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Title: Uncle's Dream; and The Permanent Husband

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translator: Frederick Whishaw

Release date: December 6, 2011 [eBook #38241]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38241

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNCLE'S
DREAM; AND THE PERMANENT HUSBAND ***

VIZETELLY'S RUSSIAN NOVELS.

Uncle's Dream;

AND

The Permanent Husband.

CELEBRATED RUSSIAN NOVELS

By FEDOR DOSTOIEFFSKY.

Translated from the original Russian by Fred. Whishaw.

“There are three Russian novelists who, though, with one exception, little
known out of their own country, stand head and shoulders above most of
their contemporaries. In the opinion of some not indifferent critics, they are
superior to all other novelists of this generation. Two of them, Dostoieffsky
and Turgenieff, died not long ago; the third, Lyof Tolstoi, still lives. The one
with the most marked individuality of character, probably the most highly
gifted, was unquestionably Dostoieffsky.”—Spectator.

In crown 8vo. containing nearly 500 pages, price 6s.

THE IDIOT.

“Is unquestionably a work of great power and originality. M. Dostoieffsky
crowds his canvas with living organisms, depicted with extreme
vividness.”—Scotsman.

In crown 8vo, price 5s.

THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY; AND THE GAMBLER.

“Dostoieffsky is one of the keenest observers of humanity amongst modern
novelists. Both stories are very valuable as pictures of a society and a people
with whom we are imperfectly acquainted, but who deserve the closest
scrutiny.”—Public Opinion.

Third edition. In crown 8vo, with Portrait and Memoir, price 5s.

INJURY AND INSULT.

“That ‘Injury and Insult’ is a powerful novel few will deny. Vania is a
marvellous character. Once read, the book can never be forgotten.”—St.
Stephen's Review.

“A masterpiece of fiction. The author has treated with consummate tact the
difficult character of Natasha, ‘the incarnation of the slave of passion.’She
lives and breathes in these vivid pages, and the reader is drawn into the
vortex of her anguish, and rejoices when she breaks free from her chain.”—
Morning Post.

Third edition. In crown 8vo, 450 pages, price 6s.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

“Dostoieffsky is one of the most remarkable of modern writers, and his book,
‘Crime and Punishment’ is one of the most moving of modern novels. It is
the story of a murder and of the punishment which dogs the murderer; and its
effect is unique in fiction. It is realism, but such realism as M. Zola and his
followers do not dream of. The reader knows the personages—strange
grotesque, terrible personages they are—more intimately than if he had been
years with them in the flesh. He is constrained to live their lives, to suffer
their tortures, to scheme and resist with them, exult with them, weep and
laugh and despair with them; he breathes the very breath of their nostrils, and
with the madness that comes upon them he is afflicted even as they. This
sounds extravagant praise, no doubt; but only to those who have not read the
volume. To those who have, we are sure that it will appear rather under the
mark than otherwise.”—The Athenæum.

VIZETELLY'S RUSSIAN NOVELS.

Uncle's Dream;

AND

The Permanent Husband.

By FEDOR DOSTOIEFFSKY,

AUTHOR OF “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT,” “INJURY AND
INSULT,” “THE IDIOT,” “THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY; AND
THE GAMBLER.”

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY FREDERICK
WHISHAW.

LONDON:

VIZETELLY & CO., 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT
GARDEN.

1888.

Contents

Uncle's Dream.

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
Footnotes

The Permanent Husband

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.

UNCLE'S DREAM.

CHAPTER I.

Maria Alexandrovna Moskaleva was the principal lady of Mordasoff—there
was no doubt whatever on that point! She always bore herself as though she
did not care a fig for anyone, but as though no one else could do without
her. True, there were uncommonly few who loved her—in fact I may say
that very many detested her; still, everyone was afraid of her, and that was
what she liked!

Now, why did Maria Alexandrovna, who dearly loves scandal, and cannot
sleep at night unless she has heard something new and piquant the day
before,—why, or how did she know how to bear herself so that it would
never strike anyone, looking at her, to suppose that the dignified lady was
the most inveterate scandal-monger in the world—or at all events in
Mordasoff? On the contrary, anyone would have said at once, that scandals
and such-like pettiness must vanish in her presence; and that scandal-
mongers, caught red-handed by Maria Alexandrovna, would blush and
tremble, like schoolboys at the entrance of the master; and that the talk
would immediately be diverted into channels of the loftiest and most
sublime subjects so soon as she entered the room. Maria Alexandrovna
knew many deadly and scandalous secrets of certain other Mordasoff
inhabitants, which, if she liked to reveal them at any convenient
opportunity, would produce results little less terrible than the earthquake of
Lisbon. Still, she was very quiet about the secrets she knew, and never let
them out except in cases of absolute need, and then only to her nearest and
dearest friends. She liked to hint that she knew certain things, and frighten
people out of their wits; preferring to keep them in a state of perpetual
terror, rather than crush them altogether.

This was real talent—the talent of tactics.

We all considered Maria Alexandrovna as our type and model of
irreproachable comme-il-faut! She had no rival in this respect in Mordasoff!
She could kill and annihilate and pulverize any rival with a single word. We
have seen her do it; and all the while she would look as though she had not
even observed that she had let the fatal word fall.

Everyone knows that this trait is a speciality of the highest circles.

Her circle of friends was large. Many visitors to Mordasoff left the town
again in an ecstasy over her reception of them, and carried on a
correspondence with her afterwards! Somebody even addressed some
poetry to her, which she showed about the place with great pride. The
novelist who came to the town used to read his novel to her of an evening,
and ended by dedicating it to her; which produced a very agreeable effect. A
certain German professor, who came from Carlsbad to inquire into the
question of a little worm with horns which abounds in our part of the world,
and who wrote and published four large quarto volumes about this same
little insect, was so delighted and ravished with her amiability and kindness
that to this very day he carries on a most improving correspondence upon
moral subjects from far Carlsbad!

Some people have compared Maria Alexandrovna, in certain respects, with
Napoleon. Of course it may have been her enemies who did so, in order to
bring Maria Alexandrovna to scorn; but all I can say is, How is it that
Napoleon, when he rose to his highest, that too high estate of his, became
giddy and fell? Historians of the old school have ascribed this to the fact
that he was not only not of royal blood, but was not even a gentleman! and
therefore when he rose too high, he thought of his proper place, the ground,
became giddy and fell! But why did not Maria Alexandrovna's head whirl?
And how was it that she could always keep her place as the first lady of
Mordasoff?

People have often said this sort of thing of Maria Alexandrovna; for
instance: “Oh—yes, but how would she act under such and such difficult
circumstances?” Yet, when the circumstances arose, Maria Alexandrovna
invariably rose also to the emergency! For instance, when her husband—
Afanassy Matveyevitch—was obliged to throw up his appointment, out of
pure incapacity and feebleness of intellect, just before the government

inspector came down to look into matters, all Mordasoff danced with
delight to think that she would be down on her knees to this inspector,
begging and beseeching and weeping and praying—in fact, that she would
drop her wings and fall; but, bless you, nothing of the sort happened! Maria
Alexandrovna quite understood that her husband was beyond praying for:
he must retire. So she only rearranged her affairs a little, in such a manner
that she lost not a scrap of her influence in the place, and her house still
remained the acknowledged head of all Mordasoff Society!

The procurer's wife, Anna Nicolaevna Antipova, the sworn foe of Maria
Alexandrovna, though a friend so far as could be judged outside, had
already blown the trumpet of victory over her rival! But when Society
found that Maria Alexandrovna was extremely difficult to put down, they
were obliged to conclude that the latter had struck her roots far deeper than
they had thought for.

As I have mentioned Afanassy Matveyevitch, Maria Alexandrovna's
husband, I may as well add a few words about him in this place.

Firstly, then, he was a most presentable man, so far as exterior goes, and a
very high-principled person besides; but in critical moments he used to lose
his head and stand looking like a sheep which has come across a new gate.
He looked very majestic and dignified in his dress-coat and white tie at
dinner parties, and so on; but his dignity only lasted until he opened his
mouth to speak; for then—well, you'd better have shut your ears, ladies and
gentlemen, when he began to talk—that's all! Everyone agreed that he was
quite unworthy to be Maria Alexandrovna's husband. He only sat in his
place by virtue of his wife's genius. In my humble opinion he ought long
ago to have been derogated to the office of frightening sparrows in the
kitchen garden. There, and only there, would he have been in his proper
sphere, and doing some good to his fellow countrymen.

Therefore, I think Maria Alexandrovna did a very wise thing when she sent
him away to her village, about a couple of miles from town, where she
possessed a property of some hundred and twenty souls—which, to tell the
truth, was all she had to keep up the respectability and grandeur of her
noble house upon!

Everybody knew that Afanassy was only kept because he had earned a
salary and perquisites; so that when he ceased to earn the said salary and
perquisites, it surprised no-one to learn that he was sent away—“returned
empty” to the village, as useless and fit for nothing! In fact, everyone
praised his wife for her soundness of judgment and decision of character!

Afanassy lived in clover at the village. I called on him there once and spent
a very pleasant hour. He tied on his white ties, cleaned his boots himself
(not because he had no-one to do it for him, but for the sake of art, for he
loved to have them shine), went to the bath as often as he could, had tea
four times a day, and was as contented as possible.

Do you remember, a year and a half ago, the dreadful stories that were afoot
about Zenaida, Maria Alexandrovna's and Afanassy's daughter? Zenaida
was undoubtedly a fine, handsome, well-educated girl; but she was now
twenty-three years old, and not married yet. Among the reasons put forth
for Zenaida being still a maid, one of the strongest was those dark rumours
about a strange attachment, a year and a half ago, with the schoolmaster of
the place—rumours not hushed up even to this day. Yes, to this very day
they tell of a love-letter, written by Zina, as she was called, and handed all
about Mordasoff. But kindly tell me, who ever saw this letter? If it went
from hand to hand what became of it? Everyone seems to have heard of it,
but no one ever saw it! At all events, I have never met anyone who actually
saw the letter with his own eyes. If you drop a hint to Maria Alexandrovna
about it, she simply does not understand you.

Well, supposing that there was something, and that Zina did write such a
letter; what dexterity and skill of Maria Alexandrovna, to have so ably
nipped the bud of the scandal! I feel sure that Zina did write the letter; but
Maria Alexandrovna has managed so well that there is not a trace, not a
shred of evidence of the existence of it. Goodness knows how she must
have worked and planned to save the reputation of this only daughter of
hers; but she managed it somehow.

As for Zina not having married, there's nothing surprising in that. Why,
what sort of a husband could be found for her in Mordasoff? Zina ought to
marry a reigning prince, if anyone! Did you ever see such a beauty among
beauties as Zina? I think not. Of course, she was very proud—too proud.

There was Mosgliakoff—some people said she was likely to end by
marrying him; but I never thought so. Why, what was there in Mosgliakoff?
True, he was young and good looking, and possessed an estate of a hundred
and fifty souls, and was a Petersburg swell; but, in the first place, I don't
think there was much inside his head. He was such a funny, new-idea sort
of man. Besides, what is an estate of a hundred and fifty souls, according to
present notions? Oh, no; that's a marriage that never could come off.

There, kind reader, all you have just read was written by me some five
months ago, for my own amusement. I admit, I am rather partial to Maria
Alexandrovna; and I wished to write some sort of laudatory account of that
charming woman, and to mould it into the form of one of those playful
“letters to a friend,” purporting to have been written in the old golden days
(which will never return—thank Heaven!) to one of the periodicals of the
time, “The Northern Bee,” or some such paper. But since I have no
“friend,” and since I am, besides, naturally of a timid disposition, and
especially so as to my literary efforts, the essay remained on my writing-
table, as a memorial of my early literary attempts and in memory of the
peaceful occupation of a moment or two of leisure.

Well, five months have gone by, and lo! great things have happened at
Mordasoff!

Prince K—— drove into the town at an early hour one fine morning, and
put up at Maria Alexandrovna's house! The prince only stayed three days,
but his visit proved pregnant with the most fatal consequences. I will say
more—the prince brought about what was, in a certain sense, a revolution
in the town, an account of which revolution will, of course, comprise some
of the most important events that have ever happened in Mordasoff; and I
have determined at last, after many heart-sinkings and flutterings, and much
doubt, to arrange the story into the orthodox literary form of a novel, and
present it to the indulgent Public! My tale will include a narrative of the
Rise and Greatness and Triumphant Fall of Maria Alexandrovna, and of all
her House in Mordasoff, a theme both worthy of, and attractive to any
writer!

