! I’m so grateful to you! I would have jumped out of the window, I swear I would!’
    Rybnikov muttered:
    ‘Five hundred roubles is huge money. I don’t earn a third of that, not even with mess and travelling allowances. But I’ve got my job to do. The top brass won’t excuse lateness …’
    ‘Five hundred roubles he offered, the buffoon!’ the lady exclaimed, not listening to him. ‘Preening his feathers for his audience! But he’s really so mean, such an economiser !’ She pronounced the final word with boundless contempt and even stopped sobbing, then added: ‘Refuses to live according to his means.’
    Intrigued by the logical introduction inherent in this statement, Vasilii Alexandrovich asked:
    ‘Begging your pardon, but I don’t quite understand. Is he thrifty or does he lives beyond his means?’
    ‘His means are huge, but he lives too far within them!’ his travelling companion explained, no longer crying, but anxiously examining her slightly reddened nose in a little mirror. She dabbed at it with a powder puff and adjusted a lock of golden hair beside her forehead. ‘Last year he earned almost a hundred thousand, but he barely spent even half of it. He puts it all away “for a rainy day”!’
    At this point she finally calmed down completely, turned her gaze on her companion and introduced herself punctiliously.
    ‘Glyceria Romanovna Lidina.’
    The staff captain told her his name too.
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ the lady told him with a smile. ‘I must explain, since you have witnessed this monstrous spectacle. Georges simply adores histrionic scenes, especially in front of an audience!’
    ‘Is he really an artiste, then?’
    Glyceria Romanovna fluttered her almost inch-long eyelashes incredulously.
    ‘What? You don’t know Astralov? The tenor Astralov. His name is on all the show bills!’
    ‘I’m not much for theatres,’ Rybnikov replied with an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t have any time to go strutting about at operas, you know. And it’s beyond my pocket, anyway. My pay’s miserly, they’re delaying the pension, and life in Petersburg is too pricey by half. The cabbies take seventy kopecks for every piddling little ride …’
    Lidina was not listening, she wasn’t even looking at him any more.
    ‘We’ve been married for two years!’ she said, as if she were not addressing her prosaic companion, but a more worthy audience, which was listening to her with sympathetic attention. ‘Ah, I was so in love! But now I realise it was the voice I loved, not him. What a voice he has! He only has to start singing and I melt, he can wrap me round his little finger. And he knows it, the scoundrel! Did you see the way he started singing just now, the cheap manipulator? Thank goodness the bell interrupted him, my head was already starting to spin!’
    ‘A handsome gentleman,’ the staff captain acknowledged, trying to suppress a yawn. ‘Probably gets his fair share of crumpet. Is that what the drama’s all about?’
    ‘They told me about him!’ Glyceria Romanovna exclaimed with her eyes flashing. ‘There are always plenty of “well-wishers” in the world of theatre. But I didn’t believe them. And then I saw it with my own eyes! And where? In my own drawing room! And who with? That old floozy Koturnova! I’ll never set foot in that desecrated apartment again! Or in Petersburg either!’
    ‘So you’re moving to Moscow, then?’ the staff