The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

XII

AT THE ZAKHLEBININS’

The Zakhlebinins were actually a “very respectable family,” as Velchaninov had put it earlier, and Zakhlebinin himself was quite a solid official and a visible one. Everything that Pavel Pavlovich had said about their income was also true: “They live well, it seems, but if the man were to die, there would be nothing left.”

Old Zakhlebinin met Velchaninov splendidly and amicably, and from a former “enemy” turned entirely into a friend.

“My congratulations, it’s better this way,” he began speaking with a pleasant and dignified air. “I myself insisted on a peaceful settlement, and Pyotr Karlovich” (Velchaninov’s lawyer) “is pure gold in that regard. So then? You’ll get about sixty thousand and without any fuss, without temporizing, without quarrels. Otherwise the case might have dragged on for three years!”

Velchaninov was introduced at once to Mme. Zakhlebinin, a rather spread-out old lady, with a simplish and tired face. The girls also began sailing out, singly or in pairs. But far too many girls appeared; gradually some ten or twelve of them assembled—Velchaninov even lost count; some came in, others left. But among them were many friends from neighboring houses. The Zakhlebinins’ country place—a big wooden house, in some unknown but fanciful taste, added on to at various times—enjoyed the use of a big garden. But three or four other houses gave onto this garden from different sides, so that this big garden served as a common one, which naturally contributed to the closeness between the girls and their summer neighbors. From the first words of the conversation, Velchaninov noticed that he had been expected there and that his arrival in the quality of Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, wishing to become acquainted, had been all but solemnly announced. His keen, experienced eye in such matters soon discerned something even peculiar here: from the much too amiable reception of the parents, from a certain peculiar look about the girls and their dress (though, incidentally, it was a feast day), the suspicion flashed in him that Pavel Pavlovich had tricked him, and might very well have suggested here, naturally without putting it directly into words, something like the notion of him as a bored bachelor, of “good society,” with a fortune, who might very, very well suddenly decide, at last, to “put an end to it” and settle down—“the more so as he has also received an inheritance.” It seemed that the oldest Mlle. Zakhlebinin, Katerina Fedoseevna, the one who was twenty-four and of whom Pavel Pavlovich had spoken as a lovely person, had been more or less tuned to this note. She stood out among her sisters especially by her attire and some sort of original arrangement of her fluffy hair. The sisters and all the other girls looked as if they, too, already knew firmly that Velchaninov was becoming acquainted “on account of Katya” and had come to “have a look” at her. Their glances and even certain phrases that flashed by inadvertently in the course of the day, later confirmed him in this surmise. Katerina Fedoseevna was a tall blonde, plump to the point of luxuriousness, with an extremely sweet face, of an apparently quiet and unenterprising, even drowsy, character. “Strange that such a girl has stayed like this so long,” Velchaninov thought involuntarily, studying her with pleasure. “Granted she has no dowry and will soon spread out altogether, but meanwhile there are so many who love that…” The rest of the sisters were none too bad either, and among the girlfriends there flashed several amusing and even pretty little faces. This began to amuse him; and anyhow he had come with special thoughts.

Nadezhda Fedoseevna, the sixth one, the schoolgirl and supposed fiancée of Pavel Pavlovich, made them wait. Velchaninov waited for her with impatience, marveling at himself and chuckling inwardly. Finally she appeared, and not without effect, accompanied by a pert and sharp girlfriend, Marya Nikitishna, a brunette with a laughing face, of whom, as it turned out at once, Pavel Pavlovich was extremely afraid. This Marya Nikitishna, already a girl of twenty-three, a barterer and even a wit, was governess of the little children in the family of some neighbors and acquaintances, and had long been considered like one of their own at the Zakhlebinins’, where the girls valued her terribly. It was evident that she was also especially necessary now for Nadya. From the first glance, Velchaninov could see that the girls, and even the girlfriends, were all against Pavel Pavlovich, while from the second moment after Nadya’s appearance, he decided that she hated him. He also noticed that Pavel Pavlovich did not perceive it at all, or else did not wish to perceive it. Indisputably, Nadya was better than all her sisters—a small brunette with the air of a wild thing and the boldness of a nihilist; a thievish little demon with fiery eyes, a lovely, though often wicked, smile, amazing lips and teeth, slim, slender, with a nascent thought in the ardent expression of her face, at the same time still quite childish. Her fifteen years spoke in her every step, her every word. It turned out later that Pavel Pavlovich had actually seen her for the first time with an oilcloth book bag in her hand, but now she no longer carried it.

The giving of the bracelet was a complete failure and even produced a disagreeable impression. Pavel Pavlovich, as soon as he saw his fiancée come in, approached her at once with a grin. He offered his gift under the pretext of “the agreeable pleasure felt by him the previous time on the occasion of the agreeable romance sung by Nadezhda Fedoseevna at the piano…” He became flustered, did not finish, and stood like a lost man, reaching out and thrusting into Nadezhda Fedoseevna’s hand the case with the bracelet, while she, not wanting to take it, and blushing with shame and wrath, kept putting her hands behind her back. She boldly turned to her mother, whose face expressed embarrassment, and said loudly:

“I don’t want to take it, Maman!”

“Take it and say thank you,” the father said with calm sternness, but he, too, was displeased. “Unnecessary, unnecessary!” he muttered didactically to Pavel Pavlovich. Nadya, since there was nothing to be done, took the case and, lowering her eyes, curtsied as little girls do, that is, she suddenly plopped down and suddenly bounced up at once, as if on a spring. One of the sisters came over to look, and Nadya gave her the case, still unopened, thereby showing that she herself did not even want to look. The bracelet was taken out and handed around; but they all looked at it silently, and some even mockingly. Only the mother murmured that it was a very nice bracelet. Pavel Pavlovich was ready to fall through the earth.

Velchaninov came to the rescue.

He suddenly started talking, loudly and eagerly, seizing the first thought that came to him, and before five minutes had passed, he already held the attention of everyone in the drawing room. He had learned magnificently the art of babbling in society, that is, the art of appearing perfectly simple-hearted and at the same time making it seem that he took his listeners for people as simple-hearted as himself. With extreme naturalness he could pretend, when necessary, to be the merriest and happiest of men. He knew how to place very deftly a witty and provocative phrase, a merry hint, a funny quip, and to do it as if quite inadvertently, as if without noticing—whereas the witticism, the quip, and the conversation itself had been prepared long ago, learned, and put to use more than once. But at the present moment his art was seconded by nature itself: he felt that he was in the spirit, that something was drawing him; he felt in himself a complete and triumphant assurance that in a few moments all these eyes would be turned on him, that all these people would be listening only to him, talking only to him, laughing only at what he said. And indeed laughter was soon heard, others gradually mixed in the conversation—he had perfect command of the skill of drawing others into a conversation—and three or four voices could already be heard talking at once. The dull and tired face of Mrs. Zakhlebinin lit up almost with joy; the same with Katerina Fedoseevna, who listened and looked as if mesmerized. Scowling, Nadya studied him keenly; one could note that she had been prejudiced against him. This fired Velchaninov up still more. The “wicked” Marya Nikitishna did manage to slip into the conversation a rather pointed barb on his account; she invented and insisted that Pavel Pavlovich had recommended him there the day before as a childhood friend of his, thus adding—and hinting at it clearly—a whole seven extra years to his age. Yet the wicked Marya Nikitishna liked him, too. Pavel Pavlovich was decidedly taken aback. He had, of course, some notion of the resources his friend possessed, and in the beginning was even glad of his success, giggling along and mixing in the conversation himself; but for some reason he gradually began to lapse as if into reflection, even, finally, into despondency, which showed clearly on his alarmed physiognomy.

“Well, you’re the sort of guest who doesn’t need to be entertained,” old Zakhlebinin cheerily decided at last, getting up from his chair to go to his room upstairs, where, despite the feast day, he had a few business papers ready for going over, “and, imagine, I considered you the gloomiest hypochondriac of all our young people. How wrong one can be!”

In the drawing room stood a grand piano; Velchaninov asked who studied music, and suddenly turned to Nadya.

“You sing, it seems?”

“Who told you so?” Nadya snapped.

“Pavel Pavlovich said so earlier.”

“Not so; I only sing for a joke; I have no voice.”

“I have no voice either, but I do sing.”

“So you’ll sing for us? Well, then I’ll sing for you, too,” Nadya flashed her eyes, “only not now, but after dinner. I can’t stand music,” she added, “I’m sick of this piano; all this playing and singing here from morning till night—Katya’s more than enough herself.”

Velchaninov seized on the phrase at once, and it turned out that Katerina Fedoseevna was the only one of them all who seriously studied piano. He immediately turned to her with a request to play. Everyone was evidently pleased that he had turned to Katya, and Maman even blushed with satisfaction. Katerina Fedoseevna rose, smiling, and went to the grand piano, but suddenly, unexpectedly for herself, blushed all over, and suddenly felt terribly ashamed that, big as she was, already twenty-four years old, and so plump, here she was blushing like a little girl—and all this was written on her face as she sat down to play. She played something by Haydn, and played it very accurately, though without expression; but she turned shy. When she finished, Velchaninov started praising terribly, not her but Haydn, and especially the little piece she had played—and she was obviously so pleased, she listened so gratefully and happily to this praise not of herself but of Haydn, that Velchaninov involuntarily looked at her more gently and attentively. “Eh, aren’t you a nice one?” shone in his eyes—and everyone understood this glance as if at once, especially Katerina Fedoseevna herself.

“A nice garden you’ve got,” he suddenly addressed them all, looking through the glass door to the balcony. “You know, let’s all go out to the garden!”

“Let’s go, let’s go!” came joyful squeals—just as if he had guessed the main general wish.

They were in the garden until dinner. Mrs. Zakhlebinin, who had long been wanting to sleep, also could not help herself and went out with everyone else, but sensibly stayed to sit and rest on the balcony, where she dozed off at once. In the garden, the mutual relations between Velchaninov and all the girls became friendlier still. He noticed that two or three very young men joined them from neighboring houses; one was a university student, another merely a high school boy. These two sprang over at once each to his own girl, and it was evident that they had come for their sake; the third “young man,” a very gloomy and ruffled twenty-year-old boy in enormous blue spectacles, began hurriedly and frowningly exchanging whispers with Marya Nikitishna and Nadya. He sternly looked Velchaninov over and seemed to consider it his duty to treat him with extraordinary disdain. Some girls suggested that they go ahead and start playing. To Velchaninov’s question about what games they played, they replied that they played all games, including fox and hounds, but that in the evening they would play proverbs, that is, where everybody sits down and one person stands apart for a while; all those sitting down choose a proverb, for instance: “Slow and steady wins the race,” and when the person is called back, each one in turn has to prepare and tell him a sentence. The first one has to give a sentence containing the word “slow,” the second a sentence containing the word “steady,” and so on. And the person has to pick out all these words and from them guess the proverb.

“It must be great fun,” observed Velchaninov.

“Oh, no, it’s quite boring,” two or three voices answered at once.

“Or else we play theater,” Nadya observed, addressing him. “See that big tree with the bench around it? There, behind the tree, is like backstage, the actors sit there—say, a king, a queen, a princess, a young man—whatever anyone likes; each one comes out whenever he has a mind to and says whatever occurs to him, and something or other comes out.”

“But how nice!” Velchaninov praised once more.

“Oh, no, it’s quite boring! Each time it comes out as fun in the beginning, but by the end it turns senseless each time, because nobody knows how to finish; though maybe with you it would be more amusing. And we thought you were Pavel Pavlovich’s friend, but it turns out he was simply boasting. I’m very glad you came… owing to a certain circumstance,” she looked very seriously and meaningly at Velchaninov and at once stepped over beside Marya Nikitishna.

“There’ll be a game of proverbs this evening,” one girlfriend, whom he had scarcely noticed till then and had not yet exchanged a word with, whispered confidentially to Velchaninov, “and this evening everybody will laugh at Pavel Pavlovich, so you must, too.”

“Ah, how nice of you to come, we’re so bored here otherwise,” another girlfriend said to him amiably, one he had not yet noticed at all, and who appeared from God knows where, a little redhead with freckles, her face flushed in a terribly funny way from walking and the heat.

Pavel Pavlovich’s uneasiness grew greater and greater. In the garden, toward the end, Velchaninov succeeded completely in becoming close with Nadya; she no longer peered at him scowlingly as earlier and seemed to have set aside the idea of studying him more closely, but laughed, jumped, squealed, and even seized him by the hand once or twice; she was terribly happy, and went on paying not the slightest attention to Pavel Pavlovich, as if not noticing him. Velchaninov was convinced that there existed a positive conspiracy against Pavel Pavlovich; Nadya and a crowd of girls would draw Velchaninov to one side, while other girlfriends under various pretexts lured Pavel Pavlovich to the other; but he would tear away and at once run headlong straight to them—that is, to Velchaninov and Nadya—and suddenly thrust his bald and anxiously eavesdropping head between them. Toward the end, he was not even embarrassed; the naivete of his gestures and movements was at times astonishing. Velchaninov could not help paying special attention once again to Katerina Fedoseevna; by then it had, of course, become clear to her that he had come not at all for her sake and was already much too interested in Nadya; but her face was as sweet and good-natured as before. She seemed to be happy in the fact alone that she, too, was near them and could listen to what the new visitor was saying; she herself, poor dear, had never known how to mix adroitly in conversation.