Of course I must first explain why there should have been anything
extraordinary in the fact that Prince K—— came to Mordasoff, and put up
at Maria Alexandrovna's mansion. And in order to do this, I must first be
allowed to say a few words about this same Prince K——. This I shall now
do. A short biography of the nobleman is absolutely necessary to the further
working out of my story. So, reader, you must excuse me.

CHAPTER II.

I will begin, then, by stating that Prince K—— was not so very, very old,
although, to look at him, you would think he must fall to pieces every
moment, so decayed, or rather, worn-out was he. At Mordasoff all sorts of
strange things were told of him. Some declared that the old prince's wits
had forsaken him. All agreed that it was passing strange that the owner of a
magnificent property of four thousand souls, a man of rank, and one who
could have, if he liked, a great influence, and play a great part in his
country's affairs; that such a man should live all alone upon his estate, and
make an absolute hermit of himself, as did Prince K——. Many who had
known him a few years before insisted upon it that he was very far from
loving solitude then, and was as unlike a hermit as anyone could possibly
be.

However, here is all I have been able to learn authentically as to his
antecedents, etc.:—

Some time or other, in his younger days—which must have been a mighty
long while ago,—the prince made a most brilliant entry into life. He
knocked about and enjoyed himself, and sang romantic songs, and wrote
epigrams, and led a fast life generally, very often abroad, and was full of
gifts and intellectual capacity.

Of course he very soon ran through his means, and when old age
approached, he suddenly found himself almost penniless. Somebody
recommended him to betake himself to his country seat, which was about to
be sold by public auction. So off he went with that intention; but called in at
Mordasoff, and stopped there six months. He liked this provincial life, and
while in our town he spent every farthing he had left in the world,
continuing his reckless life as of old, galivanting about, and forming
intimacies with half the ladies of Mordasoff.

He was a kind-hearted, good sort of a man, but, of course, not without
certain princely failings, which, however, were accounted here to be
nothing but evidences of the highest breeding, and for this reason caused a
good effect instead of aversion. The ladies, especially, were in a state of
perpetual ecstasy over their dear guest. They cherished the fondest and
tenderest recollections of him. There were also strange traditions and
rumours about the prince. It was said that he spent more than half the day at
his toilet table; and that he was, in fact, made up of all sorts of little bits. No
one could say when or how he had managed to fall to pieces so completely.

He wore a wig, whiskers, moustache, and even an “espagnole,” all false to a
hair, and of a lovely raven black; besides which he painted and rouged
every day. It was even said that he managed to do away with his wrinkles
by means of hidden springs—hidden somehow in his wig. It was said,
further, that he wore stays, in consequence of the want of a rib which he had
lost in Italy, through being caused to fly, involuntarily, out of a window
during a certain love affair. He limped with his left foot, and it was
whispered that the said foot was a cork one—a very scientific member,
made for him in place of the real one which came to grief during another
love affair, in Paris this time. But what will not people say? At all events, I
know for a fact that his right eye was a glass one; beautifully made, I
confess, but still—glass. His teeth were false too.

For whole days at a time he used to wash himself in all sorts of patent
waters and scents and pomades.

However, no one could deny that even then he was beginning to indulge in
senile drivel and chatter. It appeared his career was about over; he had seen
his best days, everyone knew that he had not a copeck left in the world!

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, an old relative of his—who had always
lived in Paris, but from whom he never had had the slightest hope of
inheritance—died, after having buried her legal heir exactly a month
before! The prince, to his utter astonishment, turned out to be the next heir,
and a beautiful property of four thousand serfs, just forty miles from
Mordasoff, became his—absolutely and unquestionably!

He immediately started off to Petersburg, to see to his affairs. Before he
departed, however, the ladies of our town gave him a magnificent
subscription banquet. They tell how bewitching and delightful the prince
was at this last dinner; how he punned and joked and told the most unusual
stories; and how he promised to come to Donchanovo (his new property)
very soon, and gave his word that on his arrival he would give endless balls
and garden parties and picnics and fireworks and entertainments of all
kinds, for his friends here.

For a whole year after his departure, the ladies of the place talked of
nothing but these promised festivities; and awaited the arrival of the “dear
old man” with the utmost impatience. At last the prince arrived; but to the
disappointment and astonishment of everyone, he did not even call in at
Mordasoff on the way; and on his arrival at Donchanovo he shut himself up
there, as I have expressed it before, like a very hermit.

All sorts of fantastic rumours were bruited about, and from this time the
prince's life and history became most secret, mysterious, and
incomprehensible.

In the first place, it was declared that the prince had not been very
successful in St. Petersburg; that many of his relations—future heirs and
heirs presumptive, and so on, had wished to put the Prince under some kind
of restraint, on the plea of “feebleness of intellect;” probably fearing that he
would run through this property as he had done with the last! And more,
some of them went so far as to suggest that he should be popped into a
lunatic asylum; and he was only saved by the interference of one of the
nearest of kin, who pointed out that the poor old prince was more than half
dead already, and that the rest of him must inevitably soon die too; and that
then the property would come down to them safely enough without the need
of the lunatic asylum. I repeat, what will not people say? Especially at our
place, Mordasoff! All this, it was said, had frightened the prince dreadfully;
so that his nature seemed to change entirely, and he came down to live a
hermit life at Donchanovo.

Some of our Mordasoff folk went over to welcome him on his arrival; but
they were either not received at all or received in the strangest fashion. The
prince did not recognise his old friends: many people explained that he did

not wish to recognise them. Among other visitors to Donchanovo was the
Governor.

On the return of the latter from his visit, he declared that the prince was
undoubtedly a little “off his head.” The Governor always made a face if
anyone reminded him of this visit of his to Donchanovo. The ladies were
dreadfully offended.

At last an important fact was revealed: namely, that there was with the
prince, and apparently in authority over him, some unknown person of the
name of Stepanida Matveyevna, who had come down with him from St.
Petersburg; an elderly fat woman in a calico dress, who went about with the
house-keys in her hand; and that the prince obeyed this woman like a little
child, and did not dare take a step without her leave; that she washed him
and dressed him and soothed and petted him just like a nurse with a baby;
and lastly, that she kept all visitors away from him, even relations—who,
little by little, had begun to pervade the place rather too frequently, for the
purpose of seeing that all was right.

It was said that this person managed not only the prince, but his estate too:
she turned off bailiffs and clerks, she encashed the rents, she looked after
things in general—and did it well, too; so that the peasants blessed their fate
under her rule.

As for the prince, it was rumoured that he spent his days now almost
entirely at his toilet-table, trying on wigs and dress-coats, and that the rest
of his time was spent playing cards and games with Stepanida Matveyevna,
and riding on a quiet old English mare. On such occasions his nurse always
accompanied him in a covered droshky, because the prince liked to ride out
of bravado, but was most unsafe in his saddle.

He had been seen on foot too, in a long great coat and a straw hat with a
wide brim; a pink silk lady's tie round his neck, and a basket on his arm for
mushrooms and flowers and berries, and so on, which he collected. The
nurse accompanied him, and a few yards behind walked a manservant,
while a carriage was in attendance on the high road at the side. When any
peasant happened to meet him, and with low bow, and hat in hand, said,
“Good morning, your highness—our beloved Sun, and Father of us all,” or

some such Russian greeting, he would stick his eye-glass in his eye, nod his
head and say, with great urbanity, and in French, “Bon jour, mon ami, bon
jour!”

Lots of other rumours there were—in fact, our folks could not forget that
the prince lived so near them.

What, then, must have been the general amazement when one fine day it
was trumpeted abroad that the prince—their curious old hermit-prince, had
arrived at Mordasoff, and put up at Maria Alexandrovna's house!

Agitation and bewilderment were the order of the day; everybody waited
for explanations, and asked one another what could be the meaning of this
mystery? Some proposed to go and see for themselves; all agreed that it was
most extraordinary. The ladies wrote notes to each other, came and
whispered to one another, and sent their maids and husbands to find out
more.

What was particularly strange was, why had the prince put up at Maria
Alexandrovna's, and not somewhere else? This fact annoyed everyone; but,
most of all, Mrs. Antipova, who happened to be a distant relative of the
prince.

However, in order to clear up all these mysteries and find an answer to all
these questions, we must ourselves go and see Maria Alexandrovna. Will
you follow me in, kind reader? It is only ten in the morning, certainly, as
you point out; but I daresay she will receive such intimate friends, all the
same. Oh, yes; she'll see us all right.

CHAPTER III.

It is ten o'clock in the morning, and we are at Maria Alexandrovna's, and in
that room which the mistress calls her “salon” on great occasions; she has a
boudoir besides.

In this salon the walls are prettily papered, and the floor is nicely painted;
the furniture is mostly red; there is a fireplace, and on the mantelpiece a
bronze clock with some figure—a Cupid—upon it, in dreadfully bad taste.
There are large looking-glasses between the windows. Against the back
wall there stands a magnificent grand piano—Zina's—for Zina is a
musician. On a table in the middle of the room hisses a silver tea-urn, with a
very pretty tea-set alongside of it.

There is a lady pouring out tea, a distant relative of the family, and living
with Maria Alexandrovna in that capacity, one Nastasia Petrovna Ziablova.
She is a widow of over thirty, a brunette with a fresh-looking face and lively
black eyes, not at all bad looking.

She is of a very animated disposition, laughs a great deal, is fond of
scandal, of course; and can manage her own little affairs very nicely. She
has two children somewhere, being educated. She would much like to
marry again. Her last husband was a military man.

Maria Alexandrovna herself is sitting at the fire in a very benign frame of
mind; she is dressed in a pale-green dress, which becomes her very well;
she is unspeakably delighted at the arrival of the Prince, who, at this
moment, is sitting upstairs, at his toilet table. She is so happy, that she does
not even attempt to conceal her joy. A young man is standing before her and
relating something in an animated way; one can see in his eyes that he
wishes to curry favour with his listener.

This young fellow is about twenty-five years old, and his manners are
decidedly good, though he has a silly way of going into raptures, and has,
besides, a good deal too much of the “funny man” about him. He is well
dressed and his hair is light; he is not a bad-looking fellow. But we have
already heard of this gentleman: he is Mr. Mosgliakoff. Maria
Alexandrovna considers him rather a stupid sort of a man, but receives him
very well. He is an aspirant for the hand of her daughter Zina, whom,
according to his own account, he loves to distraction. In his conversation,
he refers to Zina every other minute, and does his best to bring a smile to
her lips by his witty remarks; but the girl is evidently very cool and
indifferent with him. At this moment she is standing away at the side near
the piano, turning over the leaves of some book.

This girl is one of those women who create a sensation amounting almost to
amazement when they appear in society. She is lovely to an almost
impossible extent, a brunette with splendid black eyes, a grand figure and
divine bust. Her shoulders and arms are like an antique statue; her gait that
of an empress. She is a little pale to-day; but her lips, with the gleam of her
pearly teeth between them, are things to dream of, if you once get a sight of
them. Her expression is severe and serious.

Mr. Mosgliakoff is evidently afraid of her intent gaze; at all events, he
seems to cower before her when she looks at him. She is very simply
dressed, in a white muslin frock—the white suits her admirably. But then,
everything suits her! On her finger is a hair ring: it does not look as though
the hair was her mother's, from the colour. Mosgliakoff has never dared to
ask her whose hair it is. This morning she seems to be in a peculiarly
depressed humour; she appears to be very much preoccupied and silent: but
her mother is quite ready to talk enough for both; albeit she glances
continually at Zina, as though anxious for her, but timidly, too, as if afraid
of her.

“I am so pleased, Pavel Alexandrovitch,” she chirps to Mosgliakoff; “so
happy, that I feel inclined to cry the news out of the window to every
passer-by. Not to speak of the delightful surprise—to both Zina and myself
—of seeing you a whole fortnight sooner than we expected you—that, of
course, ‘goes without saying’; but I am so, so pleased that you should have

brought this dear prince with you. You don't know how I love that
fascinating old man. No, no! You would never believe it. You young people
don't understand this sort of rapture; you never would believe me, assure
you as much as ever I pleased.

“Don't you remember, Zina, how much he was to me at that time—six years
ago? Why, I was his guide, his sister, his mother! There was something
delightfully ingenuous and ennobling in our intimacy—one might say
pastoral; I don't know what to call it—it was delightful. That is why the
poor dear prince thinks of my house, and only mine, with gratitude, now. Do
you know, Pavel Alexandrovitch, perhaps you have saved him by thus
bringing him to me? I have thought of him with quaking of heart all these
six years—you'd hardly believe it,—and dreamed of him, too. They say that
wretch of a woman has bewitched and ruined him; but you've got him out
of the net at last. We must make the best of our opportunity now, and save
him outright. Do tell me again, how did you manage it? Describe your
meeting and all in detail; I only heard the chief point of the story just now,
and I do so like details. So, he's still at his toilet table now, is he?—”

“Yes. It was all just as I told you, Maria Alexandrovna!” begins
Mosgliakoff readily—delighted to repeat his story ten times over, if
required—“I had driven all night, and not slept a wink. You can imagine
what a hurry I was in to arrive here,” he adds, turning to Zina; “in a word, I
swore at the driver, yelled for fresh horses, kicked up a row at every post
station: my adventures would fill a volume. Well, exactly at six o'clock in
the morning I arrived at the last station, Igishova. ‘Horses, horses!’ I
shouted, ‘let's have fresh horses quick; I'm not going to get out.’ I frightened
the post-station man's wife out of her wits; she had a small baby in her
arms, and I have an idea that its mother's fright will affect said baby's
supply of the needful. Well, the sunrise was splendid—fine frosty morning
—lovely! but I hadn't time to look at anything. I got my horses—I had to
deprive some other traveller of his pair; he was a professor, and we nearly
fought a duel about it.

“They told me some prince had driven off a quarter of an hour ago. He had
slept here, and was driving his own horses; but I didn't attend to anything.
Well, just seven miles from town, at a turn of the road, I saw that some

surprising event had happened. A huge travelling carriage was lying on its
side; the coachman and two flunkeys stood outside it, apparently dazed,
while from inside the carriage came heart-rending lamentations and cries. I
thought I'd pass by and let them all be—; it was no affair of mine: but
humanity insisted, and would not take a denial. (I think it is Heine says that
humanity shoves its nose in everywhere!) So I stopped; and my driver and
myself, with the other fellows, lifted the carriage on to its legs again, or
perhaps I should say wheels, as it had no legs.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is that very prince they mentioned!’ So, I looked
in. Good Heavens! it was our prince! Here was a meeting, if you like! I
yelled at him, ‘Prince—uncle!’ Of course he hardly knew me at the first
glance, but he very soon recognised me. At least, I don't believe he knows
who I am really, even now; I think he takes me for someone else, not a
relation. I saw him last seven years ago, as a boy; I remember him, because
he struck me so; but how was he to remember me? At all events, I told him
my name, and he embraced me ecstatically; and all the while he himself
was crying and trembling with fright. He really was crying, I'll take my oath
he was! I saw it with my own eyes.

“Well, we talked a bit, and at last I persuaded him to get into my trap with
me, and call in at Mordasoff, if only for one day, to rest and compose his
feelings. He told me that Stepanida Matveyevna had had a letter from
Moscow, saying that her father, or daughter, or both, with all her family,
were dying; and that she had wavered for a long time, and at last
determined to go away for ten days. The prince sat out one day, and then
another, and then a third, measuring wigs, and powdering and pomading
himself; then he grew sick of it, and determined to go and see an old friend,
a priest called Misael, who lived at the Svetozersk Hermitage. Some of the
household, being afraid of the great Stepanida's wrath, opposed the prince's
proposed journey; but the latter insisted, and started last night after dinner.
He slept at Igishova, and went off this morning again, at sunrise. Just at the
turn going down to the Reverend Mr. Misael's, the carriage went over, and
the prince was very nearly shot down the ravine.”

“Then I step in and save the prince, and persuade him to come and pay a
visit to our mutual friend, Maria Alexandrovna (of whom the prince told me

that she is the most delightful and charming woman he has ever known).
And so here we are, and the prince is now upstairs attending to his wigs and
so on, with the help of his valet, whom he took along with him, and whom
he always would and will take with him wherever he goes; because he
would sooner die than appear before ladies without certain little secret
touches which require the valet's hand. There you are, that's the whole
story.”

“Why, what a humourist he is, isn't he, Zina?” said the lady of the house.
"How beautifully you told the story! Now, listen, Paul: one question;
explain to me clearly how you are related to the prince; you call him uncle!"

“I really don't know, Maria Alexandrovna; seventh, cousin I think, or
something of that sort. My aunt knows all about it; it was she who made me
go down to see him at Donchanova, when I got kicked out by Stepanida! I
simply call him ‘uncle,’ and he answers me; that's about all our
relationship.”

“Well, I repeat, it was Providence that made you bring him straight to my
house as you did. I tremble to think of what might have happened to the
poor dear prince if somebody else, and not I, had got hold of him! Why,
they'd have torn him to pieces among them, and picked his bones! They'd
have pounced on him as on a new-found mine; they might easily have
robbed him; they are capable of it. You have no idea, Paul, of the depth of
meanness and greediness to which the people of this place have fallen!”

“But, my dear good Maria Alexandrovna—as if he would ever think of
bringing him anywhere but to yourself,” said the widow, pouring out a cup
of tea; “you don't suppose he would have taken the prince to Mrs.
Antipova's, surely, do you?”

“Dear me, how very long he is coming out,” said Maria Alexandrovna,
impatiently rising from her chair; “it really is quite strange!”

“Strange! what, of uncle? Oh dear, no! he'll probably be another five hours
or so putting himself together; besides, since he has no memory whatever,
he has very likely quite forgotten that he has come to your house! Why, he's
a most extraordinary man, Maria Alexandrovna.”

“Oh don't, don't! Don't talk like that!”

“Why not, Maria Alexandrovna? He is a lump of composition, not a man at
all! Remember, you haven't seen him for six years, and I saw him half an
hour ago. He is half a corpse; he's only the memory of a man; they've
forgotten to bury him! Why, his eye is made of glass, and his leg of cork,
and he goes on wires; he even talks on wires!”

Maria Alexandrovna's face took a serious expression. “What nonsense you
talk,” she said; “and aren't you ashamed of yourself, you, a young man and
a relation too—to talk like that of a most honourable old nobleman! not to
mention his incomparable personal goodness and kindness” (her voice here
trembled with emotion). “He is a relic, a chip, so to speak, of our old
aristocracy. I know, my dear young friend, that all this flightiness on your
part, proceeds from those 'new ideas' of which you are so fond of talking;
but, goodness me, I've seen a good deal more of life than you have: I'm a
mother; and though I see the greatness and nobleness, if you like, of these
‘new ideas,’ yet I can understand the practical side of things too! Now, this
gentleman is an old man, and that is quite enough to render him ridiculous
in your eyes. You, who talk of emancipating your serfs, and ‘doing
something for posterity,’ indeed! I tell you what it is, it's your Shakespeare!
You stuff yourself full of Shakespeare, who has long ago outlived his time,
my dear Paul; and who, if he lived now, with all his wisdom, would never
make head or tail of our way of life!”

“If there be any chivalry left in our modern society, it is only in the highest
circles of the aristocracy. A prince is a prince either in a hovel or in a
palace! You are more or less a representative of the highest circles; your
extraction is aristocratic. I, too, am not altogether a stranger to the upper
ten, and it's a bad fledgling that fouls its own nest! However, my dear Paul,
you'll forget your Shakespeare yet, and you'll understand all this much
better than I can explain it. I foresee it! Besides, I'm sure you are only
joking; you did not mean what you said. Stay here, dear Paul, will you? I'm
just going upstairs to make inquiries after the prince, he may want
something.” And Maria Alexandrovna left the room hurriedly.

“Maria Alexandrovna seems highly delighted that Mrs. Antipova, who
thinks so much of herself, did not get hold of the prince!” remarked the

widow; “Mrs. Antipova must be gnashing her teeth with annoyance just
now! She's a relation, too, as I've been pointing out to Maria
Alexandrovna.”

Observing that no one answered her, and casting her eyes on Zina and
Mosgliakoff, the widow suddenly recollected herself, and discreetly left the
room, as though to fetch something. However, she rewarded herself for her
discretion, by putting her ear to the keyhole, as soon as she had closed the
door after her.

Pavel Alexandrovitch immediately turned to Zina. He was in a state of great
agitation; his voice shook.

“Zenaida Afanassievna, are you angry with me?” he began, in a timid,
beseechful tone.

“With you? Why?” asked Zina, blushing a little, and raising her magnificent
eyes to his face.

“For coming earlier. I couldn't help it; I couldn't wait another fortnight; I
dreamed of you every night; so I flew off to learn my fate. But you are
frowning, you are angry;—oh; am I really not to hear anything definite,
even now?”

Zina distinctly and decidedly frowned.

“I supposed you would speak of this,” she said, with her eyes drooped
again, but with a firm and severe voice, in which some annoyance was
perceptible; “and as the expectation of it was very tedious, the sooner you
had your say, the better! You insist upon an answer again, do you? Very
well, I say wait, just as I said it before. I now repeat, as I did then, that I
have not as yet decided, and cannot therefore promise to be your wife. You
cannot force a girl to such a decision, Pavel Alexandrovitch! However, to
relieve your mind, I will add, that I do not as yet refuse you absolutely; and
pray observe that I give you thus much hope of a favourable reply, merely
out of forced deference to your impatience and agitation; and that if I think
fit afterwards to reject you altogether, you are not to blame me for having
given you false hopes. So now you know.”

“Oh, but—but—what's the use of that? What hope am I to get out of that,
Zina?” cried Mosgliakoff in piteous tones.

“Recollect what I have said, and draw whatever you please from the words;
that's your business. I shall add nothing. I do not refuse you; I merely say—
wait! And I repeat, I reserve the free right of rejecting you afterwards if I
choose so to do. Just one more word: if you come here before the fixed time
relying on outside protection, or even on my mother's influence to help you
gain your end, let me tell you, you make a great mistake; if you worry me
now, I shall refuse you outright. I hope we understand each other now, and
that I shall hear no more of this, until the period I named to you for my
decision.” All this was said quietly and drily, and without a pause, as if
learnt by rote. Paul felt foolish; but just at this moment Maria Alexandrovna
entered the room, and the widow after her.

“I think he's just coming, Zina! Nastasia Petrovna, make some new tea
quick, please!” The good lady was considerably agitated.

“Mrs. Antipova has sent her maid over to inquire about the prince already.
How angry she must be feeling just now,” remarked the widow, as she
commenced to pass over the tea-urn.

“And what's that to me!” replied Maria Alexandrovna, over her shoulder.
“Just as though I care what she thinks! I shall not send a maid to her kitchen
to inquire, I assure you! And I am surprised, downright surprised, that, not
only you, but all the town, too, should suppose that that wretched woman is
my enemy! I appeal to you, Paul—you know us both. Why should I be her
enemy, now? Is it a question of precedence? Pooh! I don't care about
precedence! She may be first, if she likes, and I shall be readiest of all to go
and congratulate her on the fact. Besides, it's all nonsense! Why, I take her
part; I must take her part. People malign her; why do you all fall upon her
so? Because she's young, and likes to be smart; is that it? Dear me, I think
finery is a good bit better than some other failings—like Natalia
Dimitrievna's, for instance, who has a taste for things that cannot be
mentioned in polite society. Or is it that Mrs. Antipova goes out too much,
and never stays at home? My goodness! why, the woman has never had any
education; naturally she doesn't care to sit down to read, or anything of that
sort. True, she coquets and makes eyes at everybody who looks at her. But

why do people tell her that she's pretty? especially as she only has a pale
face, and nothing else to boast of.

“She is amusing at a dance, I admit; but why do people tell her that she
dances the polka so well? She wears hideous hats and things; but it's not her
fault that nature gave her no gift of good taste. She talks scandal; but that's
the custom of the place—who doesn't here? That fellow, Sushikoff, with his
whiskers, goes to see her pretty often while her husband plays cards, but
that may be merely a trumped-up tale; at all events I always say so, and take
her part in every way! But, good heavens! here's the prince at last! 'Tis he,
'tis he! I recognise him! I should know him out of a thousand! At last I see
you! At last, my Prince!” cried Maria Alexandrovna,—and she rushed to
greet the prince as he entered the room.

CHAPTER IV.

At first sight you would not take this prince for an old man at all, and it is
only when you come near and take a good look at him, that you see he is
merely a dead man working on wires. All the resources of science are
brought to bear upon this mummy, in order to give it the appearance of life
and youth. A marvellous wig, glorious whiskers, moustache and napoleon—
all of the most raven black—cover half his face. He is painted and
powdered with very great skill, so much so that one can hardly detect any
wrinkles. What has become of them, goodness only knows.

He is dressed in the pink of fashion, just as though he had walked straight
out of a tailor's fashion-page. His coat, his gloves, tie, his waistcoat, his
linen, are all in perfect taste, and in the very last mode. The prince limps
slightly, but so slightly that one would suppose he did it on purpose because
that was in fashion too. In his eye he wears a glass—in the eye which is
itself glass already.