“And how nice your sister Katerina Fedoseevna is!” Velchaninov suddenly said to Nadya on the quiet.

“Katya? Why, there couldn’t be a kinder soul than hers! She’s an angel for us all, I’m in love with her,” the girl replied rapturously.

Finally, at five o’clock, dinner was served, and it was also very noticeable that the dinner had been prepared not in the usual way, but especially for the visitor. There were two or three dishes obviously in addition to what was usually served, rather sophisticated ones, and one of them something altogether unfamiliar, so that no one could even put a name to it. Besides the usual table wines, a bottle of Tokay also appeared, obviously thought up for the visitor; toward the end of dinner champagne was served for some reason. Old Zakhlebinin, having drunk one glass too many, was in the most sunny-minded mood and was ready to laugh at everything Velchaninov said. The end was that Pavel Pavlovich finally could not help himself: carried away by the competition, he also suddenly decided to utter some pun, and so he did: from the end of the table where he sat by Mme. Zakhlebinin, the loud laughter of overjoyed girls suddenly came.

“Papa, Papa! Pavel Pavlovich has also made a pun,” two of the middle Zakhlebinin girls cried with one voice, “he says we’re ‘young misses one always misses …’ ”

“Ah, so he’s punning, too? Well, what pun has he made?” the old man responded in a solemn voice, turning patronizingly to Pavel Pavlovich and smiling beforehand at the anticipated pun.

“But that’s what he said, that we’re ‘young misses one always misses.’ ”

“Y-yes! Well, so what?” the old man still did not understand and smiled still more good-naturedly in anticipation.

“Oh, Papa, what’s the matter with you, you don’t understand! It’s misses and then misses; misses is the same as misses, misses one always misses…”

“Ahhh!” the perplexed old man drew out. “Hm! Well, he’ll do better next time!” and the old man laughed gaily.

“Pavel Pavlovich, one can’t have all perfections at once!” Marya Nikitishna taunted him loudly. “Ah, my God, he’s choking on a bone!” she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair.

Turmoil even ensued, but that was just what Marya Nikitishna wanted. Pavel Pavlovich had only swallowed his wine the wrong way, after grabbing it to conceal his embarrassment, but Marya Nikitishna insisted and swore up and down that it was “a fishbone, that she’d seen it herself, and one can die from that.”

“Thump him on the back!” someone shouted.

“In fact, that’s the best thing!” Zakhlebinin loudly approved, but volunteers had already turned up: Marya Nikitishna, the redheaded girlfriend (also invited for dinner), and, finally, the terribly frightened mother of the family in person—they all wanted to thump Pavel Pavlovich on the back. Pavel Pavlovich jumped up from the table to evade them and spent a whole minute insisting that it was merely wine that had gone down the wrong way, and that the coughing would soon pass—before they finally figured out that it was all Marya Nikitishna’s pranks.

“Well, aren’t you the little mischief, though!…” Mme. Zakhlebinin observed sternly to Marya Nikitishna—but was at once unable to help herself and burst into such laughter as rarely happened with her, which also produced an effect of a sort. After dinner they all went out to the balcony to have coffee.

“Such fine days we’re having!” the old man benevolently praised nature, looking out at the garden with pleasure. “Only we could use a little rain… Well, I’ll go and rest. Have fun, have fun, God bless you! And you have fun, too!” He slapped Pavel Pavlovich on the shoulder as he went out.

When everyone had gone down to the garden again, Pavel Pavlovich suddenly rushed over to Velchaninov and tugged him by the sleeve.

“For one moment, sir,” he whispered impatiently.

They walked to a solitary side path in the garden.

“No, excuse me this time, sir, no, this time I won’t let you…” he whispered, spluttering fiercely and grabbing Velchaninov’s sleeve.

“What? How’s that?” Velchaninov asked, making big eyes. Pavel Pavlovich stood silently gazing at him, moving his lips, and smiled fiercely.

“Where have you gone? Where are you? Everything’s ready!” the girls’ calls and impatient voices were heard. Velchaninov shrugged and went back to the company. Pavel Pavlovich went running after him.

“I bet he asked you for a handkerchief,” Marya Nikitishna said, “last time he also forgot it.”

“He eternally forgets!” a middle Zakhlebinin girl picked up.

“Forgot his handkerchief! Pavel Pavlovich forgot his handkerchief! Maman, Pavel Pavlovich forgot his handkerchief again, Maman, Pavel Pavlovich has caught cold again!” voices came.

“Why doesn’t he say so? Pavel Pavlovich, you are so fastidious!” Mme. Zakhlebinin drawled in a singsong voice. “It’s dangerous to joke with a cold; I’ll send you a handkerchief right away. And why is it he’s always catching cold!” she added as she left, glad of an occasion to go back to the house.

“I have two handkerchiefs, and no cold, ma’am,” Pavel Pavlovich called after her, but she must not have understood, and a minute later, as Pavel Pavlovich was trotting after everyone, trying to keep closer to Velchaninov and Nadya, a maid came puffing up to him and indeed brought him a handkerchief.

“Let’s play, let’s play, let’s play proverbs!” shouts came from all sides, as if they expected God knows what from their “proverbs.”

They chose a place and sat down on benches; it fell to Marya Nikitishna to guess; they demanded that she go as far away as possible and not eavesdrop; in her absence a proverb was chosen and the words were distributed. Marya Nikitishna came back and guessed it at once. The proverb was: “Dreadful the dream, but God is merciful.”

Marya Nikitishna was followed by the ruffled young man in blue spectacles. Of him still greater precautions were demanded—that he stand by the gazebo and turn his face fully toward the fence. The gloomy young man did his duty with disdain and even seemed to feel a certain moral humiliation. When he was called back, he could not guess anything, went around to each person, listening twice to what they told him, spent a long time gloomily reflecting, but nothing came of it. He was put to shame. The proverb was: “Prayer to God and service to the tsar are never in vain.”

“Besides, it’s a disgusting proverb!” the wounded youth grumbled indignantly, retreating to his place.

“Ah, how boring!” voices were heard.

Velchaninov went; he was hidden farther away than the others; he also failed to guess.

“Ah, how boring!” still more voices were heard.

“Well, now I’ll go,” said Nadya.

“No, no, now Pavel Pavlovich will go, it’s Pavel Pavlovich’s turn,” they all shouted and livened up a bit.

Pavel Pavlovich was taken right to the fence, to the corner, and placed facing it, and to keep him from turning around, the little redhead was set to watch him. Pavel Pavlovich, already cheered up and almost merry again, piously intended to do his duty and stood like a stump staring at the fence, not daring to turn around. The little redhead kept watch some twenty paces behind him, closer to the company, by the gazebo, exchanging excited winks with the other girls; one could see that they were all expecting something, even with a certain anxiousness; something was being prepared. Suddenly the little redhead waved her arms from behind the gazebo. That instant they all jumped up and rushed off somewhere at breakneck speed.

“You run, too!” ten voices whispered to Velchaninov, all but horrified that he was not running.

“What is it? What’s happened?” he kept asking, hurrying after them all.

“Quiet, don’t shout! Let him stand there and stare at the fence while we all run away. Here’s Nastya running, too!”

The little redhead (Nastya) was running headlong as if God knows what had happened, and waving her arms. They all came finally, beyond the pond, to a completely different end of the garden. When Velchaninov got there, he saw that Katerina Fedoseevna was having a big argument with all the girls and especially with Nadya and Marya Nikitishna.

“Katya, darling, don’t be angry!” Nadya was kissing her.

“All right, I won’t tell Mama, but I shall leave myself, because this is not nice at all. What must the poor man be feeling there by the fence?”

She left out of pity, but all the rest remained as implacable and pitiless as before. It was sternly demanded of Velchaninov that, when Pavel Pavlovich came back, he also pay no attention to him, as if nothing had happened. “And let’s all play fox and hounds!” the little redhead cried out rapturously.

Pavel Pavlovich rejoined the company only after at least a quarter of an hour. He must have spent two thirds of that time standing at the fence. Fox and hounds was in full swing and succeeded excellently—everyone shouted and had fun. Mad with rage, Pavel Pavlovich sprang straight up to Velchaninov and again grabbed him by the sleeve.

“For one little moment, sir!”

“Oh, Lord, what’s with him and his little moments!”

“Asking for a handkerchief again,” the cry came after them.

“Well, this time it’s you, sir; here it’s you now, sir, you are the cause of it!” Pavel Pavlovich’s teeth even chattered as he articulated this.

Velchaninov interrupted him and peaceably advised him to be more cheerful, or else he would be teased to death: “They tease you because you’re angry while everyone else is having fun.” To his amazement, Pavel Pavlovich was terribly struck by his words and advice; he at once became quiet, even to the point of returning to the company like a guilty man and obediently taking part in the general games; for some time afterward they did not bother him and played with him like anyone else—and before half an hour had gone by, he was almost cheerful again. In all the games, he engaged himself as a partner, when need be, predominantly with the treacherous little redhead or one of the Zakhlebinin sisters. But Velchaninov noticed, to his still greater amazement, that Pavel Pavlovich hardly dared even once to address Nadya, though he ceaselessly fussed around her or near her; at least he accepted the position of one unnoticed and scorned by her as if it were proper, natural. But in the end a prank was again played on him even so.

The game was hide-and-seek. The person hiding, incidentally, had the right to change his place within the whole area in which he was allowed to hide. Pavel Pavlovich, who had managed to hide by getting himself into a thick bush, suddenly decided to change his place and run into the house. There was shouting, he was seen; he hastily sneaked upstairs, having in mind a little place behind a chest of drawers where he wanted to hide. But the little redhead flew up after him, tiptoed stealthily to the door, and snapped the lock. As before, everyone at once stopped playing and again ran beyond the pond to the other end of the garden. About ten minutes later, Pavel Pavlovich, sensing that no one was looking for him, peeked out the window. No one was there. He did not dare shout lest he awaken the parents; the maid and the serving girl had been given strict orders not to come or respond to Pavel Pavlovich’s call. Katerina Fedoseevna could have opened the door for him, but she, having returned to her room, sat down in reverie and unexpectedly fell asleep herself. He sat like that for about an hour. At last, girls began to appear in twos and threes, passing by as if inadvertently.

“Pavel Pavlovich, why don’t you join us? Ah, it’s such fun there! We’re playing theater. Alexei Ivanovich had the role of the ‘young man.’ ”

“Pavel Pavlovich, why don’t you join us, it’s you one always misses!” other young misses observed, passing by.

“Who is it, again, that one always misses?” suddenly came the voice of Mme. Zakhlebinin, who had just woken up and decided finally to take a stroll in the garden and watch the “children’s” games while waiting for tea.

“It’s Pavel Pavlovich there.” She was shown the window through which peeked, with a distorted smile, pale with anger, the face of Pavel Pavlovich.

“The man would just rather sit there alone, while others are having such fun!” the mother of the family shook her head.

Meanwhile Velchaninov had the honor, finally, of receiving from Nadya an explanation of her words earlier about being “glad he had come owing to a certain circumstance.” The explanation took place in a solitary alley. Marya Nikitishna purposely summoned Velchaninov, who had participated in some of the games and was already beginning to languish greatly, and brought him to this alley, where she left him alone with Nadya.

“I’m perfectly convinced,” she rattled out in a bold and quick patter, “that you are not at all such a friend of Pavel Pavlovich’s as he boasted you were. I calculate that you alone can render me an extremely important service; here is today’s nasty bracelet,” she took the case from her pocket, “I humbly beg you to return it to him immediately, because I myself will not speak to him ever or for anything for the rest of my life. Anyhow, you may tell him so on my behalf and add that henceforth he dare not thrust his presents at me. The rest I’ll let him know through others. Will you kindly give me the pleasure of fulfilling my wish?”

“Ah, no, spare me, for God’s sake!” Velchaninov all but cried out, waving his hands.

“What! Spare me?” Nadya was unbelievably astonished by his refusal and stared wide-eyed at him. All her prepared tone broke down in an instant, and she was nearly in tears. Velchaninov laughed.

“It’s not that I… I’d be very glad… but I’ve got my own accounts with him…”

“I knew you weren’t his friend and that he was lying!” Nadya interrupted him fervently and quickly. “I’ll never marry him, you should know that! Never! I don’t even understand how he dared… Only you must return his vile bracelet to him even so, otherwise what am I to do? I absolutely, absolutely want him to get it back today, the same day—and lump it. And if he peaches to Papa, he’ll be in real trouble.”

Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the ruffled young man in blue spectacles popped from behind a bush.

“You must give him back the bracelet,” he fell upon Velchaninov furiously, “if only in the name of women’s rights, assuming you yourself stand on the level of the question…”

But he had no time to finish; Nadya pulled him by the sleeve with all her might and tore him away from Velchaninov.

“Lord, how stupid you are, Predposylov!”¹² she cried. “Go away! Go away, go away, and don’t you dare eavesdrop, I told you to stand far off!…” She stamped her little feet at him, and when he had slipped back into his bushes, she still went on pacing back and forth across the path, as if beside herself, flashing her eyes and clasping her hands in front of her.

“You wouldn’t believe how stupid they are!” she suddenly stopped in front of Velchaninov. “To you it’s funny, but how is it for me!”

“But it’s not him, not him?” Velchaninov was laughing.

“Naturally it’s not him, how could you think such a thing!” Nadya smiled and turned red. “He’s only his friend. But what friends he chooses, I don’t understand it, they all say he’s a ‘future mover,’ but I don’t understand a thing… Alexei Ivanovich, I have no one to turn to; your final word, will you give it back or not?”

“Well, all right, I’ll give it back, let me have it.”

“Ah, you’re a dear, ah, you’re so kind!” she suddenly rejoiced, handing him the case. “For that I’ll sing for you the whole evening, because I sing wonderfully, you should know that, and I lied earlier about not liking music. Ah, if only you’d come again, just once, how glad I’d be, I’d tell you everything, everything, everything, and a lot more besides, because you’re so kind, so kind, like—like Katya!”

And indeed, when they went back home for tea, she sang two romances for him in a voice not yet trained at all and only just beginning, but rather pleasant and strong. When they all came back from the garden, Pavel Pavlovich was sitting sedately with the parents at the tea table, on which a big family samovar was already boiling and heirloom Sèvres porcelain teacups were set out. Most likely he and the old folks were discussing very serious things—because in two days he would be leaving for a whole nine months. He did not even glance at those who came in from the garden, least of all at Velchaninov; it was also obvious that he had not “peached” and that so far everything was quiet.

But when Nadya started singing, he, too, appeared at once. Nadya purposely did not answer his one direct question, but Pavel Pavlovich was not embarrassed or shaken by that; he stood at the back of her chair and his whole bearing showed that this was his place and he would yield it to no one.

“Alexei Ivanovich will sing, Maman, Alexei Ivanovich wants to sing!” nearly all the girls cried, crowding around the piano, at which Velchaninov was confidently sitting down, intending to accompany himself. The old folks came out along with Katerina Fedoseevna, who had been sitting with them and pouring tea.

Velchaninov chose a certain romance by Glinka,¹³ which almost no one knows anymore:

When you do ope your merry lips, my love

And coo to me more sweetly than a dove…

He sang it addressing Nadya alone, who stood right at his elbow and closest to him of all. He had long ago lost his voice, but from what remained, one could see that it had once been not bad. Velchaninov had managed to hear this romance for the first time some twenty years before, when he was still a student, from Glinka himself, in the house of one of the late composer’s friends, at a literary-artistic bachelor party. Glinka, carried away, had played and sung all his favorite things from his own works, including this romance. He also had no voice left by then, but Velchaninov remembered the extraordinary impression produced then precisely by this romance. No artistic salon singer could ever have achieved such an effect. In this romance, the intensity of the passion rises and grows with every line, every word; precisely because of this extraordinary intensity, the slightest falseness, the slightest exaggeration or untruth—which one gets away with so easily in opera—would here ruin and distort the whole meaning. To sing this small but remarkable thing, one had absolutely—yes, absolutely—to have a full, genuine inspiration, a genuine passion or its full poetic assimilation. Otherwise the romance would not only fail altogether, but might even appear outrageous and all but something shameless: it would be impossible to show such intensity of passionate feeling without provoking disgust, yet truth and simple-heartedness saved everything. Velchaninov remembered that he himself once used to succeed with this romance. He had almost assimilated Glinka’s manner of singing; but now, from the very first sound, from the first line, a genuine inspiration blazed up in his soul and trembled in his voice. With every word of the romance, the feeling broke through and bared itself more strongly and boldly, in the last lines cries of passion were heard, and when, turning his flashing eyes to Nadya, he finished singing the last words of the romance:

Now I do gaze more boldly in your eyes

My lips approach, to list I no more rise,

I want to kiss, I want to kiss and kiss,

I want to kiss, to kiss and kiss and kiss!

—Nadya almost started in fright, and even recoiled a little; a blush poured over her cheeks, and at the same moment Velchaninov saw something as if responsive flash in her embarrassed and almost abashed little face. Fascination, and at the same time perplexity, showed on the faces of all the listening girls as well; to everyone it seemed as if impossible and shameful to sing like that, and at the same time all these little faces and eyes burned and shone as if waiting for something more. Among these faces there especially flashed before Velchaninov the face of Katerina Fedoseevna, which had become almost beautiful.

“Some romance!” muttered old Zakhlebinin, slightly taken aback. “But… isn’t it too strong? Pleasant, but strong…”

“Strong…” Mme. Zakhlebinin echoed, but Pavel Pavlovich did not let her finish: he suddenly popped forward and, as if mad, forgetting himself so much that with his own hand he seized Nadya by the hand and drew her away from Velchaninov, he then leaped up to him and stared at him like a lost man, moving his trembling lips.

“For one moment, sir,” he finally managed to utter.

Velchaninov saw clearly that in another moment this gentleman might venture on something ten times more absurd; he quickly took him by the arm and, ignoring the general perplexity, led him out to the balcony and even took several steps with him down to the garden, where it was already almost completely dark.

“Do you understand that you must leave with me right now, this very minute!” Pavel Pavlovich said.

“No, I don’t…”

“Do you remember,” Pavel Pavlovich went on in his frenetic whisper, “do you remember how you demanded once that I tell you everything, everything, openly, sir, ‘the very last word …’—do you remember, sir? Well, the time has come for saying that word… let’s go, sir!”

Velchaninov reflected, glanced once more at Pavel Pavlovich, and agreed to leave.

Their suddenly announced departure upset the parents and made all the girls terribly indignant.

“At least another cup of tea,” Mme. Zakhlebinin moaned plaintively.

“Why did you get so upset?” the old man, in a stern and displeased tone, addressed the grinning and stubbornly silent Pavel Pavlovich.

“Pavel Pavlovich, why are you taking Alexei Ivanovich away?” the girls cooed plaintively, at the same time glancing at him with bitterness. And Nadya looked at him so angrily that he cringed all over, yet—he did not yield.

“But in fact, Pavel Pavlovich—and I thank him for it—has reminded me of an extremely important matter, which I might have let slip,” Velchaninov laughed, shaking hands with the host, bowing to the hostess and to the girls, and, as if especially among them, to Katerina Fedoseevna, which again was noticed by everyone.

“We thank you for coming and will always be glad to see you, all of us,” Zakhlebinin concluded weightily.

“Ah, we’re so glad…” the mother of the family picked up with feeling.

“Come again, Alexei Ivanovich, come again!” many voices were heard from the balcony when he was already sitting in the carriage with Pavel Pavlovich; barely heard was one little voice, softer than all the others, that said: “Come again, dear, dear Alexei Ivanovich!”

“It’s the little redhead!” thought Velchaninov.

XIII

WHOSE SIDE HAS MORE ON IT

He was able to think about the little redhead, and yet vexation and repentance had long been wearying his soul. And during this whole day—spent so amusingly, one would have thought—sorrow had almost never left him. Before singing the romance, he had already not known where to escape from it; maybe that was why he had sung with such feeling.

“And I could stoop so low… break away from everything!” he began to reproach himself, but hastened to interrupt his thoughts. And it seemed so low to lament; it would have been much more pleasant to quickly get angry with someone.

“Mor-ron!” he whispered spitefully, glancing sideways at Pavel Pavlovich, who was silently sitting next to him in the carriage.

Pavel Pavlovich remained obstinately silent, perhaps concentrating and preparing himself. With an impatient gesture he occasionally took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“He’s sweating!” Velchaninov kept up his spite.

Only once did Pavel Pavlovich advert to the coachman with a question: “Will there be a thunderstorm, or not?”

“Aye, and a good one! There’s bound to be, it was such a sultry day.” Indeed, the sky was darkening, and distant lightning flashed. They entered the city at half past ten.

“I’m going to your place, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich obligingly addressed Velchaninov, not far from his house.

“I understand; but I must warn you that I feel seriously unwell…”

“I won’t stay long, I won’t stay long!”

As they came through the gateway, Pavel Pavlovich ran over for a moment to Mavra at the caretaker’s.

“Why did you go there?” Velchaninov asked sternly when the man caught up with him and they went into his rooms.

“Never mind, sir, just so… the coachman, sir…”

“I won’t let you drink!”

No answer came. Velchaninov lit the candles, and Pavel Pavlovich settled at once into an armchair. Velchaninov frowningly stopped before him.

“I also promised to tell you my ‘last’ word,” he began with an inward, still suppressed, irritation. “Here it is, this word: I consider in good conscience that all matters between us have been mutually ended, so that we even have nothing to talk about; do you hear—nothing; and therefore it might be better if you left now and I locked the door behind you.”

“Let’s square accounts, Alexei Ivanovich!” Pavel Pavlovich said, but with a somehow especially meek look in his eyes.

“Square ac-counts?” Velchaninov was terribly surprised. “That’s a strange phrase to utter! What ‘accounts’ have we got to ‘square’? Hah! Is it that ‘last word’ of yours, which you promised earlier to… reveal to me?”

“The very same, sir.”

“We have no more accounts to square, they were squared long ago!” Velchaninov said proudly.

“Do you really think so, sir?” Pavel Pavlovich said in a soulful voice, somehow strangely joining his hands in front of him, finger to finger, and holding them in front of his chest. Velchaninov did not answer him and started pacing the room. “Liza? Liza?” moaned in his heart.

“But, anyhow, what is it you wanted to square?” he addressed him frowningly, after a rather prolonged silence. The man had followed him around the room with his eyes all the while, holding his joined hands in front of him in the same way.

“Don’t go there anymore, sir,” he almost whispered in a pleading voice, and suddenly got up from the chair.

“What? So it’s only about that?” Velchaninov laughed spitefully. “Though you’ve made me marvel all day today!” he began venomously, but suddenly his whole face changed: “Listen to me,” he said sadly and with profoundly sincere feeling, “I consider that I’ve never stooped so low in anything as I did today—first by agreeing to go with you, and then—by what happened there… It was so pretty, so pathetic… I befouled and demeaned myself by getting involved… and forgetting… Well, never mind!” he suddenly recollected himself. “Listen: you happened to fall on me today when I was irritated and sick… well, no point in justifying myself! I won’t go there anymore, and I assure you that I have absolutely no interest there,” he concluded resolutely.

“Really? Really?” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, not concealing his joyful excitement. Velchaninov glanced at him with scorn and again started pacing the room.

“It seems you’ve decided to be happy at all costs?” he finally could not refrain from observing.

“Yes, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich softly and naively confirmed.

“What is it to me,” thought Velchaninov, “that he’s a buffoon and his malice comes only from stupidity? All the same I can’t help hating him—though he may not deserve it!”

“I’m an ‘eternal husband,’ sir!” Pavel Pavlovich said with a humbly submissive smile at himself. “I’ve long known this little phrase of yours, Alexei Ivanovich, ever since you lived there with us, sir. I memorized many of your words from that year. When you said ‘eternal husband’ here the last time, I realized it, sir.”

Mavra came in with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

“Forgive me, Alexei Ivanovich, you know I can’t do without it, sir. Don’t regard it as boldness; consider me a stranger and not worthy of you, sir.”

“Yes…” Velchaninov allowed with disgust, “but I assure you that I’m feeling unwell…”

“Quickly, quickly, just one moment now!” Pavel Pavlovich hurried, “only one little glass, because my throat…”

He greedily drank the glass in one gulp and sat down—casting an all but tender glance at Velchaninov. Mavra went out.

“How loathsome!” Velchaninov whispered.

“It’s only the girlfriends, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich suddenly said cheerfully, thoroughly revived.

“How? What? Ah, yes, you’re still at it…”

“Only the girlfriends, sir! And still so young; we’re showing off out of gracefulness, that’s what, sir! It’s even charming. And then—then, you know, I’ll become her slave; she’ll know esteem, society… she’ll get completely reeducated, sir.”

“By the way, I must give him the bracelet!” Velchaninov thought, frowning and feeling for the case in his coat pocket.

“Now you say, sir, that I’ve decided to be happy? I must get married, Alexei Ivanovich,” Pavel Pavlovich went on confidentially and almost touchingly, “otherwise what will become of me? You can see for yourself, sir!” he pointed to the bottle.