He was soaked with scent. His speech and manner of pronouncing certain
syllables was full of affectation; and this was, perhaps, all that he retained
of the mannerisms and tricks of his younger days. For if the prince had not
quite lost his wits as yet, he had certainly parted with nearly every vestige
of his memory, which—alas!—is a thing which no amount of perfumeries
and wigs and rouge and tight-lacing will renovate. He continually forgets
words in the midst of conversation, and loses his way, which makes it a
matter of some difficulty to carry on a conversation with him. However,
Maria Alexandrovna has confidence in her inborn dexterity, and at sight of
the prince she flies into a condition of unspeakable rapture.

“Oh! but you've not changed, you've not changed a bit!” she cries, seizing
her guest by both hands, and popping him into a comfortable arm-chair. “Sit
down, dear Prince, do sit down! Six years, prince, six whole long years

since we saw each other, and not a letter, not a little tiny scrap of a note all
the while. Oh, how naughty you have been, prince! And how angry I have
been with you, my dear friend! But, tea! tea! Good Heavens, Nastasia
Petrovna, tea for the prince, quick!”

“Th—thanks, thanks; I'm very s—orry!” stammered the old man (I forgot to
mention that he stammered a little, but he did even this as though it were
the fashion to do it). “Very s—sorry; fancy, I—I wanted to co—come last
year, but they t—told me there was cho—cho—cholera here.”

“There was foot and mouth disease here, uncle,” put in Mosgliakoff, by
way of distinguishing himself. Maria Alexandrovna gave him a severe look.

“Ye—yes, foot and mouth disease, or something of that s—sort,” said the
prince; “so I st—stayed at home. Well, and how's your h—husband, my
dear Anna Nic—Nicolaevna? Still at his proc—procuror's work?”

“No, prince!” said Maria Alexandrovna, a little disconcerted. “My husband
is not a procurer.”

“I'll bet anything that uncle has mixed you up with Anna Nicolaevna
Antipova,” said Mosgliakoff, but stopped suddenly on observing the look
on Maria Alexandrovna's face.

“Ye—yes, of course, Anna Nicolaevna. A—An. What the deuce! I'm always
f—forgetting; Antipova, Antipova, of course,” continued the prince.

“No, prince, you have made a great mistake,” remarked Maria
Alexandrovna, with a bitter smile. “I am not Anna Nicolaevna at all, and I
confess I should never have believed that you would not recognise me. You
have astonished me, prince. I am your old friend, Maria Alexandrovna
Moskaloff. Don't you remember Maria Alexandrovna?”

“M—Maria Alexandrovna! think of that; and I thought she was w—what's
her name. Y—yes, Anna Vasilievna! C'est délicieux. W—why I thought you
were going to take me to this A—Anna Matveyevna. Dear me! C'est ch—
charmant! It often happens so w—with me. I get taken to the wrong house;

but I'm v—very pleased, v—very pleased! So you're not Nastasia Va—
silievna? How interesting.”

“I'm Maria Alexandrovna, prince; Maria Alexandrovna! Oh! how naughty
you are, Prince, to forget your best, best friend!”

“Ye—es! ye—yes! best friend; best friend, for—forgive me!” stammered
the old man, staring at Zina.

“That's my daughter Zina. You are not acquainted yet, prince. She wasn't
here when you were last in the town, in the year —— you know.”

“Oh, th—this is your d—daughter!” muttered the old man, staring hungrily
at Zina through his glasses. “Dear me, dear me. Ch—charmante, ch—
armante! But what a lo—ovely girl,” he added, evidently impressed.

“Tea! prince,” remarked Maria Alexandrovna, directing his attention to the
page standing before him with the tray. The prince took a cup, and
examined the boy, who had a nice fresh face of his own.

“Ah! this is your l—little boy? Wh—what a charming little b—boy! and
does he be—behave nicely?”

“But, prince,” interrupted Maria Alexandrovna, impatiently, “what is this
dreadful occurrence I hear of? I confess I was nearly beside myself with
terror when I heard of it. Were you not hurt at all? Do take care. One cannot
make light of this sort of thing.”

“Upset, upset; the c—coachman upset me!” cried the prince, with unwonted
vivacity. “I thought it was the end of the world, and I was fri—frightened
out of my wits. I didn't expect it; I didn't, indeed! and my co—oachman is
to blame for it all. I trust you, my friend, to lo—ok into the matter well. I
feel sure he was making an attempt on my life!”

“All right, all right, uncle,” said Paul; “I'll see about it. But look here—
forgive him, just this once, uncle; just this once, won't you?”

“N—not I! Not for anything! I'm sure he wants my life, he and Lavrenty
too. It's—it's the 'new ideas;' it's Com—Communism, in the fullest sense of
the word. I daren't meet them anywhere.”

“You are right, you are quite right, prince,” cried Maria Alexandrovna.
“You don't know how I suffer myself from these wretched people. I've just
been obliged to change two of my servants; and you've no idea how stupid
they are, prince.”

“Ye—yes! quite so!” said the prince, delighted—as all old men are whose
senile chatter is listened to with servility. “But I like a fl—flunky to look
stupid; it gives them presence. There's my Terenty, now. You remember
Terenty, my friend? Well, the f—first time I ever looked at him I said, ‘You
shall be my ha—hall porter.’ He's stupid, phen—phen—omenally stupid, he
looks like a she—sheep; but his dig—dignity and majesty are wonderful.
When I look at him he seems to be composing some l—learned dis—
sertation. He's just like the German philosopher, Kant, or like some fa—fat
old turkey, and that's just what one wants in a serving-man.”

Maria Alexandrovna laughed, and clapped her hands in the highest state of
ecstasy; Paul supported her with all his might; Nastasia Petrovna laughed
too; and even Zina smiled.

“But, prince, how clever, how witty, how humorous you are!” cried Maria
Alexandrovna. “What a wonderful gilt of remarking the smallest
refinements of character. And for a man like you to eschew all society, and
shut yourself up for five years! With such talents! Why, prince, you could
write, you could be an author. You could emulate Von Vezin, Gribojedoff,
Gogol!”

“Ye—yes! ye—yes!” said the delighted prince. “I can reproduce things I
see, very well. And, do you know, I used to be a very wi—witty fellow
indeed, some time ago. I even wrote a play once. There were some very
smart couplets, I remember; but it was never acted.”

“Oh! how nice it would be to read it over, especially just now, eh, Zina? for
we are thinking of getting up a play, you must know, prince, for the benefit

of the ‘martyrs of the Fatherland,’ the wounded soldiers. There, now, how
handy your play would come in!”

“Certainly, certainly. I—I would even write you another. I think I've quite
forgotten the old one. I remember there were two or three such epigrams
that (here the prince kissed his own hand to convey an idea of the exquisite
wit of his lines) I recollect when I was abroad I made a real furore. I
remember Lord Byron well; we were great friends; you should have seen
him dance the mazurka one day during the Vienna Congress.”

“Lord Byron, uncle?—Surely not!”

“Ye—yes, Lord Byron. Perhaps it was not Lord Byron, though, perhaps it
was someone else; no, it wasn't Lord Byron, it was some Pole; I remember
now. A won—der-ful fellow that Pole was! He said he was a C—Count, and
he turned out to be a c—cook—shop man! But he danced the mazurka won
—der—fully, and broke his leg at last. I recollect I wrote some lines at the
time:—

“Our little Pole
Danced like blazes.”

—How did it go on, now? Wait a minute! No, I can't remember.”

“I'll tell you, uncle. It must have been like this,” said Paul, becoming more
and more inspired:—

“But he tripped in a hole,
Which stopped his crazes.”

“Ye—yes, that was it, I think, or something very like it. I don't know,
though—perhaps it wasn't. Anyhow, the lines were very sm—art. I forget a
good deal of what I have seen and done. I'm so b—busy now!”

“But do let me hear how you have employed your time in your solitude,
dear prince,” said Maria Alexandrovna. “I must confess that I have thought
of you so often, and often, that I am burning with impatience to hear more
about you and your doings.”

“Employed my time? Oh, very busy; very busy, ge—generally. One rests,
you see, part of the day; and then I imagine a good many things.”

“I should think you have a very strong imagination, haven't you, uncle?”
remarked Paul.

“Exceptionally so, my dear fellow. I sometimes imagine things which
amaze even myself! When I was at Kadueff,—by-the-by, you were vice-
governor of Kadueff, weren't you?”

“I, uncle! Why, what are you thinking of?”

“No? Just fancy, my dear fellow! and I've been thinking all this time how f
—funny that the vice-governor of Kadueff should be here with quite a
different face: he had a fine intelligent, dig—dignified face, you know. A
wo—wonderful fellow! Always writing verses, too; he was rather like the
Ki—King of Diamonds from the side view, but—”

“No, prince,” interrupted Maria Alexandrovna. “I assure you, you'll ruin
yourself with the life you are leading! To make a hermit of oneself for five
years, and see no one, and hear no one: you're a lost man, dear prince! Ask
any one of those who love you, they'll all tell you the same; you're a lost
man!”

“No,” cried the prince, “really?”

“Yes, I assure you of it! I am speaking to you as a sister—as a friend! I am
telling you this because you are very dear to me, and because the memory
of the past is sacred to me. No, no! You must change your way of living;
otherwise you will fall ill, and break up, and die!”

“Gracious heavens! Surely I shan't d—die so soon?” cried the old man.
“You—you are right about being ill; I am ill now and then. I'll tell you all
the sy—symptoms! I'll de—detail them to you. Firstly I—”

“Uncle, don't you think you had better tell us all about it another day?” Paul
interrupted hurriedly. “I think we had better be starting just now, don't
you?”

“Yes—yes, perhaps, perhaps. But remind me to tell you another time; it's a
most interesting case, I assure you!”

“But listen, my dear prince!” Maria Alexandrovna resumed, “why don't you
try being doctored abroad?”

“Ab—road? Yes, yes—I shall certainly go abroad. I remember when I was
abroad, about '20; it was delightfully g—gay and jolly. I very nearly
married a vi—viscountess, a French woman. I was fearfully in love, but
som—somebody else married her, not I. It was a very s—strange thing. I
had only gone away for a coup—couple of hours, and this Ger—German
baron fellow came and carried her off! He went into a ma—madhouse
afterwards!”

“Yes, dear prince, you must look after your health. There are such good
doctors abroad; and—besides, the mere change of life, what will not that
alone do for you! You must desert your dear Donchanovo, if only for a
time!”

“C—certainly, certainly! I've long meant to do it. I'm going to try hy—
hydropathy!”

“Hydropathy?”

“Yes. I've tried it once before: I was abroad, you know, and they persuaded
me to try drinking the wa—waters. There wasn't anything the matter with
me, but I agreed, just out of deli—delicacy for their feelings; and I did seem
to feel easier, somehow. So I drank, and drank, and dra—ank up a whole
waterfall; and I assure you if I hadn't fallen ill just then I should have been
quite well, th—thanks to the water! But, I confess, you've frightened me so
about these ma—maladies and things, I feel quite put out. I'll come back d
—directly!”

“Why, prince, where are you off to?” asked Maria Alexandrovna in surprise.

“Directly, directly. I'm just going to note down an i—idea!”

“What sort of idea?” cried Paul, bursting with laughter.

Maria Alexandrovna lost all patience.

“I cannot understand what you find to laugh at!” she cried, as the old man
disappeared; “to laugh at an honourable old man, and turn every word of his
into ridicule—presuming on his angelic good nature. I assure you I blushed
for you, Paul Alexandrovitch! Why, what do you see in him to laugh at? I
never saw anything funny about him!”

“Well, I laugh because he does not recognise people, and talks such
nonsense!”

“That's simply the result of his sad life, of his dreadful five years' captivity,
under the guardianship of that she-devil! You should pity, not laugh at him!
He did not even know me; you saw it yourself. I tell you it's a crying shame;
he must be saved, at all costs! I recommend him to go abroad so that he
may get out of the clutches of that—beast of a woman!”

“Do you know what—we must find him a wife!” cried Paul.

“Oh, Mr. Mosgliakoff, you are too bad; you really are too bad!”

“No, no, Maria Alexandrovna; I assure you, this time I'm speaking in all
seriousness. Why not marry him off? Isn't it rather a brilliant idea? What
harm can marriage do him? On the contrary, he is in that position that such
a step alone can save him! In the first place, he will get rid of that fox of a
woman; and, secondly, he may find some girl, or better still some widow—
kind, good, wise and gentle, and poor, who will look after him as his own
daughter would, and who will be sensible of the honour he does her in
making her his wife! And what could be better for the old fellow than to
have such a person about him, rather than the—woman he has now? Of
course she must be nice-looking, for uncle appreciates good looks; didn't
you observe how he stared at Miss Zina?”