“And this is only a hundredth part—of my qualities, sir. I’m quite unable to do without being married and—without new faith, sir. I’ll believe and resurrect.”

“But why are you telling all this to me?” Velchaninov almost snorted with laughter. Anyhow, it all seemed wild to him.

“But tell me, finally,” he cried out, “why did you drag me there? What did you need me there for?”

“As a test, sir…” Pavel Pavlovich somehow suddenly became embarrassed.

“A test of what?”

“Of the effect, sir… You see, Alexei Ivanovich, it’s only a week that I… that I’ve been seeking there, sir” (he was growing more and more abashed). “Yesterday I met you and thought: ‘I’ve never seen her in, so to speak, a stranger’s, that is, a man’s company, sir, apart from my own …’ A foolish thought, sir, I feel it myself now, an unnecessary one, sir, I just wanted it so much, sir, on account of my nasty character…” He suddenly raised his head and blushed.

“Can he be telling the whole truth?” Velchaninov thought, amazed to the point of stupefaction.

“Well, and what then?”

Pavel Pavlovich smiled sweetly and somehow slyly.

“Nothing but lovely childishness, sir! It’s all the girlfriends, sir! Only forgive me for my stupid behavior toward you today, Alexei Ivanovich; I’ll never do it again, sir; and this thing won’t ever happen again.”

“And I won’t be there anyway,” Velchaninov smirked.

“That’s partly what I’m referring to, sir.”

Velchaninov winced slightly.

“However, I’m not the only one in the world,” he observed vexedly.

Pavel Pavlovich blushed again.

“It makes me sad to hear that, Alexei Ivanovich, and, believe me, I respect Nadezhda Fedoseevna so much…”

“Excuse me, excuse me, I didn’t mean anything—it’s only a bit strange to me that you overestimated my means so much… and… were relying on me so sincerely…”

“I relied on you, sir, precisely because it was after everything… that had already been, sir.”

“Meaning that you still regard me, in that case, as a most noble man?” Velchaninov suddenly stopped. At another moment he himself would have been horrified at the naivete of his sudden question.

“And I always did, sir.” Pavel Pavlovich lowered his eyes.

“Well, yes, naturally… I don’t mean that—that is, not in that sense—I only wanted to say that despite any… prejudice…”

“Yes, sir, and despite any prejudice.”

“And when you were coming to Petersburg?” Velchaninov could no longer restrain himself, feeling all the monstrousness of his curiosity.

“And when I was coming to Petersburg, I considered you the most noble of men, sir. I’ve always respected you, Alexei Ivanovich.” Pavel Pavlovich raised his eyes and clearly, now without any embarrassment, looked at his adversary. Velchaninov suddenly turned coward: he decidedly did not want anything to happen or anything to go over the line, the more so as he himself had provoked it.

“I loved you, Alexei Ivanovich,” Pavel Pavlovich said as if suddenly making up his mind, “And I loved you, sir, all that year in T———. You didn’t notice it, sir,” he went on in a slightly quavering voice, to Velchaninov’s decided horror, “I stood too small compared with you in order for you to notice. And perhaps it wasn’t necessary, sir. And for all these nine years I’ve remembered you, sir, because never in my life have I known such a year as that.” (Pavel Pavlovich’s eyes glistened somehow peculiarly.) “I remembered many of your words and utterances, sir, of your thoughts, sir. I always remembered you as an educated man, sir, ardent for good feelings, highly educated, and with thoughts. ‘Great thoughts come not so much from great intelligence as from great feeling, sir’—you yourself said that, and perhaps forgot it, but I remembered it, sir. I always counted on you, that is, as on a man of great feeling… that is, I believed, sir—despite all, sir…” His chin suddenly trembled. Velchaninov was completely frightened; this unexpected tone had to be stopped at all costs.

“Enough, please, Pavel Pavlovich,” he muttered, blushing and in irritated impatience. “And why, why,” he suddenly cried out, “why do you fasten yourself on to a sick, irritated, all but delirious man, and drag him into this darkness… when—it’s all a phantom and a mirage, and a lie, and shame, and unnaturalness, and—excessive—and that’s the main, the most shameful thing, that it’s excessive! And it’s all rubbish: we’re two depraved, underground, vile people… And if you like, if you like, I’ll prove to you right now that you not only do not love me, but that you hate me with all your strength and are lying without knowing it yourself: you took me and drove me there not at all for the ridiculous purpose of testing your fiancée (what a thing to come up with!)—you simply saw me yesterday and got angry and took me there to show her to me and say: ‘See her! She’s going to be mine; go on and try something now!’ You challenged me! Maybe you didn’t know it yourself, but it was so, because you did feel all that… And without hatred one can’t make such a challenge; and that means you hated me!” He was rushing up and down the room as he shouted this out, and most of all he was tormented and offended by the humiliating awareness that he was condescending so much to Pavel Pavlovich.

“I wished to make peace with you, Alexei Ivanovich!” the other suddenly pronounced resolutely, in a quick whisper, and his chin began to twitch again. Fierce rage took possession of Velchaninov, as if no one had ever given him such offense before!

“I tell you once again,” he screamed, “that you are… clinging to a sick and irritated man in order to tear from him, in his delirium, some phantasmal word! We… but we’re people from different worlds, understand that, and… and… a grave lies between us!” he whispered frenziedly—and suddenly recovered himself.

“And how do you know,” Pavel Pavlovich’s face suddenly became distorted and pale, “how do you know what that little grave means here… inside me, sir!” he cried out, stepping up to Velchaninov and, with a ridiculous but terrible gesture, striking himself on the heart with his fist. “I know that little grave here, sir, and we two stand on the sides of that grave, only my side has more on it than yours, more, sir…” he was whispering as if in delirium, while continuing to hit himself on the heart, “more, sir—more, sir…” Suddenly an extraordinary stroke of the doorbell brought them both to their senses. The ring was so strong that it seemed as if someone had vowed to tear the bell off with the first stroke.

“No one rings like that for me,” Velchaninov said in bewilderment.

“But it’s not for me either, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich whispered timidly, having also come to his senses and instantly turned back into the former Pavel Pavlovich. Velchaninov frowned and went to open the door.

“Mr. Velchaninov, if I am not mistaken?” a young, ringing, remarkably self-confident voice was heard in the hall.

“What is it?”

“I have precise information,” the ringing voice went on, “that a certain Trusotsky is presently with you. I absolutely must see him at once.” It would, of course, have been very agreeable to Velchaninov to send this self-confident gentleman down the stairs at once with a good kick. But he reflected, stepped aside, and let him pass.

“Here is Mr. Trusotsky. Come in…”

XIV

SASHENKA AND NADENKA

Into the room came a very young man, of about nineteen, perhaps even somewhat less—so youthful seemed his handsome, confidently upturned face. He was not badly dressed, at least everything sat well on him; he was above medium height; thick black hair broken into locks, and big, bold dark eyes especially marked his physiognomy. Only his nose was a little too broad and upturned; had it not been for that, he would have been an altogether handsome fellow. He entered imposingly.

“I believe I have the—occasion—of speaking with Mr. Trusotsky?” he said measuredly, emphasizing the word “occasion” with particular pleasure, thereby letting it be known that there could be neither honor nor pleasure for him in talking with Mr. Trusotsky.

Velchaninov was beginning to understand; it seemed that Pavel Pavlovich, too, was already seeing some light. His face expressed uneasiness; however, he stood up for himself.

“Not having the honor of knowing you,” he answered with a dignified air, “I suppose that I cannot have any business with you, sir.”

“First you will hear me out, and then express your opinion,” the young man said confidently and didactically, and, taking out a tortoiseshell lorgnette which he had hanging on a string, he began scrutinizing through it the bottle of champagne standing on the table. Having calmly finished his examination of the bottle, he folded the lorgnette and, again addressing Pavel Pavlovich, said:

“Alexander Lobov.”

“And what is this Alexander Lobov, sir?”

“I am he. Haven’t you heard?”

“No, sir.”

“Anyway, how could you know. I’ve come with an important matter, which in fact concerns you; allow me to sit down, however, I’m tired…”

“Sit down,” Velchaninov invited—but the young man had managed to sit down before he was invited. Despite a growing pain in his chest, Velchaninov was intrigued by this impudent boy. In his pretty, childish, and ruddy face he glimpsed some distant resemblance to Nadya.

“You sit down, too,” the youth offered to Pavel Pavlovich, indicating the place opposite him with a casual nod.

“Never mind, sir, I’ll stand.”

“You’ll get tired. I suppose, Mr. Velchaninov, that you may not have to go.”

“I have nowhere to go. I live here.”

“As you will. I confess, I even wish you to be present at my talk with this gentleman. Nadezhda Fedoseevna has recommended you to me quite flatteringly.”

“Hah! When did she have time?”

“Just after you left. I’m coming from there, too. The thing is this, Mr. Trusotsky,” he turned to the standing Pavel Pavlovich, “we, that is, Nadezhda Fedoseevna and I,” he spoke through his teeth, sprawling casually in the armchair, “have long been in love and have pledged ourselves to each other. You are now a hindrance between us; I’ve come to suggest that you vacate that place. Will you be pleased to accept my suggestion?”

Pavel Pavlovich even swayed; he turned pale, but a sarcastic smile at once forced itself to his lips.

“No, sir, not at all pleased,” he snapped laconically.

“Well, now!” the youth turned in the armchair and crossed one leg over the other.

“I don’t even know with whom I am speaking, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich added, “I even think there is no reason for us to continue.”

Having spoken that out, he, too, found it necessary to sit down.

“I told you you’d get tired,” the youth observed casually. “I just had occasion to inform you that my name is Lobov and that Nadezhda Fedoseevna and I have pledged ourselves to each other—consequently, you can’t say, as you just did, that you don’t know whom you are dealing with; nor can you think that we have nothing to continue talking about; not to mention me—the matter concerns Nadezhda Fedoseevna, whom you are so insolently pestering. And that alone already constitutes a sufficient reason for explanations.”

All this he said through his teeth, like a fop, even barely deigning to articulate the words; he even took out the lorgnette again and, while speaking, directed it at something for a moment.

“Excuse me, young man…” Pavel Pavlovich exclaimed vexedly, but the “young man” at once checked him.

“At any other time I would, of course, forbid you to call me ‘young man,’ but now, you must agree, my youth is my chief advantage over you, and you might have wished very much—today, for instance, as you were presenting the bracelet—that you were at least a little bit younger.”

“Ah, you sprat!” Velchaninov whispered.

“In any case, my dear sir,” Pavel Pavlovich corrected himself with dignity, “I still do not find the reasons you have presented—improper and quite dubious reasons—sufficient for the dispute over them to be continued, sir. I see this is all a childish and empty matter; tomorrow I will make inquiries of the most esteemed Fedosei Semyonovich, but now I beg you to spare me, sir.”

“See how the man is!” the youth cried out at once, unable to sustain the tone, hotly addressing Velchaninov. “It’s not enough that he’s chased away from there and they stick their tongues out at him—he also wants to denounce us tomorrow to the old man! Don’t you prove by that, you obstinate man, that you want to take the girl by force, buying her from people who have lost their minds, but, owing to social barbarism, have kept their power over her? She has shown well enough, it seems, that she despises you; wasn’t today’s indecent gift—your bracelet—returned to you? What more do you want?”

“No one returned any bracelet to me, and that cannot be,” Pavel Pavlovich gave a start.

“Cannot be? Didn’t Mr. Velchaninov give it to you?”

“Ah, devil take you!” thought Velchaninov.

“Indeed,” he said, frowning, “Nadezhda Fedoseevna entrusted me earlier with giving this case to you, Pavel Pavlovich. I didn’t want to take it, but she—insisted… here it is… quite annoying…”

He took out the case and, in embarrassment, placed it in front of the petrified Pavel Pavlovich.

“Why hadn’t you given it to him?” the young man sternly addressed Velchaninov.

“I hadn’t found time, one might think,” the latter frowned.

“That’s odd.”

“Wha-a-at?”

“It’s odd, to say the least, you must agree. However, I agree to allow that it was a misunderstanding.”

Velchaninov would have liked terribly to get up right then and box the boy’s ears, but he could not contain himself and suddenly snorted with laughter; the boy at once laughed himself. Not so Pavel Pavlovich; if Velchaninov could have noticed the terrible look he gave him when he burst out laughing at Lobov—he would have understood that at that moment the man was crossing a certain fatal line… But, though he did not see his look, Velchaninov understood that he had to support Pavel Pavlovich.

“Listen, Mr. Lobov,” he began in a friendly tone, “without going into a consideration of other reasons, which I do not wish to touch upon, I would merely like to point out to you that Pavel Pavlovich, after all, in proposing to Nadezhda Fedoseevna, is bringing to this respectable family—first, full information about himself; second, his excellent and respectable position; and finally, his fortune; and, consequently, he is of course surprised to see a rival such as you—a man of great merits, perhaps, but one still so young that he simply cannot take you as a serious rival… and is therefore right in asking you to finish.”

“What do you mean ‘so young’? I turned nineteen a month ago. Legally, I’ve been able to marry for a long time. There you have it.”

“But what father would venture to give his daughter to you now—though you may be a big future millionaire or some sort of future benefactor of mankind? At the age of nineteen a man can’t even answer for his own self, and you venture to take upon your conscience someone else’s future—that is, the future of a child like yourself! That’s also not entirely noble, do you think? I’ve allowed myself to speak out, because you addressed me earlier as a mediator between yourself and Pavel Pavlovich.”

“Ah, yes, incidentally, his name is Pavel Pavlovich!” the youth remarked. “Why did I keep imagining it was Vassily Petrovich? The thing is this, sir,” he turned to Velchaninov, “you haven’t surprised me in the least; I knew you were all the same! Strange, however, that I was told you were even something of a new man. Anyway, it’s all trifles, and the point is that there is nothing here that is not noble on my part, as you allowed yourself to put it, but even quite the contrary, which I hope to explain to you: we have, first of all, pledged ourselves to each other, and, besides that, I promised her directly, in front of two witnesses, that if she ever falls in love with another, or simply thinks better of having married me, and wants to divorce me, I will immediately give her a certificate of my own adultery—thus supporting, therewith, where necessary, her application for divorce. Moreover, in the event I should go back on my word later and refuse to give her this certificate, then, for her security, on the very day of our wedding I will give her a promissory note for a hundred thousand roubles in my name, so that, in the event I persist in refusing the certificate, she can immediately turn in my promissory note and have me double-trumped! In this way everything is provided for, and I’m not putting anyone’s future at risk. Well, sir, that’s the first thing.”

“I bet it was that one—what’s his name—Predposylov who thought it up for you?” cried Velchaninov.

“Hee, hee, hee!” Pavel Pavlovich tittered venomously.

“Why is this gentleman tittering? You’ve guessed right—it’s Predposylov’s thought; and you must agree it’s clever. The absurd law is completely paralyzed. Naturally, I intend to love her always, and she laughs terribly—but even so it’s adroit, and you must agree that it’s noble, that not everyone would venture on such a thing?”

“In my opinion, it is not only not noble, but even vile.”

The young man heaved his shoulders.

“Once again you don’t surprise me,” he observed after some silence, “all this stopped surprising me long ago. Predposylov would snap out directly that this failure of yours to understand the most natural things comes from the perversion of your most ordinary feelings and notions, first, by a long life of absurdity, and second, by long idleness. However, maybe we still don’t understand each other; after all, you were well spoken of to me… You’re already about fifty, though?”

“Get on with your business, please.”

“Excuse the indiscretion and don’t be annoyed; I didn’t mean anything. To continue: I’m not at all a future big millionaire, as you were pleased to put it (and what an idea to come up with!), I’m all here, as you see me, but of my future I’m absolutely certain. I won’t be a hero or anybody’s benefactor, but I’ll provide for myself and my wife. Of course, right now I have nothing, I was even brought up in their house, ever since childhood…”

“How’s that?”

“It’s because I’m the son of a distant relative of this Zakhlebinin’s wife, and when all my people died and left me at the age of eight, the old man took me into his house and then sent me to school. He’s even a kind man, if you wish to know…”

“I know that, sir…”

“Yes, but much too antiquated a head. Kind, though. Now, of course, I’ve long since left his custody, wishing to earn my own living and be owing only to myself.”

“And when did you leave it?” Velchaninov was curious.

“That would be about four months ago.”

“Ah, well, it’s all clear now: friends from childhood! Do you have a job or something?”

“Yes, a private one, in a notary’s office, twenty-five roubles a month. Of course, that’s only for the time being, but when I made my proposal I didn’t even have that. I was working for the railroad then, for ten roubles, but this is all only for the time being.”

“So you even made a proposal?”

“A formal proposal, long ago, three weeks or more.”

“Well, and what then?”

“The old man laughed a lot, but then got very angry, and she was locked upstairs in the attic. But Nadya endured it heroically. Anyway, it was all a failure, because the old man had his back up against me before then for leaving the office job he’d gotten me four months earlier, before the railroad. He’s a nice old man, I repeat again, simple and merry at home, but the moment he’s in the office, you can’t even imagine! It’s some sort of Jupiter sitting there! I naturally let him know that his manners were no longer to my liking, but the main thing here came out because of the assistant section chief: this gentleman decided to peach on me for supposedly ‘being rude’ to him, though I only told him he was undeveloped. I dropped them all and am now with the notary.”

“And were you paid much at the office?”

“Eh, I was a supernumerary! The old man supported me himself—I told you he’s kind; but even so we won’t yield. Of course, twenty-five roubles is no great prosperity, but I soon hope to take part in managing the disordered estates of Count Zavileisky, and then I’ll go straight up to three thousand; or else I’ll become a lawyer. They’re looking for people now… Hah! what thunder, there’ll be a storm, it’s a good thing I managed before the storm; I came from there on foot, running most of the way.”

“But, excuse me, in that case when did you manage to talk with Nadezhda Fedoseevna—if, on top of that, you’re not received there?”

“Ah, but that can be done over the fence! You did notice the little redhead today?” he laughed. “Well, she took care of it, and so did Marya Nikitishna; only this Marya Nikitishna is a serpent!… why did you wince? You’re not afraid of thunder?”

“No, I’m unwell, very unwell…” Velchaninov was indeed suffering from his unexpected pain in the chest, got up from his chair, and tried to pace the room.

“Ah, then naturally I’m bothering you—don’t worry, I’ll leave at once!” and the youth jumped up from his place.

“You’re not bothering me, it’s nothing,” said the delicate Velchaninov.

“How is it nothing, when ‘Kobylnikov has a stomachache’—remember in Shchedrin?¹⁴ Do you like Shchedrin?”

“Yes…”

“So do I. Well, Vassily… no, what’s your name, Pavel Pavlovich, let’s finish, sir!” he addressed Pavel Pavlovich, almost laughing. “I’ll formulate the question once more for your understanding: do you agree to renounce tomorrow, officially, in front of the old folks and in my presence, all your claims regarding Nadezhda Fedoseevna?”

“I don’t agree at all, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich also rose with an impatient and embittered look, “and with that I ask you once more to spare me, sir… because all this is childish and silly, sir.”

“Watch out!” the youth shook his finger at him with a haughty smile, “don’t make a mistake in your calculations! Do you know what such a mistake may lead to? And I warn you that in nine months, when you’ve spent everything there, worn yourself out, and come back—you’ll be forced to renounce Nadezhda Fedoseevna here, and if you don’t renounce her—so much the worse for you; that’s what you’ll bring things to! I must warn you that you are now like the dog in the manger—excuse me, it’s just a comparison—none for yourself, none for anyone else. I repeat out of humaneness: reflect, force yourself to reflect well for at least once in your life.”

“I beg you to spare me your morals,” Pavel Pavlovich shouted fiercely, “and as for your nasty hints, I’ll take my measures tomorrow—severe measures, sir!”

“Nasty hints? What are you referring to? You’re nasty yourself, if that’s what’s in your head. However, I agree to wait until tomorrow, but if… Ah, again this thunder! Goodbye, very glad to have met you,” he nodded to Velchaninov and ran, evidently hurrying to keep ahead of the thunderstorm and not get caught in the rain.

XV

ACCOUNTS ARE SQUARED

“Did you see? Did you see, sir?” Pavel Pavlovich sprang over to Velchaninov as soon as the youth went out.

“Yes, you have no luck!” Velchaninov let slip inadvertently. He would not have said these words if he were not so tormented and angered by this increasing pain in his chest. Pavel Pavlovich gave a start, as if burnt.

“Well, and you, sir—it must have been from pity for me that you didn’t return the bracelet—ha?”

“I had no chance…”

“From heartfelt pity, as a true friend pities a true friend?”

“Well, yes, I pitied you.” Velchaninov became angry.

He did, nevertheless, tell him briefly how he had gotten the bracelet back earlier and how Nadezhda Fedoseevna had nearly forced him to take part…

“You understand, I wouldn’t have taken it for anything; I have enough troubles without that!”

“You got carried away and took it!” Pavel Pavlovich tittered.

“That’s stupid on your part; however, you must be forgiven. You saw yourself just now that the main one in the matter is not I but others!”

“Even so you got carried away, sir.”

Pavel Pavlovich sat down and filled his glass.

“Do you suppose I’m going to yield to this youngster, sir? I’ll tie him in a knot, that’s what, sir! Tomorrow I’ll go and tie everything up! We’ll smoke this spirit out of the nursery, sir…”

He drank his glass almost in one gulp and poured more; in general he began to behave with a hitherto unusual casualness.

“See, Nadenka and Sashenka, dear little children—hee, hee, hee!”

He was beside himself with spite. There came another loud clap of thunder; lightning flashed blindingly, and the rain poured down in buckets. Pavel Pavlovich got up and closed the open window.

“And him asking you: ‘You’re not afraid of thunder?’—hee, hee! Velchaninov afraid of thunder! Kobylnikov has a—how is it—Kobylnikov has… And about being fifty years old—eh? Remember, sir?” Pavel Pavlovich went on sarcastically.

“You, incidentally, have settled in nicely here,” Velchaninov observed, barely able to utter the words from pain. “I’ll lie down… you do as you like.”

“One wouldn’t put a dog out in such weather!” Pavel Pavlovich picked up touchily, though almost glad that he had the right to be touchy.

“Well, so sit, drink… spend the night even!” Velchaninov mumbled, stretched out on the sofa, and groaned slightly.

“Spend the night, sir? Aren’t you… afraid, sir?”

“Of what?” Velchaninov suddenly raised his head.

“Never mind, sir, just so. Last time you were as if afraid, or else I only imagined it…”

“You’re stupid!” Velchaninov burst out and turned angrily to the wall.

“Never mind, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich responded.

The sick man somehow suddenly fell asleep, a moment after lying down. All the unnatural tension of this day, not to mention the great disorder of his health recently, somehow suddenly snapped, and he became as strengthless as a child. But the pain got its own back and overcame weariness and sleep; an hour later he awoke and with suffering got up from the sofa. The thunderstorm had abated; the room was filled with smoke, the bottle stood empty, and Pavel Pavlovich was sleeping on the other sofa. He was lying on his back, his head on a sofa pillow, fully dressed, with his boots on. His lorgnette, having slipped from his pocket, hung on its string almost to the floor. His hat lay near him, also on the floor. Velchaninov looked at him sullenly and decided not to wake him up. Bending over and pacing the room, because he was no longer able to lie down, he moaned and reflected on his pain.

He feared this pain in his chest not without reason. He had begun having these attacks long ago, but they visited him very rarely—once in a year or two. He knew it was from his liver. It began as if with a still dull, not strong, but bothersome pressure gathering at some point in his chest, in the pit of his stomach or higher up. Growing constantly, sometimes over the course of ten hours, the pain would finally reach such intensity, the pressure would become so unbearable, that the sick man would begin imagining death. During the last attack, which had come a year before, when the pain finally subsided after the tenth hour, he suddenly felt so strengthless that he could barely move his hand as he lay in bed, and for the whole day the doctor allowed him only a few teaspoons of weak tea and a little pinch of bread soaked in bouillon, like a nursing infant. This pain appeared on different occasions, but always with upset nerves to begin with. It would also pass strangely: sometimes, when caught at the very beginning, in the first half hour, everything would go away at once with simple poultices; but sometimes, as during the last attack, nothing would help, and the pain would subside only after a repeated and progressive taking of emetics. The doctor confessed afterward that he had been convinced it was poisoning. Now it was still a long time till morning, he did not want to send for a doctor during the night, and besides he did not like doctors. Finally, he could not help himself and started moaning loudly. The moans awakened Pavel Pavlovich: he sat up on the sofa and listened with fear for some time, his perplexed eyes following Velchaninov, who was nearly running all around the two rooms. The bottle he had drunk also affected him strongly, not in the usual way, and for a long time he could not collect himself; finally he understood and rushed to Velchaninov; the latter mumbled something in response.

“It’s from your liver, sir, I know this!” Pavel Pavlovich suddenly became terribly animated. “Pyotr Kuzmich had it, Polosukhin, he had it in exactly the same way, from the liver, sir. It’s a case for poultices, sir. Pyotr Kuzmich always used poultices… You can die of it, sir! I’ll run and fetch Mavra—eh?”

“No need, no need,” Velchaninov waved him away vexedly, “no need for anything.”

But Pavel Pavlovich, God knows why, was almost beside himself, as if it were a matter of saving his own son. He would not listen, he insisted as hard as he could on the necessity for poultices and, on top of that, two or three cups of weak tea, drunk all at once—“not simply hot, sir, but boiling hot!” He did run to Mavra, without waiting for permission, made a fire with her in the kitchen, which had always stood empty, started the samovar; meanwhile he managed to put the sick man to bed, took his street clothes off, wrapped him in a blanket, and in no more than twenty minutes had cooked up some tea and the first poultice.