“But how will you find him such a bride?” asked Nastasia Petrovna, who
had listened intently to Paul's suggestion.

“What a question! Why, you yourself, if you pleased! and why not, pray? In
the first place, you are good-looking, you are a widow, you are generous,

you are poor (at least I don't think you are very rich). Then you are a very
reasonable woman: you'll learn to love him, and take good care of him;
you'll send that other woman to the deuce, and take your husband abroad,
where you will feed him on pudding and lollipops till the moment of his
quitting this wicked world, which will be in about a year, or in a couple of
months perhaps. After that, you emerge a princess, a rich widow, and, as a
prize for your goodness to the old gentleman, you'll marry a fine young
marquis, or a governor-general, or somebody of the sort! There—that's a
pretty enough prospect, isn't it?”

“Tfu! Goodness me! I should fall in love with him at once, out of pure
gratitude, if he only proposed to me!” said the widow, with her black eyes
all ablaze; “but, of course, it's all nonsense!”

“Nonsense, is it? Shall I make it sound sense, then, for you? Ask me
prettily, and if I don't make you his betrothed by this evening, you may cut
my little finger off! Why, there's nothing in the world easier than to talk
uncle into anything you please! He'll only say, ‘Ye—yes, ye—yes,’ just as
you heard him now! We'll marry him so that he doesn't know anything
about it, if you like? We'll deceive him and marry him, if you please! Any
way you like, it can be done! Why, it's for his own good; it's out of pity for
himself! Don't you think, seriously, Nastasia Petrovna, that you had better
put on some smart clothes in any case?”

Paul's enthusiasm amounted by now to something like madness, while the
widow's mouth watered at his idea, in spite of her better judgment.

“I know, I know I look horridly untidy!” she said. “I go about anyhow,
nowadays! There's nothing to dress for. Do I really look like a regular
cook?”

All this time Maria Alexandrovna sat still, with a strange expression on her
face. I shall not be far wrong if I say that she listened to Paul's wild
suggestion with a look of terror, almost: she was confused and startled; at
last she recollected herself, and spoke.

“All this is very nice, of course; but at the same time it is utter nonsense,
and perfectly out of the question!” she observed cuttingly.

“Why, why, my good Maria Alexandrovna? Why is it such nonsense, or
why out of the question?”

“For many reasons; and, principally because you are, as the prince is also, a
guest in my house; and I cannot permit anyone to forget their respect
towards my establishment! I shall consider your words as a joke, Paul
Alexandrovitch, and nothing more! Here comes the prince—thank
goodness!”

“Here I am!” cried the old man as he entered. “It's a wo—wonderful thing
how many good ideas of all s—sorts I'm having to-day! and another day I
may spend the whole of it without a single one! As—tonishing? not one all
day!”

“Probably the result of your accident, to-day, uncle! Your nerves got shaken
up, you see, and ——”

“Ye—yes, I think so, I think so too; and I look on the accident as pro—
fitable, on the whole; and therefore I'm going to excuse the coachman. I
don't think it was an at—tempt on my life, after all, do you? Besides, he
was punished a little while a—go, when his beard was sh—shaved off!”

“Beard shaved off? Why, uncle, his beard is as big as a German state!”

“Ye—yes, a German state, you are very happy in your ex—pressions, my
boy! but it's a fa—false one. Fancy what happened: I sent for a price-current
for false hair and beards, and found advertisements for splendid ser—vants'
and coachmen's beards, very cheap—extraordinarily so! I sent for one, and
it certainly was a be—auty. But when we wanted to clap it on the
coachman, we found he had one of his own t—twice as big; so I thought,
shall I cut off his, or let him wear it, and send this one b—back? and I
decided to shave his off, and let him wear the f—false one!”

“On the theory that art is higher than nature, I suppose uncle?”

“Yes, yes! Just so—and I assure you, when we cut off his beard he suffered
as much as though we were depriving him of all he held most dear! But we
must be go—going, my boy!”

“But I hope, dear prince, that you will only call upon the governor!” cried
Maria Alexandrovna, in great agitation. “You are mine now, Prince; you
belong to my family for the whole of this day! Of course I will say nothing
about the society of this place. Perhaps you are thinking of paying Anna
Nicolaevna a visit? I will not say a word to dissuade you; but at the same
time I am quite convinced that—time will show! Remember one thing, dear
Prince, that I am your sister, your nurse, your guardian for to-day at least,
and oh!—I tremble for you. You don't know these people, Prince, as I do!
You don't know them fully: but time will teach you all you do not know.”

“Trust me, Maria Alexandrovna!” said Paul, “it shall all be exactly as I have
promised you!”

“Oh—but you're such a weathercock! I can never trust you! I shall wait for
you at dinner time, Prince; we dine early. How sorry I am that my husband
happens to be in the country on such an occasion! How happy he would
have been to see you! He esteems you so highly, Prince; he is so sincerely
attached to you!”

“Your husband? dear me! So you have a h—husband, too!” observed the
old man.

“Oh, prince, prince! how forgetful you are! Why, you have quite, quite
forgotten the past! My husband, Afanassy Matveyevitch, surely you must
remember him? He is in the country: but you have seen him thousands of
times before! Don't you remember—Afanassy Matveyevitch!”

“Afanassy Matveyevitch. Dear me!—and in the co—country! how very
charming! So you have a husband! dear me, I remember a vaudeville very
like that, something about—

“The husband's here,
And his wife at Tvere.”

Charming, charming—such a good rhyme too; and it's a most ri—diculous
story! Charming, charming; the wife's away, you know, at Jaroslaf or Tv
—— or somewhere, and the husband is——is——Dear me! I'm afraid I've
forgotten what we were talking about! Yes, yes—we must be going, my

boy! Au revoir, madame; adieu, ma charmante demoiselle” he added,
turning to Zina, and putting the ends of her fingers to his lips.

“Come back to dinner,—to dinner, prince! don't forget to come back here
quick!” cried Maria Alexandrovna after them as they went out; “be back to
dinner!”

CHAPTER V.

“Nastasia Petrovna, I think you had better go and see what is doing in the
kitchen!” observed Maria Alexandrovna, as she returned from seeing the
prince off. “I'm sure that rascal Nikitka will spoil the dinner! Probably he's
drunk already!” The widow obeyed.

As the latter left the room, she glanced suspiciously at Maria Alexandrovna,
and observed that the latter was in a high state of agitation. Therefore,
instead of going to look after Nikitka, she went through the “Salon,” along
the passage to her own room, and through that to a dark box-room, where
the old clothes of the establishment and such things were stored. There she
approached the locked door on tiptoe; and stifling her breath, she bent to the
keyhole, through which she peeped, and settled herself to listen intently.
This door, which was always kept shut, was one of the three doors
communicating with the room where Maria Alexandrovna and Zina were
now left alone. Maria Alexandrovna always considered Nastasia an
untrustworthy sort of woman, although extremely silly into the bargain. Of
course she had suspected the widow—more than once—of eavesdropping;
but it so happened that at the moment Madame Moskaleva was too agitated
and excited to think of the usual precautions.

She was sitting in her arm-chair and gazing at Zina. Zina felt that her
mother was looking at her, and was conscious of an unpleasant sensation at
her heart.

“Zina!”

Zina slowly turned her head towards the speaker, and lifted her splendid
dark eyes to hers.

“Zina, I wish to speak to you on a most important matter!”

Zina adopted an attentive air, and sat still with folded hands, waiting for
light. In her face there was an expression of annoyance as well as irony,
which she did her best to hide.

“I wish to ask you first, Zina, what you thought of that Mosgliakoff, to-
day?”

“You have known my opinion of him for a long time!” replied Zina, surlily.

“Yes, yes, of course! but I think he is getting just a little too troublesome,
with his continual bothering you—”

“Oh, but he says he is in love with me, in which case his importunity is
pardonable!”

“Strange! You used not to be so ready to find his offences pardonable; you
used to fly out at him if ever I mentioned his name!”

“Strange, too, that you always defended him, and were so very anxious that
I should marry him!—and now you are the first to attack him!”

“Yes; I don't deny, Zina, that I did wish, then, to see you married to
Mosgliakoff! It was painful to me to witness your continual grief, your
sufferings, which I can well realize—whatever you may think to the
contrary!—and which deprived me of my rest at night! I determined at last
that there was but one great change of life that would ever save you from
the sorrows of the past, and that change was matrimony! We are not rich;
we cannot afford to go abroad. All the asses in the place prick their long
ears, and wonder that you should be unmarried at twenty-three years old;
and they must needs invent all sorts of stories to account for the fact! As if I
would marry you to one of our wretched little town councillors, or to Ivan
Ivanovitch, the family lawyer! There are no husbands for you in this place,
Zina! Of course Paul Mosgliakoff is a silly sort of a fellow, but he is better
than these people here: he is fairly born, at least, and he has 150 serfs and
landed property, all of which is better than living by bribes and corruption,
and goodness knows what jobbery besides, as these do! and that is why I
allowed my eyes to rest on him. But I give you my solemn word, I never
had any real sympathy for him! and if Providence has sent you someone

better now, oh, my dear girl, how fortunate that you have not given your
word to Mosgliakoff! You didn't tell him anything for certain to-day, did
you, Zina?”

“What is the use of beating about the bush, when the whole thing lies in a
couple of words?” said Zina, with some show of annoyance.

“Beating about the bush, Zina? Is that the way to speak to your mother? But
what am I? You have long ceased to trust to your poor mother! You have
long looked upon me as your enemy, and not as your mother at all!”

“Oh, come mother! you and I are beyond quarrelling about an expression!
Surely we understand one another by now? It is about time we did,
anyhow!”

“But you offend me, my child! you will not believe that I am ready to
devote all, all I can give, in order to establish your destiny on a safe and
happy footing!”

Zina looked angrily and sarcastically at her mother.

“Would not you like to marry me to this old prince, now, in order to
establish my destiny on a safe and happy footing?”

“I have not said a word about it; but, as you mention the fact, I will say that
if you were to marry the prince it would be a very happy thing for you, and
—”

“Oh! Well, I consider the idea utter nonsense!” cried the girl passionately.
“Nonsense, humbug! and what's more, I think you have a good deal too
much poetical inspiration, mamma; you are a woman poet in the fullest
sense of the term, and they call you by that name here! You are always full
of projects; and the impracticability and absurdity of your ideas does not in
the least discourage you. I felt, when the prince was sitting here, that you
had that notion in your head. When Mosgliakoff was talking nonsense there
about marrying the old man to somebody I read all your thoughts in your
face. I am ready to bet any money that you are thinking of it now, and that
you have come to me now about this very question! However, as your

perpetual projects on my behalf are beginning to weary me to death, I must
beg you not to say one word about it, not one word, mamma; do you hear
me? not one word; and I beg you will remember what I say!” She was
panting with rage.

“You are a child, Zina; a poor sorrow-worn, sick child!” said Maria
Alexandrovna in tearful accents. “You speak to your poor mother
disrespectfully; you wound me deeply, my dear; there is not another mother
in the world who would have borne what I have to bear from you every
day! But you are suffering, you are sick, you are sorrowful, and I am your
mother, and, first of all, I am a Christian woman! I must bear it all, and
forgive it. But one word, Zina: if I had really thought of the union you
suggest, why would you consider it so impracticable and absurd? In my
opinion, Mosgliakoff has never said a wiser thing than he did to-day, when
he declared that marriage was what alone could save the prince,—not, of
course, marriage with that slovenly slut, Nastasia; there he certainly did
make a fool of himself!”

“Now look here, mamma; do you ask me this out of pure curiosity, or with
design? Tell me the truth.”

“All I ask is, why does it appear to you to be so absurd?”

“Good heavens, mother, you'll drive me wild! What a fate!” cried Zina,
stamping her foot with impatience. “I'll tell you why, if you can't see for
yourself. Not to mention all the other evident absurdities of the plan, to take
advantage of the weakened wits of a poor old man, and deceive him and
marry him—an old cripple, in order to get hold of his money,—and then
every day and every hour to wish for his death, is, in my opinion, not only
nonsense, but so mean, so mean, mamma, that I—I can't congratulate you
on your brilliant idea; that's all I can say!”

There was silence for one minute.

“Zina, do you remember all that happened two years ago?” asked Maria
Alexandrovna of a sudden.

Zina trembled.

“Mamma!” she said, severely, “you promised me solemnly never to
mention that again.”

“And I ask you now, as solemnly, my dear child, to allow me to break that
promise, just once! I have never broken it before. Zina! the time has come
for a full and clear understanding between us! These two years of silence
have been terrible. We cannot go on like this. I am ready to pray you, on my
knees, to let me speak. Listen, Zina, your own mother who bore you
beseeches you, on her knees! And I promise you faithfully, Zina, and
solemnly, on the word of an unhappy but adoring mother, that never, under
any circumstances, not even to save my life, will I ever mention the subject
again. This shall be the last time, but it is absolutely necessary!”

Maria Alexandrovna counted upon the effect of her words, and with reason:

“Speak, then!” said Zina, growing whiter every moment.

“Thank you, Zina!——Two years ago there came to the house, to teach
your little brother Mitya, since dead, a tutor——”

“Why do you begin so solemnly, mamma? Why all this eloquence, all these
quite unnecessary details, which are painful to me, and only too well known
to both of us?” cried Zina with a sort of irritated disgust.

“Because, my dear child, I, your mother, felt in some degree bound to
justify myself before you; and also because I wish to present this whole
question to you from an entirely new point of view, and not from that
mistaken position which you are accustomed to take up with regard to it;
and because, lastly, I think you will thus better understand the conclusion at
which I shall arrive upon the whole question. Do not think, dear child, that I
wish to trifle with your heart! No, Zina, you will find in me a real mother;
and perhaps, with tears streaming from your eyes, you will ask and beseech
at my feet—at the feet of the 'mean woman,' as you have just called me,—
yes, and pray for that reconciliation which you have rejected so long! That's
why I wish to recall all, Zina, all that has happened, from the very
beginning; and without this I shall not speak at all!”

“Speak, then!” repeated Zina, cursing the necessity for her mother's
eloquence from the very bottom of her heart.

“I continue then, Zina!——This tutor, a master of the parish school, almost
a boy, makes upon you what is, to me, a totally inexplicable impression. I
built too much upon my confidence in your good sense, or your noble pride,
and principally upon the fact of his insignificance—(I must speak out!)—to
allow myself to harbour the slightest suspicion of you! And then you
suddenly come to me, one fine day, and state that you intend to marry the
man! Zina, it was putting a knife to my heart! I gave a shriek and lost
consciousness.

“But of course you remember all this. Of course I thought it my duty to use
all my power over you, which power you called tyranny. Think for yourself
—a boy, the son of a deacon, receiving a salary of twelve roubles a month
—a writer of weak verses which are printed, out of pity, in the 'library of
short readings.' A man, a boy, who could talk of nothing but that accursed
Shakespeare,—this boy to be the husband of Zenaida Moskaloff! Forgive
me, Zina, but the very thought of it all makes me wild!

“I rejected him, of course. But no power would stop you; your father only
blinked his eyes, as usual, and could not even understand what I was telling
him about. You continue your relations with this boy, even giving him
rendezvous, and, worst of all, you allow yourself to correspond with him!

“Rumours now begin to flit about town: I am assailed with hints; they blow
their trumpets of joy and triumph; and suddenly all my fears and
anticipations are verified! You and he quarrel over something or other; he
shows himself to be a boy (I can't call him a man!), who is utterly unworthy
of you, and threatens to show your letters all over the town! On hearing this
threat, you, beside yourself with irritation, boxed his ears. Yes, Zina, I am
aware of even that fact! I know all, all! But to continue—the wretched boy
shows one of your letters the very same day to that ne'er-do-well Zanshin,
and within an hour Natalie Dimitrievna holds it in her hands—my deadly
enemy! The same evening the miserable fellow attempts to put an end to
himself, in remorse. In a word, there is a fearful scandal stirred up. That
slut, Nastasia, comes panting to me with the dreadful news; she tells me that
Natalie Dimitrievna has had your letter for a whole hour. In a couple of

hours the whole town will learn of your foolishness! I bore it all. I did not
fall down in a swoon; but oh, the blows, the blows you dealt to my heart,
Zina! That shameless scum of the earth, Nastasia, says she will get the letter
back for two hundred roubles! I myself run over, in thin shoes, too, through
the snow to the Jew Baumstein, and pledge my diamond clasps—a
keepsake of my dear mother's! In a couple of hours the letter is in my
hands! Nastasia had stolen it; she had broken open a desk, and your honour
was safe!

“But what a dreadful day you had sentenced me to live! I noticed some grey
hairs among my raven locks for the first time, next morning! Zina, you have
judged this boy's action yourself now! You can admit now, and perhaps
smile a bitter smile over the admission, that it was beyond the limits of
good sense to wish to entrust your fate to this youth.

“But since that fatal time you are wretched, my child, you are miserable!
You cannot forget him, or rather not him—for he was never worthy of you,
—but you cannot forget the phantom of your past joy! This wretched young
fellow is now on the point of death—consumption, they say; and you, angel
of goodness that you are! you do not wish to marry while he is alive,
because you fear to harass him in his last days; because to this day he is
miserable with jealousy, though I am convinced that he never loved you in
the best and highest sense of the word! I know well that, hearing of
Mosgliakoff's proposal to you, he has been in a flutter of jealousy, and has
spied upon you and your actions ever since; and you—you have been
merciful to him, my child. And oh! God knows how I have watered my
pillow with tears for you!”

“Oh, mother, do drop all this sort of thing!” cried Zina, with inexpressible
agony in her tone. “Surely we needn't hear all about your pillow!” she
added, sharply. “Can't we get on without all this declamation and
pirouetting?”

“You do not believe me, Zina! Oh! do not look so unfriendly at me, my
child! My eyes have not been dry these two years. I have hidden my tears
from you; but I am changed, Zina mine, much changed and in many ways! I
have long known of your feelings, Zina, but I admit I have only lately
realized the depth of your mental anguish. Can you blame me, my child, if I

looked upon this attachment of yours as romanticism—called into being by
that accursed Shakespeare, who shoves his nose in everywhere where he
isn't wanted?

“What mother would blame me for my fears of that kind, for my measures,
for the severity of my judgment? But now, understanding as I do, and
realizing your two years' sufferings, I can estimate the depth of your real
feelings. Believe me, I understand you far better than you understand
yourself! I am convinced that you love not him—not this unnatural boy,—
but your lost happiness, your broken hopes, your cracked idol!

“I have loved too—perhaps more deeply than yourself; I, too, have suffered,
I, too, have lost my exalted ideals and seen them levelled with the earth;
and therefore who can blame me now—and, above all, can you blame me
now,—if I consider a marriage with the prince to be the one saving, the one
essential move left to you in your present position”?

Zina listened to this long declamation with surprise. She knew well that her
mother never adopted this tone without good reason. However this last and
unexpected conclusion fairly amazed her.

“You don't mean to say you seriously entertain the idea of marrying me to
this prince?” she cried bewildered, and gazing at her mother almost with
alarm; “that this is no mere idea, no project, no flighty inspiration, but your
deliberate intention? I have guessed right, then? And pray, how is this
marriage going to save me? and why is it essential to me in my present
position? And—and what has all this to do with what you have been talking
about?——I cannot understand you, mother,—not a bit!”

“And I can't understand, angel mine, how you cannot see the connection of
it all!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, in her turn. “In the first place, you would
pass into new society, into a new world. You would leave for ever this
loathsome little town, so full of sad memories for you; where you meet
neither friends nor kindness; where they have bullied and maligned you;
where all these—these magpies hate you because you are good looking!
You could go abroad this very spring, to Italy, Switzerland, Spain!—to
Spain, Zina, where the Alhambra is, and where the Guadalquiver flows—no
wretched little stream like this of ours!”

“But, one moment, mother; you talk as though I were married already, or at
least as if the prince had made me an offer!”

“Oh, no—oh dear, no! don't bother yourself about that, my angel! I know
what I'm talking about! Let me proceed. I've said my ‘firstly;’ now, then, for
my ‘secondly!’ I understand, dear child, with what loathing you would give
your hand to that Mosgliakoff!——”

“I know, without your telling me so, that I shall never be his wife!” cried
Zina, angrily, and with flashing eyes.

“If only you knew, my angel, how I understand and enter into your loathing
for him! It is dreadful to vow before the altar that you will love a man
whom you cannot love—how dreadful to belong to one whom you cannot
esteem! And he insists on your love—he only marries you for love. I can
see it by the way he looks at you! Why deceive ourselves? I have suffered
from the same thing for twenty-five years; your father ruined me—he, so to
speak, sucked up my youth! You have seen my tears many a time!——”

“Father's away in the country, don't touch him, please!” said Zina.

“I know you always take his part! Oh, Zina, my very heart trembled within
me when I thought to arrange your marriage with Mosgliakoff for financial
reasons! I trembled for the consequences. But with the prince it is different,
you need not deceive him; you cannot be expected to give him your love,
not your love—oh, no! and he is not in a state to ask it of you!”

“Good heavens, what nonsense! I do assure you you are in error from the
very first step—from the first and most important step! Understand, that I
do not care to make a martyr of myself for some unknown reason! Know,
also, that I shall not marry anyone at all; I shall remain a maid. You have
bitten my head off for the last two years because I would not marry. Well,
you must accept the fact, and make the best of it; that's all I can say, and so
it shall be!”

“But Zina, darling—my Zina, don't be so cross before you have heard me
out! What a hot-headed little person you are, to be sure! Let me show you
the matter from my point of view, and you'll agree with me—you really

will! The prince will live a year—two at most; and surely it is better to be a
young widow than a decayed old maid! Not to mention the fact that you
will be a princess—free, rich, independent! I dare say you look with
contempt upon all these calculations—founded upon his death; but I am a
mother, and what mother will blame me for my foresight?

“And if you, my angel of kindness, are unwilling to marry, even now, out of
tenderness for that wretched boy's feelings, oh, think, think how, by
marrying this prince, you will rejoice his heart and soothe and comfort his
soul! For if he has a single particle of commonsense, he must understand
that jealousy of this old man were too absurd—too ridiculous! He will
understand that you marry him—for money, for convenience; that stern
necessity compels you to it!

“And lastly, he will understand that—that,—well I simply wish to say, that,
upon the prince's death, you will be at liberty to marry whomsoever you
please.”

“That's a truly simple arrangement! All I have to do is to marry this prince,
rob him of his money, and then count upon his death in order to marry my
lover! You are a clever arithmetician, mamma; you do your sums and get
your totals nicely. You wish to seduce me by offering me this! Oh, I
understand you, mamma—I understand you well! You cannot resist the
expression of your noble sentiments and exalted ideas, even in the
manufacture of a nasty business. Why can't you say simply and
straightforwardly, ‘Zina, this is a dirty affair, but it will pay us, so please
agree with me?’ at all events, that would be candid and frank on your part.”

“But, my dear child, why, why look at it from this point of view? Why look
at it under the light of suspicion as deceit, and low cunning, and
covetousness? You consider my calculations as meanness, as deceit; but, by
all that is good and true, where is the meanness? Show me the deceit. Look
at yourself in the glass: you are so beautiful, that a kingdom would be a fair
price for you! And suddenly you, you, the possessor of this divine beauty,
sacrifice yourself, in order to soothe the last years of an old man's life! You
would be like a beautiful star, shedding your light over the evening of his
days. You would be like the fresh green ivy, twining in and about his old
age; not the stinging nettle that this wretched woman at his place is,

fastening herself upon him, and thirstily sucking his blood! Surely his
money, his rank are not worthy of being put in the scales beside you? Where
is the meanness of it; where is the deceit of all this? You don't know what
you are saying, Zina.”

“I suppose they are worthy of being weighed against me, if I am to marry a
cripple for them! No, mother, however you look at it, it is deceit, and you
can't get out of that!”

“On the contrary, my dear child, I can look at it from a high, almost from an
exalted—nay, Christian—point of view. You, yourself, told me once, in a fit
of temporary insanity of some sort, that you wished to be a sister of charity.
You had suffered; you said your heart could love no more. If, then, you
cannot love, turn your thoughts to the higher aspect of the case. This poor
old man has also suffered—he is unhappy. I have known him, and felt the
deepest sympathy towards him—akin to love,—for many a year. Be his
friend, his daughter, be his plaything, even, if you like; but warm his old
heart, and you are doing a good work—a virtuous, kind, noble work of love.

“He may be funny to look at; don't think of that. He's but half a man—pity
him! You are a Christian girl—do whatever is right by him; and this will be
medicine for your own heart-wounds; employment, action, all this will heal
you too, and where is the deceit here? But you do not believe me. Perhaps
you think that I am deceiving myself when I thus talk of duty and of action.
You think that I, a woman of the world, have no right to good feeling and
the promptings of duty and virtue. Very well, do not trust me, if you like:
insult me, do what you please to your poor mother; but you will have to
admit that her words carry the stamp of good sense,—they are saving
words! Imagine that someone else is talking to you, not I. Shut your eyes,
and fancy that some invisible being is speaking. What is worrying you is the
idea that all this is for money—a sort of sale or purchase. Very well, then
refuse the money, if it is so loathsome to your eyes. Leave just as much as is
absolutely necessary for yourself, and give the rest to the poor. Help him, if
you like, the poor fellow who lies there a-dying!”