“It’s heated plates, sir, burning hot!” he said almost in ecstasy, placing the heated plate wrapped in a towel on Velchaninov’s pained chest. “There aren’t any other poultices, sir, and it would take too long to get them, and plates, I swear on my honor, sir, will even be best of all; it’s been tested on Pyotr Kuzmich, sir, with my own eyes and hands. You can die of it, sir. Drink the tea, swallow it—never mind if it burns you; life’s dearer… than foppery, sir…”

He got the half-asleep Mavra to bustle about; the plates were changed every three or four minutes. After the third plate and the second cup of boiling hot tea drunk at one gulp, Velchaninov suddenly felt relief.

“Once you’ve dislodged the pain, thank God for that, sir, it’s a good sign!” Pavel Pavlovich cried out and ran to fetch a fresh plate and fresh tea.

“Only to break the pain! If we can only turn the pain back!” he kept saying every moment.

After half an hour, the pain was quite weakened, but the patient was so worn out that, however Pavel Pavlovich begged, he would not agree to endure “one more little plate, sir.” His eyes were closing from weakness.

“Sleep, sleep,” he repeated in a weak voice.

“Right you are!” Pavel Pavlovich agreed.

“You spend the night… what time is it?”

“A quarter to two, sir.”

“Spend the night.”

“I will, I will.”

A minute later the sick man called Pavel Pavlovich again.

“You, you,” he murmured when the man came running and bent over him, “you—are better than I! I understand everything, everything… thank you.”

“Sleep, sleep,” Pavel Pavlovich whispered, and hastened on tiptoe back to his sofa.

As he was falling asleep, the sick man could still hear Pavel Pavlovich quietly and hurriedly making his bed, taking off his clothes, and, finally, putting out the candle and, barely breathing, so as not to make any noise, stretching himself out on the sofa.

Undoubtedly Velchaninov did sleep and fell asleep very soon after the candles were put out; he clearly recalled it afterward. But all the while he slept, till the very moment he woke up, he dreamed that he was not asleep and that it was as if he was quite unable to fall asleep, despite his weakness. Finally, he dreamed he was having a sort of waking delirium and was quite unable to scatter the visions crowding around him, despite the full awareness that it was only delirium and not reality. The visions were all familiar ones; his room was as if filled with people, and the door to the front hall stood open; crowds of people poured in and thronged the stairs. At the table, moved out into the middle of the room, sat a man—exactly as the other time, in the identical dream he had had a month earlier. Just as then, this man sat with his elbow on the table and refused to speak; but now he was wearing a round hat with crape. “What? Could it have been Pavel Pavlovich then, too?” Velchaninov thought—but, peeking into the silent man’s face, he convinced himself that it was someone else entirely. “Why the crape, then?” Velchaninov puzzled. The noise, talk, and clamor of people crowding around the table were terrible. It seemed these people had still greater malice toward Velchaninov than in the other dream; they threatened him with their fists and shouted at him about something with all their might, but precisely what—he was quite unable to make out. “But this is a delirium, I know it!” the thought came to him. “I know that I couldn’t fall asleep and have now gotten up, because I couldn’t stay in bed from anguish!…” However, the shouting and the people, and their gestures, and all—were so vivid, so real, that he sometimes had doubts: “Can it really be a delirium? What do these people want from me, my God! But if it’s not a delirium, then is it possible that such a clamor has not awakened Pavel Pavlovich yet? That he’s here asleep, right here on the sofa?” Finally, something suddenly happened, again as in that other dream; everyone rushed to the stairs and got terribly jammed in the doorway, because a new crowd was pouring into the room from the stairs. These people were carrying something with them, something big and heavy; one could hear the heavy steps of the carriers resounding on the treads of the stairs and their puffing voices hurriedly calling to each other. Everyone in the room cried out: “They’re bringing it, they’re bringing it!” All eyes flashed and turned to Velchaninov; threatening and triumphant, everyone pointed to the stairs. No longer doubting in the least that it was all not delirium but the truth, he stood on tiptoe to see quickly, over people’s heads, what it was that they were bringing. His heart was pounding, pounding, pounding, and suddenly—exactly as then, in that other dream—there came three loud strokes of the doorbell. And once again this was so clear, so tangibly real a ringing, that, of course, such ringing could not have been merely dreamed in a dream!… He cried out and woke up.

But he did not, as then, go racing for the door. What thought guided his first movement and did he even have any sort of thought at that moment?—no, it was as if someone prompted him to what had to be done: he snatched himself from bed and rushed with outstretched arms, as if defending himself and warding off an attack, straight toward where Pavel Pavlovich lay sleeping. His arms at once met other arms already stretched out over him, and he seized them fast; someone therefore already stood bending over him. The curtains were drawn, but it was not totally dark, because a weak light was coming from the other room, where there were no such curtains. Suddenly something cut the palm and fingers of his left hand terribly painfully, and he instantly understood that he had seized the blade of a knife or razor and gripped it tightly in his hand… At the same moment something fell with a single weighty thump to the floor.

Velchaninov was perhaps three times stronger than Pavel Pavlovich, but their struggle continued for a long time, some three full minutes. He soon bent him down to the floor and twisted his arms behind his back, but for some reason he absolutely wanted to bind those twisted arms. With his right hand—his wounded left hand holding the murderer—he began to grope for the curtain cord, could not find it for a long time, but got hold of it at last and tore it from the window. He himself marveled later at the unnatural strength required for that. In all these three minutes neither of them said a word; one could hear only their heavy breathing and the muffled sounds of the struggle. Finally, having twisted and bound Pavel Pavlovich’s arms behind his back, Velchaninov left him on the floor, stood up, opened the window curtain, and raised the blind. It was already light in the solitary street. Opening the window, he stood for a few moments taking deep breaths of air. It was just past four. Closing the window, he walked unhurriedly to the cupboard, took out a clean towel, and wound it very tightly around his left hand to stop the blood flowing from it. Under his feet he found the open razor case, forgotten that morning on the little table just next to the sofa on which Pavel Pavlovich had slept, and locked this case in his bureau with a key. Only after doing all that did he go over to Pavel Pavlovich and begin studying him.

The man had meanwhile managed with effort to get up from the rug and sit in an armchair. He was not dressed, only in his underwear, even without boots. The back and sleeves of his shirt were wet with blood; the blood was not his, but from Velchaninov’s cut hand. Of course, this was Pavel Pavlovich, but it would almost have been possible not to recognize him in the first moment, if one had met him like that by chance—so much had his physiognomy changed. He sat awkwardly straight in the armchair because of his bound arms, his distorted and worn-out face gone green, and shivered from time to time. Intently, but with some dark look, as if not yet distinguishing everything, he gazed at Velchaninov. Suddenly he smiled dully and, nodding at the carafe of water that stood on the table, said in a short half whisper:

“Some water, sir.”

Velchaninov poured some and held the glass for him to drink. Pavel Pavlovich greedily fell upon the water; having taken three gulps, he raised his head, looked very intently into the face of Velchaninov, who was standing before him with the glass in his hand, but said nothing and went on drinking. After finishing the water, he gave a deep sigh. Velchaninov took his pillow, picked up his clothes, and went to the other room, locking Pavel Pavlovich in the first room.

His earlier pain had gone away completely, but he felt a new and extreme weakness after the momentary strain just now of that strength which had come to him from God knows where. He tried to sort the incident out, but his thoughts still connected poorly; the shock had been too strong. His eyes would now close, sometimes even for ten minutes, now he would suddenly give a start, wake up, remember everything, raise his aching hand wrapped in the blood-soaked towel, and start thinking greedily and feverishly. He decided only one thing clearly: that Pavel Pavlovich had really wanted to kill him, but that maybe a quarter of an hour before then he had not known he would kill him. The razor case had maybe only flitted past his eyes during the evening without provoking any thought, and had merely stayed in his memory. (As for the razors, they were always kept in his bureau under lock and key, and it was only the previous morning that Velchaninov had taken them out to shave off some superfluous hairs around his mustache and side-whiskers—something he used to do occasionally.)

“If he had long been planning to kill me, he would have made sure to prepare a knife or a pistol beforehand, and not have counted on my razors, which he had never seen until yesterday evening”—came to his head, among other things.

It finally struck six. Velchaninov collected himself, got dressed, and went to Pavel Pavlovich. Unlocking the door, he could not understand what he had locked Pavel Pavlovich in for and why he had not let him out of the house then and there. To his surprise, the arrested man was already fully dressed; he must have found some opportunity for disentangling himself. He was sitting in the armchair, but got up at once, as soon as Velchaninov entered. The hat was already in his hand. His anxious eyes said, as if hurrying:

“Don’t start talking; there’s no point in starting; there’s no reason to talk…”

“Go!” said Velchaninov. “Take your case,” he added behind him.

Pavel Pavlovich came back from the door, took the case with the bracelet from the table, put it in his pocket, and walked out to the stairs. Velchaninov stood in the doorway to lock up after him. Their eyes met for the last time. Pavel Pavlovich suddenly stopped, the two gazed into each other’s eyes for some five seconds—as if hesitating; finally, Velchaninov waved his arm weakly at him.

“Well, go!” he said in a half voice, closed the door, and locked it.

XVI

ANALYSIS

A feeling of extraordinary, immense joy came over him; something was finished, unbound; some terrible anguish loosened and dispersed altogether. So it seemed to him. It had lasted five weeks. He kept raising his hand, looking at the blood-soaked towel, and muttering to himself: “No, now it’s all completely finished!” And all that morning, for the first time in those three weeks, he almost did not think of Liza—as if this blood from his cut fingers could “square accounts” even with that anguish.

He was clearly conscious that he had escaped terrible danger. “These people,” went through his mind, “it’s these very people who, even a minute before, don’t know if they’re going to stab you, but once they take the knife in their trembling hands and feel the first spurt of hot blood on their fingers, they won’t just stab you—they’ll cut your head ‘clean off,’ as convicts say. It’s quite so.”

He could not stay home and went out convinced that it was necessary to do something right away, or else right away something was sure to be done to him of itself; he walked the streets and waited. He wanted terribly to meet someone, to talk with someone, even a stranger, and only that, finally, suggested to him the thought of a doctor and that his hand probably ought to be properly bandaged. The doctor, an old acquaintance, after examining the wound, asked curiously: “How could this have happened?” Velchaninov laughed him off, joked, and almost told all, but restrained himself. The doctor was obliged to take his pulse and, on learning of the previous night’s attack, talked him there and then into taking a calmative he had on hand. He also calmed him down regarding the cut: “There can be no especially bad consequences.” Velchaninov laughed loudly and started assuring him that there had already been excellent consequences. The irrepressible desire to tell all repeated itself with him two more times that day—once even with a total stranger with whom he himself started a conversation in a pastry shop. Up to then he had hated starting conversations with strangers in public places.

He stopped at shops, bought a newspaper, called at his tailor’s and ordered some clothes. The thought of visiting the Pogoreltsevs continued to be disagreeable to him, and he did not think about them; besides, he could not go to the country: it was as if he kept expecting something here in town. He dined with pleasure, talked with the waiter and with a neighboring diner, and drank half a bottle of wine. He did not even think of the possibility of yesterday’s attack coming back; he was convinced that his illness had gone completely the very moment yesterday when, having fallen asleep so strengthless, he had jumped from his bed an hour and a half later and with such strength hurled his murderer to the floor. Toward evening, however, he felt dizzy and it was as if something like last night’s delirium in sleep began to come over him again at moments. He returned home at dusk and was almost scared of his room when he entered it. Dreadful and eerie his apartment seemed to him. He walked around it several times and even went into his kitchen, where he hardly ever went. “They heated the plates here yesterday,” came to his mind. He locked the door well and lit the candles earlier than usual. As he was locking the door, he remembered that half an hour before, passing by the caretaker’s room, he had called Mavra out and asked her: “Hadn’t Pavel Pavlovich come by while he was out?”—as if he might really have come by.

Having locked himself in carefully, he unlocked his bureau, took out the case of razors, and opened “yesterday’s” razor to have a look at it. On the white bone handle slight traces of blood remained. He put the razor back into the case and locked it up in the bureau again. He wanted to sleep; he felt that it was necessary to lie down right away—otherwise “tomorrow he won’t be good for anything.” For some reason he imagined the next day as fatal and “definitive.” But the same thoughts that had never left him for a moment all day, even outside, also crowded and throbbed in his sick head now, tirelessly and irresistibly, and he kept thinking, thinking, thinking, and it would be a long time before he fell asleep…

“If we decide that he got up to kill me inadvertently” he kept thinking and thinking, “then had the thought come to him at least once before, at least as a dream in some wicked moment?”