“He would never accept my help!” muttered Zina, as though to herself.

“He would not, but his mother would!” said Maria Alexandrovna. “She
would take it, and keep her secret. You sold your ear-rings, a present from
your aunt, half a year or so ago, and helped her; I know all about it! I know,
too, that the woman washes linen in order to support her unfortunate son!”

“He will soon be where he requires no more help!”

“I know, I understand your hints.” Maria Alexandrovna sighed a real sigh.
“They say he is in a consumption, and must die.

“But who says so?

“I asked the doctor the other day, because, having a tender heart, Zina, I felt
interested in the poor fellow. The doctor said that he was convinced the
malady was not consumption; that it was dangerous, no doubt, but still not
consumption, only some severe affection of the lungs. Ask him yourself! He
certainly told me that under different conditions—change of climate and of
his style of living,—the sick man might well recover. He said—and I have
read it too, somewhere, that off Spain there is a wonderful island, called
Malaga—I think it was Malaga; anyhow, the name was like some wine,
where, not only ordinary sufferers from chest maladies, but even
consumptive patients, recover entirely, solely by virtue of the climate, and
that sick people go there on purpose to be cured.

“Oh, but Spain—the Alhambra alone—and the lemons, and the riding on
mules. All this is enough in itself to impress a poetical nature. You think he
would not accept your help, your money—for such a journey? Very well—
deceit is permissible where it may save a man's life.

“Give him hope, too! Promise him your love; promise to marry him when
you are a widow! Anything in the world can be said with care and tact!
Your own mother would not counsel you to an ignoble deed, Zina. You will
do as I say, to save this boy's life; and with this object, everything is
permissible! You will revive his hope; he will himself begin to think of his
health, and listen to what the doctor says to him. He will do his best to
resuscitate his dead happiness; and if he gets well again, even if you never
marry him, you will have saved him—raised him from the dead!

“I can look at him with some sympathy. I admit I can, now! Perhaps sorrow
has changed him for the better; and I say frankly, if he should be worthy of
you when you become a widow, marry him, by all means! You will be rich
then, and independent. You can not only cure him, but, having done so, you
can give him position in the world—a career! Your marriage to him will
then be possible and pardonable, not, as now, an absolute impossibility!

“For what would become of both of you were you to be capable of such
madness now? Universal contempt, beggary; smacking little boys, which is
part of his duty; the reading of Shakespeare; perpetual, hopeless life in
Mordasoff; and lastly his certain death, which will undoubtedly take place
before long unless he is taken away from here!

“While, if you resuscitate him—if you raise him from the dead, as it were,
you raise him to a good, useful, and virtuous life! He may then enter public
life—make himself rank, and a name! At the least, even if he must die, he
will die happy, at peace with himself, in your arms—for he will be by then
assured of your love and forgiveness of the past, and lying beneath the scent
of myrtles and lemons, beneath the tropical sky of the South. Oh, Zina, all
this is within your grasp, and all—all is gain. Yes, and all to be had by
merely marrying this prince.”

Maria Alexandrovna broke off, and for several minutes there was silence;
not a word was said on either side: Zina was in a state of indescribable
agitation. I say indescribable because I will not attempt to describe Zina's
feelings: I cannot guess at them; but I think that Maria Alexandrovna had
found the road to her heart.

Not knowing how her words had sped with her daughter, Maria
Alexandrovna now began to work her busy brain to imagine and prepare
herself for every possible humour that Zina might prove to be in; but at last
she concluded that she had happened upon the right track after all. Her rude
hand had touched the sorest place in Zina's heart, but her crude and absurd
sentimental twaddle had not blinded her daughter. “However, that doesn't
matter”—thought the mother. “All I care to do is to make her think; I wish
my ideas to stick!” So she reflected, and she gained her end; the effect was
made—the arrow reached the mark. Zina had listened hungrily as her
mother spoke; her cheeks were burning, her breast heaved.

“Listen, mother,” she said at last, with decision; though the sudden pallor of
her face showed clearly what the decision had cost her. “Listen mother
——” But at this moment a sudden noise in the entrance hall, and a shrill
female voice, asking for Maria Alexandrovna, interrupted Zina, while her
mother jumped up from her chair.

“Oh! the devil fly away with this magpie of a woman!” cried the latter
furiously. “Why, I nearly drove her out by force only a fortnight ago!” she
added, almost in despair. “I can't, I can't receive her now. Zina, this question
is too important to be put off: she must have news for me or she never
would have dared to come. I won't receive the old —— Oh! how glad I am
to see you, dear Sophia Petrovna. What lucky chance brought you to see
me? What a charming surprise!” said Maria Alexandrovna, advancing to
receive her guest.

Zina escaped out of the room.

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Colonel Tarpuchin, or Sophia Petrovna, was only morally like a
magpie; she was more akin to the sparrow tribe, viewed physically. She was
a little bit of a woman of fifty summers or so, with lively eyes, and yellow
patches all over her face. On her little wizened body and spare limbs she
wore a black silk dress, which was perpetually on the rustle: for this little
woman could never sit still for an instant.

This was the most inveterate and bitterest scandal-monger in the town. She
took her stand on the fact that she was a Colonel's wife, though she often
fought with her husband, the Colonel, and scratched his face handsomely on
such occasions.

Add to this, that it was her custom to drink four glasses of “vodki” at lunch,
or earlier, and four more in the evening; and that she hated Mrs. Antipova to
madness.

“I've just come in for a minute, mon ange,” she panted; “it's no use sitting
down—no time! I wanted to let you know what's going on, simply that the
whole town has gone mad over this prince. Our ‘beauties,’ you know what I
mean! are all after him, fishing for him, pulling him about, giving him
champagne—you would not believe it! would you now? How on earth you
could ever have let him out of the house, I can't understand! Are you aware
that he's at Natalia Dimitrievna's at this moment?”

“At Natalia Dimitrievna's?” cried Maria Alexandrovna jumping up. “Why,
he was only going to see the Governor, and then call in for one moment at
the Antipova's!”

“Oh, yes, just for one moment—of course! Well, catch him if you can,
there! That's all I can say. He found the Governor ‘out,’ and went on to Mrs.

Antipova's, where he has promised to dine. There Natalia caught him—she
is never away from Mrs. Antipova nowadays,—and persuaded him to come
away with her to lunch. So there's your prince! catch him if you can!”

“But how—Mosgliakoff's with him—he promised—”

“Mosgliakoff, indeed,—why, he's gone too! and they'll be playing at cards
and clearing him out before he knows where he is! And the things Natalia is
saying, too—out loud if you please! She's telling the prince to his face that
you, you have got hold of him with certain views—vous comprenez?”

“She calmly tells him this to his face! Of course he doesn't understand a
word of it, and simply sits there like a soaked cat, and says ‘Ye—yes!’ And
would you believe it, she has trotted out her Sonia—a girl of fifteen, in a
dress down to her knees—my word on it? Then she has sent for that little
orphan—Masha; she's in a short dress too,—why, I swear it doesn't reach
her knees. I looked at it carefully through my pince-nez! She's stuck red
caps with some sort of feathers in them on their heads, and set them to
dance some silly dance to the piano accompaniment for the prince's benefit!
You know his little weakness as to our sex,—well, you can imagine him
staring at them through his glass and saying, ‘Charmant!—What figures!’
Tfu! They've turned the place into a music hall! Call that a dance! I was at
school at Madame Jarne's, I know, and there were plenty of princesses and
countesses there with me, too; and I know I danced before senators and
councillors, and earned their applause, too: but as for this dance—it's a low
can-can, and nothing more! I simply burned with shame,—I couldn't stand
it, and came out.”

“How! have you been at Natalia Dimitrievna's? Why, you——!”

“What!—she offended me last week? is that what you you mean? Oh, but,
my dear, I had to go and have a peep at the prince—else, when should I
have seen him? As if I would have gone near her but for this wretched old
prince. Imagine—chocolate handed round and me left out. I'll let her have it
for that, some day! Well, good-bye, mon ange: I must hurry off to Akulina,
and let her know all about it. You may say good-bye to the prince; he won't
come near you again now! He has no memory left, you know, and Mrs.
Antipova will simply carry him off bodily to her house. He'll think it's all

right——They're all afraid of you, you know; they think that you want to
get hold of him—you understand! Zina, you know!”

“Quelle horreur!”

“Oh, yes, I know! I tell you—the whole town is talking about it! Mrs.
Antipova is going to make him stay to dinner—and then she'll just keep
him! She's doing it to spite you, my angel. I had a look in at her back
premises. Such arrangements, my dear. Knives clattering, people running
about for champagne. I tell you what you must do—go and grab him as he
comes out from Natalia Dimitrievna's to Antipova's to dinner. He promised
you first, he's your guest. Tfu! don't you be laughed at by this brace of
chattering magpies—good for nothing baggage, both of them. ‘Procuror's
lady,’ indeed! Why, I'm a Colonel's wife. Tfu!—Mais adieu, mon ange. I
have my own sledge at the door, or I'd go with you.”

Having got rid of this walking newspaper, Maria Alexandrovna waited a
moment, to free herself of a little of her super-abundant agitation. Mrs.
Colonel's advice was good and practical. There was no use losing time,—
none to lose, in fact. But the greatest difficulty of all was as yet unsettled.

Maria Alexandrovna flew to Zina's room.

Zina was walking up and down, pale, with hands folded and head bent on
her bosom: there were tears in her eyes, but Resolve was there too, and
sparkled in the glance which she threw on her mother as the latter entered
the room. She hastily dried her tears, and a sarcastic smile played on her
lips once more.

“Mamma,” she began, anticipating her mother's speech “you have already
wasted much of your eloquence over me—too much! But you have not
blinded me; I am not a child. To do the work of a sister of mercy, without
the slightest call thereto,—to justify one's meanness—meanness proceeding
in reality from the purest egotism, by attributing to it noble ends,—all this is
a sort of Jesuitism which cannot deceive me. Listen! I repeat, all this could
not deceive me, and I wish you to understand that!”

“But, dearest child!” began her mother, in some alarm.

“Be quiet, mamma; have patience, and hear me out. In spite of the full
consciousness that all this is pure Jesuitism, and in spite of my full
knowledge of the absolutely ignoble character of such an act, I accept your
proposition in full,—you hear me—in full; and inform you hereby, that I am
ready to marry the prince. More! I am ready to help you to the best of my
power in your endeavours to lure the prince into making me an offer. Why
do I do this? You need not know that; enough that I have consented. I have
consented to the whole thing—to bringing him his boots, to serving him; I
will dance for him, that my meanness may be in some sort atoned. I shall do
all I possibly can so that he shall never regret that he married me! But in
return for my consent I insist upon knowing how you intend to bring the
matter about? Since you have spoken so warmly on the subject—I know
you!—I am convinced you must have some definite plan of operation in
your head. Be frank for once in your life; your candour is the essential
condition upon which alone I give my consent. I shall not decide until you
have told me what I require!”

Maria Alexandrovna was so surprised by the unexpected conclusion at
which Zina arrived, that she stood before the latter some little while, dumb
with amazement, and staring at her with all her eyes. Prepared to have to
combat the stubborn romanticism of her daughter—whose obstinate
nobility of character she always feared,—she had suddenly heard this same
daughter consent to all that her mother had required of her.

Consequently, the matter had taken a very different complexion. Her eyes
sparkled with delight:

“Zina, Zina!” she cried; “you are my life, my——”

She could say no more, but fell to embracing and kissing her daughter.

“Oh, mother, I don't want all this kissing!” cried Zina, with impatience and
disgust. “I don't need all this rapture on your part; all I want is a plain
answer to my question!”

“But, Zina, I love you; I adore you, darling, and you repel me like this! I am
working for your happiness, child!”

Tears sparkled in her eyes. Maria Alexandrovna really loved her daughter,
in her own way, and just now she actually felt deeply, for once in her life—
thanks to her agitation, and the success of her eloquence.

Zina, in spite of her present distorted view of things in general, knew that
her mother loved her; but this love only annoyed her; she would much
rather—it would have been easier for her—if it had been hate!

“Well, well; don't be angry, mamma—I'm so excited just now!” she said, to
soothe her mother's feelings.