He decided the question strangely—that “Pavel Pavlovich had wanted to kill him, but the thought of the killing had never once occurred to the future killer.” In short: “Pavel Pavlovich had wanted to kill, but hadn’t known that he wanted to kill. It’s senseless, but it’s so,” thought Velchaninov. “He came here not to solicit a post and not for Bagautov—though he did solicit a post and call on Bagautov, and was furious when the man died; he despised Bagautov like a chip of wood. He came here for me and came with Liza…

“And did I myself expect that he… would put a knife in me?” He decided that, yes, he had expected it precisely from the very moment he had seen him in the coach following Bagautov’s coffin. “I began as if to expect something… but, naturally, not this, naturally, not that he would put a knife in me!…

“And can it be, can it be that it was all true,” he exclaimed again, suddenly raising his head from the pillow and opening his eyes, “all that this… madman told me yesterday about his love for me, when his chin trembled and he beat his breast with his fist?

“Perfectly true!” he decided, tirelessly delving deeper and analyzing. “This Quasimodo¹⁵ from T———is only too sufficiently stupid and noble to fall in love with the lover of his wife, in whom, for twenty years, he noticed nothing! He respected me for nine years, he honored my memory and remembered my ‘utterances’—Lord, and I had no idea of anything! He couldn’t have been lying yesterday! But did he love me yesterday when he talked about his love and said: ‘Let’s square accounts’? Yes, loved me from spite; that’s the strongest love…

“And it could have been, and certainly was so, that I produced a colossal impression on him in T———, precisely a colossal and a ‘delightful’ one, and it’s precisely with such a Schiller in the shape of Quasimodo that that could happen! He exaggerated me a hundredfold, because I struck him too much in his philosophical solitude… It would be curious to know, precisely what about me struck him? Really, it might have been fresh gloves and knowing how to put them on. Quasimodos love aesthetics, oh, how they do! Gloves are all too sufficient for some most noble soul, the more so for one of the ‘eternal husbands.’ The rest they’ll fill out a thousandfold and they’ll even fight for you if you want. And how highly he rates my means of seduction! Maybe it’s precisely the means of seduction that struck him most of all. And that cry of his then: ‘If even this one as well, then who can one believe in after that?’ After such a cry, one could turn into a beast!…

“Hm! He came here so that we could ‘embrace each other and weep,’ as he himself put it in the meanest way—that is, he was coming in order to put a knife in me, but thought he was coming ‘to embrace and weep’… And he brought Liza. What, then: if I had wept with him, maybe he would in fact have forgiven me, because he wanted terribly to forgive!… All this turned, at the first encounter, into drunken clowning and caricature, and into a vile, womanish howling about being offended. (The horns, he made horns over his forehead!) That’s why he came drunk, so as to speak it out, even while clowning; he couldn’t do it not drunk… And he did like clowning, oh, how he did! Oh, how glad he was when he made me kiss him! Only he didn’t know then what he would end with: embracing or killing. It came out, of course, that the best would be both together. The most natural solution!—Yes, sir, nature doesn’t like monsters and finishes them off with ‘natural solutions.’ The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings: I know it from my own experience, Pavel Pavlovich! For a monster, nature is not a tender mother, she’s a stepmother. Nature gives birth to a monster, and, instead of pitying him, executes him—and right she is. Even decent folk in our time don’t get off easily with embraces and tears of all-forgiveness, to say nothing of such as you and I, Pavel Pavlovich!

“Yes, he was stupid enough to take me to his fiancée as well—Lord! His fiancée! Only such a Quasimodo could conceive the thought of ‘resurrection into a new life’—by means of Mademoiselle Zakhlebinin’s innocence! But it’s not your fault, Pavel Pavlovich, it’s not your fault: you’re a monster, and therefore everything in you must be monstrous—both your dreams and your hopes. But, though you’re a monster, you still doubted your dream, and that’s why you required the high sanction of Velchaninov, the reverently respected. He needed Velchaninov’s approval, his confirmation that the dream was not a dream but the real thing. Out of reverent respect for me, he took me there, believing in the nobility of my feelings—believing, perhaps, that there, under a bush, we’d embrace each other and weep, in the proximity of innocence. Yes! and this ‘eternal husband’ was bound, he was obliged, finally, to punish himself definitively for everything sometime or other, and in order to punish himself, he seized the razor—inadvertently, it’s true, but even so he did it! ‘Even so he did stab him with a knife, even so he ended by stabbing him, in the governor’s presence!’ And, by the way, did he have at least some thought of that sort when he was telling me his anecdote about the best man? And was there in fact something that night when he got out of bed and stood in the middle of the room? Hm. No, he stood there as a joke then. He got up for his own business, and when he saw that I was afraid of him, he refused to answer me for ten minutes, because he found it very pleasant that I was afraid of him… Maybe it was then that he really imagined something for the first time, as he was standing there in the dark …

“But all the same, if I hadn’t forgotten those razors on the table yesterday—maybe nothing would have happened. Is that so? Is it so? After all, he did avoid me earlier, he didn’t come for two weeks; he hid from me, pitying me! He did choose Bagautov to begin with, and not me! He did jump out of bed at night to warm the plates, thinking of creating a diversion—from the knife to loving-kindness!… He wanted to save himself and me—with warmed-up plates!…”

And for a long time yet the sick head of this former “man of the world” worked in this way, pouring from empty into void, before he calmed down. He woke up the next day with the same sick head, but with a totally new and totally unexpected horror.

This new horror came from the absolute conviction, which unexpectedly consolidated in him, that he, Velchaninov (and man of the world), today, himself, of his own free will, would end it all by going to Pavel Pavlovich—why? what for?—Of that he knew nothing and in his disgust he wanted to know nothing; he knew only that for some reason he would drag himself.

This madness—he could call it nothing else—developed, all the same, to the point of acquiring a possibly reasonable shape and a quite legitimate pretext: he still kept as if envisioning that Pavel Pavlovich would go back to his room, lock the door tightly, and—hang himself, like that cashier Marya Sysoevna told about. This yesterday’s reverie gradually turned into a senseless but irrefutable conviction in him. “Why would the fool hang himself?” he interrupted himself every moment. He remembered Liza’s words long ago… “And besides, in his place I, too, might hang myself…” it once occurred to him.

The end of it was that, instead of going to dinner, he did after all set out for Pavel Pavlovich’s. “I’ll just inquire of Marya Sysoevna,” he decided. But, before coming out to the street, he stopped suddenly under the gateway.

“Can it be, can it be,” he cried, turning crimson with shame. “Can it be that I’m trudging there in order to ‘embrace and weep’? Can it be that the whole disgrace lacks only this last senseless abomination!”

But the providence of all respectable and decent people saved him from “senseless abomination.” As soon as he reached the street, he suddenly ran into Alexander Lobov. The youth was puffing and excited.

“I was coming to see you! This friend of yours, Pavel Pavlovich, just imagine!”

“Hanged himself ?” Velchaninov muttered wildly.

“Who hanged himself? Why?” Lobov goggled his eyes.

“Never mind… just so, go on!”

“Pah, the devil, what a funny turn of thought you’ve got, though! He by no means hanged himself (why hang himself?). On the contrary—he left. I put him on the train just now and sent him off. Pah, how he drinks, let me tell you! We drank three bottles, Predposylov, too—but how he drinks, how he drinks! He sang songs on the train, remembered you, waved his hand, asked to send you his greetings. A scoundrel, don’t you think—eh?”

The young man was indeed tipsy; his flushed face, shining eyes, and poorly obedient tongue bore strong witness to that. Velchaninov guffawed at the top of his lungs:

“So they did finally end by pledging brotherhood!—ha, ha! Embraced and wept! Ah, you Schiller-poets!”

“No abuse, please. You know, he gave it up altogether there. He was there yesterday and today as well. He peached on us terribly. Nadya’s locked up—sitting in the attic. Shouts, tears, but we won’t yield! But how he drinks, let me tell you, how he drinks! And you know, he’s such mauvais ton¹⁶—that is, not mauvais ton, but what’s the word?… And he kept remembering you, but there’s no comparison with you! After all, you are a decent man and in fact once belonged to high society, and only now have been forced to shun—on account of poverty or whatever… Devil knows, I didn’t quite understand him.”

“Ah, so he told you about me in such terms?”

“He… he—don’t be angry. Being a citizen is better than high society. I mean, in our time in Russia one doesn’t know whom to respect. You must agree that it’s a bad disease of the time, when one doesn’t know whom to respect—isn’t it true?”

“True, true, but about him?”

“Him? Whom!—ah, yes! Why did he keep saying: the fifty-year-old but ruined Velchaninov? Why: but ruined and not and ruined! He laughs, he repeated it a thousand times. He got on the train, started a song, and wept—it’s simply disgusting; it’s even pathetic—the man’s drunk. Ah, I don’t like fools! He started throwing money to the beggars, for the repose of the soul of Lizaveta—his wife, or what?”

“Daughter.”

“What’s with your hand?”

“I cut it.”

“Never mind, it’ll go away. You know, devil take him, it’s good that he left, but I’ll bet that there, where he’s gone, he’ll get married again at once—isn’t it true?”

“But don’t you want to get married, too?”

“Me? I’m a different matter—what a one you are, really! If you’re fifty years old, then he’s certainly sixty; we must be logical here, my dear sir! And you know, formerly, long ago now, I was a pure Slavophile in my convictions, but now we’re expecting dawn from the West… Well, good-bye; it’s lucky I ran into you without going in; I won’t go in, don’t ask, I have no time!…”

And he started to dash off.

“Ah, yes, what’s the matter with me,” he suddenly came back, “he sent me to you with a letter! Here it is. Why didn’t you come to see him off?”

Velchaninov returned home and opened the envelope which was addressed to him.

There was not a single line from Pavel Pavlovich in the envelope, but it contained some other letter. Velchaninov recognized the hand. The letter was an old one, on time-yellowed paper, with faded ink, written to him some ten years earlier in Petersburg, two months after he left T——. But this letter had not gone to him; instead of it, he had received another one then; that was clear from the content of the yellowed letter. In this letter Natalia Vassilievna, bidding him farewell forever—just as in the letter he had received then—and confessing to him her love for another man, did not, however, conceal her pregnancy. On the contrary, to console him she promised to find an occasion for conveying the future child to him, assured him that from then on they would have other responsibilities, that their friendship was now sealed forever—in short, there was not much logic, but the goal was the same: that he should deliver her from his love. She even allowed him to visit T———in a year—to see the baby. God knows why she had changed her mind and sent the other letter instead of this one.

Velchaninov, as he read it, turned pale, but he also imagined Pavel Pavlovich finding this letter and reading it for the first time before the opened heirloom box of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

“He also must have gone pale as death,” he thought, chancing to notice his face in the mirror. “He must have been reading it and closing his eyes, and then suddenly opening them again, hoping the letter would turn to simple blank paper… He probably repeated the experiment three or four times!…”

XVII

THE ETERNAL HUSBAND

Almost exactly two years went by after the adventure we have described. We meet Mr. Velchaninov one beautiful summer day in a car of one of our newly opened railways. He was on his way to Odessa to join a friend, for the pleasure of it, and, along with that, on account of another, also quite agreeable, circumstance; through his friend he hoped to arrange for himself a meeting with one extremely interesting woman, with whom he had long wished to become acquainted. Without going into details, we shall limit ourselves to pointing out that he had regenerated, or, better to say, improved greatly over the last two years. Of the former hypochondria almost no traces remained. All that remained to him of various “memories” and anxieties—the consequences of illness—which had begun to beset him two years ago in Petersburg during the time of his then unsuccessful lawsuit—was some hidden shame from the awareness of his former faintheartedness. He was partially recompensed by the certainty that there would be no more of it and that no one would ever know about it. True, he had abandoned society then, had even begun to dress poorly, had hidden somewhere from everyone—and this, of course, everyone had noticed. But he had so quickly come forth to plead guilty, and with such a newly revived and self-confident air, that “everyone” forgave at once his momentary falling away; even those of them whom he had stopped greeting, these were the first to acknowledge him and offer him their hand, and what’s more without any importunate questions—as if he had been absent all the while somewhere far away on family business, which was no one’s affair, and had only just come back. The reason for all these beneficial and sensible changes for the better was, naturally, the winning of the lawsuit. Velchaninov got only sixty thousand roubles—no great thing, granted, but a very important one for him: first of all, he felt himself at once on firm ground again—meaning morally appeased; he knew for certain now that he would not squander this last of his money “like a fool,” as he had squandered his first two fortunes, and that he would have enough for the rest of his life. “However tottering their social edifice may be, and whatever they may be trumpeting there,” he thought occasionally, lending an ear and eye to all the marvelous and incredible that was being accomplished around him and all over Russia, “whatever people and thought may be regenerating into there, still I will always at least have this fine and tasty dinner which I’m now sitting down to, and thus I’m prepared for anything.” This thought, tender to the point of voluptuousness, was gradually taking full possession of him and produced in him even a physical turnabout, not to mention a moral one: he now looked like a totally different man compared with that “marmot” we described two years ago, with whom such indecent stories were beginning to happen—he looked cheerful, bright, imposing. Even the malignant wrinkles that had begun to form around his eyes and on his forehead were almost smoothed out; his complexion even changed—it became whiter, rosier. At the present moment he was sitting in a comfortable seat in a first-class car, and a sweet thought

was hatching in his mind: at the next station there would be a fork and a new line going to the right. “If I were to leave the direct line for a moment and bear to the right, then in no more than two stops I could visit yet another lady of my acquaintance, who has just returned from abroad and is now living in—agreeable for me, but rather boring for her—provincial seclusion; and thus the possibility arises of spending my time no less interestingly than in Odessa, the more so as Odessa won’t slip away either…” But he was still hesitant and had not made a final decision; he was “waiting for a push.” Meanwhile the station was approaching; the push was also not long in coming.

At this station the train stopped for forty minutes and the passengers were offered dinner. Just at the entrance to the waiting room for first- and second-class passengers there crowded, as usual, an impatient and hurrying multitude of people, and—perhaps also as usual—a scandal took place. One lady, who got out of a second-class car and was remarkably pretty, but somehow too magnificently dressed for a traveler, almost dragged with her, in both hands, an uhlan, a very young and handsome little officer, who was trying to tear free of her grip. The young officer was very tipsy, and the lady, in all probability an older relative, would not let him go, surely for fear he would rush straight to the buffet for a drink. Meanwhile, the uhlan was jostled in the crush by a little merchant, also on a spree, and even outrageously so. This merchant had been stuck at the station for two days already, drinking and squandering money, surrounded by all sorts of comradery, and kept being late for the train to continue his journey. There was a quarrel, the officer shouted, the merchant cursed, the lady was in despair and, drawing the uhlan away from the quarrel, exclaimed to him in a pleading voice: “Mitenka! Mitenka!” The little merchant found this much too scandalous; true, everyone was laughing, but the merchant was the more upset on account of what seemed to him, for some reason, an offense to morality.

“See that—’Mitenka’!…” he said reproachfully, imitating the lady’s piping little voice. “They’re no longer ashamed even in public!”

And, staggering over to the lady, who had thrown herself down on the first chair she could find and managed to sit the uhlan down beside her, he looked them both over with contempt and drew out in a singsong voice:

“Slut, slut that you are, your skirt tail’s all tattered!”

The lady shrieked and looked around pitifully, waiting for deliverance. She was ashamed, she was afraid, and to crown it all, the officer tore from his chair and, with a yell, rushed for the merchant, but slipped and flopped back into the chair. The guffawing increased around them, while no one even thought of helping; but Velchaninov did help; he suddenly seized the little merchant by the scruff of the neck and, turning him around, shoved him some five steps away from the frightened woman. With that the scandal ended; the little merchant was greatly taken aback both by the shove and by Velchaninov’s imposing figure; he was led away at once by his comrades. The dignified physiognomy of the elegantly dressed gentleman produced an imposing impression on the jeerers as well: the laughter ceased. The lady, blushing and almost in tears, began pouring out assurances of her gratitude. The uhlan muttered: “Thanksh, thanksh!”—and made as if to offer Velchaninov his hand, but instead suddenly decided to lie down across the chairs and stretch his legs out on them.

“Mitenka!” the lady moaned reproachfully, clasping her hands.

Velchaninov was pleased both with the adventure and with its setting. The lady interested him; she was, as could be seen, a rich provincial, dressed magnificently but tastelessly, and with somewhat ridiculous manners—she precisely united in herself everything that guaranteed success to a big-city fop with certain goals regarding women. A conversation started; the lady hotly told and complained about her husband, who “suddenly disappeared somewhere from the car, and that was why it all happened, because it was eternally so, when needed, he’d disappear somewhere…”

“For a necessity…” the uhlan muttered.

“Ah, Mitenka!” she again clasped her hands.

“The husband’s going to catch it!” thought Velchaninov.

“What’s his name? I’ll go and find him,” he offered.

“Pal Palych,” the uhlan responded.

“Your husband’s name is Pavel Pavlovich?” Velchaninov asked with curiosity, and suddenly the familiar bald head thrust itself between him and the lady. Instantly he pictured the Zakhlebinins’ garden, innocent games, and the importunate bald head constantly thrusting itself between him and Nadezhda Fedoseevna.

“Here you are at last!” the wife cried out hysterically.

It was Pavel Pavlovich himself; in surprise and fear he gazed at Velchaninov, struck dumb before him as before a phantom. His stupefaction was so great that for some time he apparently understood nothing of what his insulted spouse was telling him in an irritable and quick patter. Finally he gave a start and grasped all his horror at once: his own guilt, and about Mitenka, and about this “m’sieur”—for some reason the lady referred this way to Velchaninov—“being our guardian angel and a savior, and you—you are eternally elsewhere when you should be here…”

Velchaninov suddenly burst out laughing.

“But he and I are friends, friends from childhood!” he exclaimed to the astonished lady, familiarly and patronizingly putting his right arm around the shoulders of Pavel Pavlovich, who was smiling a pale smile. “Didn’t he ever tell you about Velchaninov?”

“No, never,” the wife was slightly dumbstruck.

“But do introduce me to your wife, you perfidious friend!”

“This, Lipochka, is indeed Mr. Velchaninov, this is…” Pavel Pavlovich tried to begin and shamefully broke off. The wife turned red and flashed her eyes at him in spite, obviously for the “Lipochka.”

“And imagine not telling me you were getting married, and not inviting me to the wedding, but you, Olympiada…”

“Semyonovna,” Pavel Pavlovich prompted.

“Semyonovna,” suddenly echoed the falling-asleep uhlan.

“You must forgive him, Olympiada Semyonovna, for me, for the sake of friends meeting… He’s a good husband!”

And Velchaninov amicably slapped Pavel Pavlovich on the shoulder.

“But, darling, I only stayed behind… for a moment…” Pavel Pavlovich began to justify himself.

“And abandoned your wife to disgrace!” Lipochka picked up at once. “You’re never where you ought to be, and where you oughn’t to be, there you are…”

“Where you oughtn’t to be—there where you oughtn’t to be… where you oughtn’t to be…” the uhlan kept agreeing.

Lipochka was nearly breathless with agitation; she knew it was not nice in front of Velchaninov, and she blushed, but she could not help herself.

“Where you oughtn’t to be, you’re all too cautious, all too cautious!” escaped from her.

“Under the bed… looks for lovers… under the bed—where he oughtn’t to be… oughtn’t to be…” Mitenka, too, suddenly became terribly agitated.

But there was nothing to be done with Mitenka. Everything ended pleasantly, however; full acquaintance ensued; Pavel Pavlovich was sent for coffee and bouillon. Olympiada Semyonovna explained to Velchaninov that they were now going from O., where her husband worked, to spend two months on their estate, that it was not far away, only twenty-five miles from this station, that they had a wonderful house and garden there, that they would have guests, that they also had neighbors, and that if Alexei Ivanovich was so good as to wish to visit them “in their seclusion,” she would receive him as a guardian angel, because she could not recall without horror what would have happened if… and so on and so forth—in short, “as a guardian angel…”

“And a savior, and a savior,” the uhlan ardently insisted.

Velchaninov politely thanked her and replied that he was always ready, that he was a perfectly idle and unoccupied man, and that Olympiada Semyonovna’s invitation was only too flattering for him. After which he at once began a merry little conversation, into which he successfully inserted two or three compliments. Lipochka blushed with pleasure and, as soon as Pavel Pavlovich returned, announced to him rapturously that Alexei Ivanovich had been so good as to accept her invitation to be their guest in the country for a whole month and promised to come in a week. Pavel Pavlovich gave a lost smile and said nothing. Olympiada Semyonovna shrugged at him and raised her eyes to heaven. Finally they parted: once more gratitude, again “guardian angel,” again “Mitenka,” and Pavel Pavlovich finally took his spouse and the uhlan to put them on the train. Velchaninov lit a cigar and began to stroll along the gallery in front of the station; he knew that Pavel Pavlovich would presently come running back again to talk with him before the bell rang. And so it happened. Pavel Pavlovich immediately appeared before him with an anxious question in his eyes and on his whole physiognomy. Velchaninov laughed: he took him “amicably” by the elbow and, drawing him to the nearest bench, sat down and sat him down beside him. He kept silent himself; he wanted Pavel Pavlovich to be the first to speak.

“So you’re coming to visit us, sir?” the man babbled, approaching the matter with complete frankness.

“I just knew it! Hasn’t changed a bit!” Velchaninov burst out laughing. “But could you really,” he again slapped him on the shoulder, “could you really think seriously even for a moment that I would in fact come to visit, and for a whole month at that—ha, ha!”

Pavel Pavlovich became all aroused.

“So you—won’t come, sir!” he cried out, not concealing his joy in the least.

“I won’t, I won’t!” Velchaninov laughed smugly. However, he himself did not understand why he found it so especially funny, but the further it went, the funnier it became to him.

“Can it be… can it really be as you say, sir?” And, having said that, Pavel Pavlovich even jumped up from his seat in trembling expectation.

“But I already said I won’t come—what a queer fellow you are!”

“How then… if so, sir, how shall I tell Olympiada Semyonovna, when you don’t come in a week, after she’s been waiting, sir?”

“That’s a hard one! Tell her I broke a leg or something like that.”

“She won’t believe it, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich drew out in a plaintive little voice.

“And you’ll catch hell?” Velchaninov went on laughing. “But I notice, my poor friend, that you do tremble before your beautiful spouse—eh?”

Pavel Pavlovich tried to smile, but it did not come off. That Velchaninov had renounced his visit—that, of course, was good; but that he spoke familiarly about his wife—now, that was bad. Pavel Pavlovich cringed. Velchaninov noticed it. Meanwhile the second bell had already rung; from the faraway car came a piping little voice, anxiously summoning Pavel Pavlovich. He fidgeted on the spot, but did not run at the summons, apparently expecting something more from Velchaninov—of course, a further assurance that he would not visit them.

“What is your wife’s former name?” Velchaninov said, as if not noticing Pavel Pavlovich’s anxiety at all.

“I took her from our local vicar, sir,” the man replied, glancing at the train in bewilderment and cocking an ear.

“Ah, I understand, for her beauty.”

Pavel Pavlovich cringed again.

“And who is this Mitenka to you?”

“He’s just so, sir; our distant relative—that is, mine, sir, my late cousin’s son, Golubchikov, demoted for disorderly conduct, and now restored again; so we’ve equipped him… An unfortunate young man, sir…”

“Well, well,” thought Velchaninov, “everything’s in order—the full setup!”

“Pavel Pavlovich!” again a distant summons was heard from the car, now with quite an irritated note in the voice.

“Pal Palych!” came another, hoarse voice.

Pavel Pavlovich again started fidgeting and fussing about, but Velchaninov seized him firmly by the elbow and stopped him.

“And do you want me to go right now and tell your wife how you wanted to put a knife in me—eh?”

“How can you, how can you, sir!” Pavel Pavlovich was terribly frightened, “God keep you from it, sir!”

“Pavel Pavlovich! Pavel Pavlovich!” the voices were heard again.

“Well, go, then!” Velchaninov released him at last, continuing to laugh good-naturedly.

“So you won’t come, sir!” Pavel Pavlovich, all but in despair, whispered a last time, and even clasped his hands before him, palms together, as in old times.

“No, I swear to you, I won’t come! Run, or there’ll be trouble!”

And he sweepingly offered him his hand—offered it and gave a start: Pavel Pavlovich did not take his hand, he even drew his own back.

The third bell rang.

In an instant something strange happened with the two men; they both as if transformed. Something wavered as it were and suddenly snapped in Velchaninov, who had been laughing so much only a moment before. He firmly and furiously seized Pavel Pavlovich by the shoulder.

“If I, if I offer you this hand here,” he showed him the palm of his left hand, on which there clearly remained a big scar from the cut, “then you might well take it!” he whispered with trembling and paled lips.

Pavel Pavlovich also paled and his lips also trembled. Some sort of spasms suddenly passed over his face.

“And Liza, sir?” he murmured in a quick whisper—and suddenly his lips, cheeks, and chin quivered, and tears poured from his eyes. Velchaninov stood before him like a post.

“Pavel Pavlovich! Pavel Pavlovich!” screams came from the car, as if someone were being slaughtered there—and suddenly the whistle blew.

Pavel Pavlovich came to his senses, clasped his hands, and dashed off at top speed; the train had already started, but he somehow managed to hold on and climb into his car in flight. Velchaninov remained at the station and continued his journey only toward evening, having waited for the next train in the same direction. He did not go to the right, to his provincial lady acquaintance—he was much too out of sorts. And how sorry he was later!