“I'm not angry, I'm not angry, darling! I know you are much agitated!” cried
Maria Alexandrovna. “You say, my child, that you wish me to be candid:
very well, I will; I will be quite frank, I assure you. But you might have
trusted me! Firstly, then, I must tell you that I have no actually organized
plan yet—no detailed plan, that is. You must understand, with that clever
little head of yours, you must see, Zina, that I cannot have such a plan, all
cut out. I even anticipate some difficulties. Why, that magpie of a woman
has just been telling me all sorts of things. We ought to be quick, by the
bye; you see, I am quite open with you! But I swear to you that the end
shall be attained!” she added, ecstatically. “My convictions are not the
result of a poetical nature, as you told me just now; they are founded on
facts. I rely on the weakness of the prince's intellect—which is a canvas
upon which one can stitch any pattern one pleases!

“The only fear is, we may be interfered with! But a fool of a woman like
that is not going to get the better of me!” she added, stamping her foot, and
with flashing eyes. “That's my part of the business, though; and to manage
it thoroughly I must begin as soon as possible—in fact, the whole thing, or
the most important part of it, must be arranged this very day!”

“Very well, mamma; but now listen to one more piece of candour. Do you
know why I am so interested in your plan of operations, and do not trust it?
because I am not sure of myself! I have told you already that I consent to
this——meanness; but I must warn you that if I find the details of your plan
of operations too dirty, too mean and repulsive, I shall not be able to stand
it, and shall assuredly throw you over. I know that this is a new pettiness, to

consent to a wicked thing and then fear the dirt in which it floats! But
what's to be done? So it will be, and I warn you!”

“But Zina, dear child, where is the wickedness in this?” asked Maria
Alexandrovna timidly. “It is simply a matter of a marriage for profit;
everybody does it! Look at it in this light, and you will see there is nothing
particular in it; it is good ‘form’ enough!”

“Oh, mamma, don't try to play the fox over me! Don't you see that I have
consented to everything—to everything? What else do you require of me?
Don't be alarmed if I call things by their proper names! For all you know it
may be my only comfort!” And a bitter smile played over her lips.

“Very well, very well, dear! we may disagree as to ideas and yet be very
fond of one another. But if you are afraid of the working of my plan, and
dread that you will see any baseness or meanness about it, leave it all to me,
dear, and I guarantee you that not a particle of dirt shall soil you! Your
hands shall be clean! As if I would be the one to compromise you! Trust me
entirely, and all shall go grandly and with dignity; all shall be done
worthily; there shall be no scandal—even if there be a whisper afterwards,
we shall all be out of the way, far off! We shall not stay here, of course! Let
them howl if they like, we won't care. Besides, they are not worth bothering
about, and I wonder at your being so frightened of these people, Zina. Don't
be angry with me! how can you be so frightened, with your proud nature?”

“I'm not frightened; you don't understand me a bit!” said Zina, in a tone of
annoyance.

“Very well, darling; don't be angry. I only talk like this because these people
about here are always stirring up mud, if they can; while you—this is the
first time in your life you have done a mean action.—Mean action! What an
old fool I am! On the contrary, this is a most generous, noble act! I'll prove
this to you once more, Zina. Firstly, then, it all depends upon the point of
view you take up——”

“Oh! bother your proofs, mother. I've surely had enough of them by now,”
cried Zina angrily, and stamped her foot on the floor.

“Well, darling, I won't; it was stupid of me—I won't!”

There was another moment's silence. Maria Alexandrovna looked into her
daughter's eyes as a little dog looks into the eyes of its mistress.

“I don't understand how you are going to set about it,” said Zina at last, in a
tone of disgust. “I feel sure you will only plunge yourself into a pool of
shame! I'm not thinking of these people about here. I despise their opinions;
but it would be very ignominious for you.”

“Oh! if that's all, my dear child, don't bother your head about it: please,
please don't! Let us be agreed about it, and then you need not fear for me.
Dear me! if you but knew, though, what things I have done, and kept my
skin whole! I tell you this is nothing in comparison with real difficulties
which I have arranged successfully. Only let me try. But, first of all we must
get the prince alone, and that as soon as possible. That's the first move: all
the rest will depend upon the way we manage this. However, I can foresee
the result. They'll all rise against us; but I'll manage them all right! I'm a
little nervous about Mosgliakoff. He——”

“Mosgliakoff!” said Zina, contemptuously.

“Yes, but don't you be afraid, Zina! I'll give you my word I'll work him so
that he shall help us himself. You don't know me yet, my Zina. My child,
when I heard about this old prince having arrived this morning, the idea, as
it were, shone out all at once in my brain! Who would have thought of his
really coming to us like this! It is a chance such as you might wait for a
thousand years in vain. Zina, my angel! there's no shame in what you are
doing. What is wrong is to marry a man whom you loathe. Your marriage
with the prince will be no real marriage; it is simply a domestic contract. It
is he, the old fool, who gains by it. It is he who is made unspeakably,
immeasurably happy. Oh! Zina, how lovely you look to-day. If I were a man
I would give you half a kingdom if you but raised your finger for it! Asses
they all are! Who wouldn't kiss a hand like this?” and Maria Alexandrovna
kissed her daughter's hand warmly. “Why, this is my own flesh and blood,
Zina. What's to be done afterwards? You won't part with me, will you? You
won't drive your old mother away when you are happy yourself? No,

darling, for though we have quarrelled often enough, you have not such
another friend as I am, Zina! You——”

“Mamma, if you've made up your mind to it all, perhaps it is time you set
about making some move in the matter. We are losing time,” said Zina,
impatiently.

“Yes, it is, it is indeed time; and here am I gabbling on while they are all
doing their best to seduce the prince away from us. I must be off at once. I
shall find them, and bring the prince back by force, if need be. Good-bye,
Zina, darling child. Don't be afraid, and don't look sad, dear; please don't! It
will be all well, nay, gloriously well! Good-bye, good-bye!”

Maria Alexandrovna made the sign of the Cross over Zina, and dashed out
of the room. She stopped one moment at her looking-glass to see that all
was right, and then, in another minute, was seated in her carriage and
careering through the Mordasoff streets. Maria Alexandrovna lived in good
style, and her carriage was always in waiting at that hour in case of need.

“No, no, my dears! it's not for you to outwit me,” she thought, as she drove
along. “Zina agrees; so half the work is done. Oh, Zina, Zina! so your
imagination is susceptible to pretty little visions, is it? and I did treat her to
a pretty little picture. She was really touched at last; and how lovely the
child looked to-day! If I had her beauty I should turn half Europe topsy-
turvy. But wait a bit, it's all right. Shakespeare will fly away to another
world when you're a princess, my dear, and know a few people. What does
she know? Mordasoff and the tutor! And what a princess she will make. I
love to see her pride and pluck. She looks at you like any queen. And not to
know her own good! However, she soon will. Wait a bit; let this old fool
die, and then the boy, and I'll marry her to a reigning prince yet! The only
thing I'm afraid of is—haven't I trusted her too much? Didn't I allow my
feelings to run away with me too far? I am anxious about her. I am anxious,
anxious!”

Thus Maria Alexandrovna reflected as she drove along. She was a busy
woman, was Maria Alexandrovna.

Zina, left alone, continued her solitary walk up and down the room with
folded hands and thoughtful brow. She had a good deal to think of! Over
and over again she repeated, “It's time—it's time—oh, it's time!” What did
this ejaculation mean? Once or twice tears glistened on her long silken
eyelashes, and she did not attempt to wipe them away.

Her mother worried herself in vain, as far as Zina was concerned; for her
daughter had quite made up her mind:—she was ready, come what might!

“Wait a bit!” said the widow to herself, as she picked her way out of her
hiding-place, after having observed and listened to the interview between
Zina and her mother. “And I was thinking of a wedding dress for myself; I
positively thought the prince would really come my way! So much for my
wedding dress—what a fool I was! Oho! Maria Alexandrovna—I'm a
baggage, am I—and a beggar;—and I took a bribe of two hundred roubles
from you, did I? And I didn't spend it on expenses connected with your
precious daughter's letter, did I? and break open a desk for your sake with
my own hands! Yes, madam; I'll teach you what sort of a baggage Nastasia
Petrovna is; both of you shall know her a little better yet! Wait a bit!”

CHAPTER VII.

Maria Alexandrovna's genius had conceived a great and daring project.

To marry her daughter to a rich man, a prince, and a cripple; to marry her
secretly, to take advantage of the senile feebleness of her guest, to marry her
daughter to this old man burglariously, as her enemies would call it,—was
not only a daring, it was a downright audacious, project.

Of course, in case of success, it would be a profitable undertaking enough;
but in the event of non-success, what an ignominious position for the
authors of such a failure.

Maria Alexandrovna knew all this, but she did not despair. She had been
through deeper mire than this, as she had rightly informed Zina.

Undoubtedly all this looked rather too like a robbery on the high road to be
altogether pleasant; but Maria Alexandrovna did not dwell much on this
thought. She had one very simple but very pointed notion on the subject:
namely, this—“once married they can't be unmarried again.”

It was a simple, but very pleasant reflection, and the very thought of it gave
Maria Alexandrovna a tingling sensation in all her limbs. She was in a great
state of agitation, and sat in her carriage as if on pins and needles. She was
anxious to begin the fray: her grand plan of operations was drawn up; but
there were thousands of small details to be settled, and these must depend
upon circumstances. She was not agitated by fear of failure—oh dear, no!
all she minded was delay! she feared the delay and obstructions that might
be put in her way by the Mordasoff ladies, whose pretty ways she knew so
well! She was well aware that probably at this moment the whole town

knew all about her present intentions, though she had not revealed them to a
living soul. She had found out by painful experience that nothing, not the
most secret event, could happen in her house in the morning but it was
known at the farthest end of the town by the evening.

Of course, no anticipation, no presentiment, deterred or deceived Maria
Alexandrovna: she might feel such sensations at times, but she despised
them. Now, this is what had happened in the town this morning, and of
which our heroine was as yet only partly informed. About mid-day, that is,
just three hours after the prince's arrival at Mordasoff, extraordinary
rumours began to circulate about the town.

Whence came they? Who spread them? None could say; but they spread
like wild-fire. Everyone suddenly began to assure his neighbour that Maria
Alexandrovna had engaged her daughter to the prince; that Mosgliakoff had
notice to quit, and that all was settled and signed, and the penniless, twenty-
three-year-old Zina was to be the princess.

Whence came this rumour? Could it be that Maria Alexandrovna was so
thoroughly known that her friends could anticipate her thoughts and actions
under any given circumstances?

The fact is, every inhabitant of a provincial town lives under a glass case;
there is no possibility of his keeping anything whatever secret from his
honourable co-dwellers in the place. They know everything; they know it,
too, better than he does himself. Every provincial person should be a
psychologist by nature; and that is why I have been surprised, often and
often, to observe when I am among provincials that there is not a great
number of psychologists—as one would expect,—but an infinite number of
dreadful asses. However, this a digression.

The rumour thus spread, then, was a thunder-like and startling shock to the
Mordasoff system. Such a marriage—a marriage with this prince—
appeared to all to be a thing so very desirable, so brilliant, that the strange
side of the affair had not seemed to strike anyone as yet!

One more circumstance must be noticed. Zina was even more detested in
the place than her mother; why, I don't know. Perhaps her beauty was the

prime cause. Perhaps, too, it was that Maria Alexandrovna was, as it were,
one of themselves, a fruit of their own soil: if she was to go away she might
even be missed; she kept the place alive more or less—it might be dull
without her! But with Zina it was quite a different matter: she lived more in
the clouds than in the town of Mordasoff. She was no company for these
good people; she could not pair with them. Perhaps she bore herself towards
them, unconsciously though, too haughtily.

And now this same Zina, this haughty girl, about whom there were certain
scandalous stories afloat, this same Zina was to become a millionaire, a
princess, and a woman of rank and eminence!

In a couple of years she might marry again, some duke, perhaps, or a
general, maybe a Governor; their own Governor was a widower, and very
fond of the ladies! Then she would be the first lady of their province! Why,
the very thought of such a thing would be intolerable: in fact, this rumour of
Zina's marriage with the prince aroused more irritation in Mordasoff than
any other piece of gossip within the memory of man!

People told each other that it was a sin and a shame, that the prince was
crazy, that the old man was being deceived, caught, robbed—anything you
like; that the prince must be saved from the bloodthirsty talons he had
floundered into; that the thing was simply robbery, immorality. And why
were any others worse than Zina? Why should not somebody else marry the
prince?

Maria Alexandrovna only guessed at all this at present—but that was quite
enough. She knew that the whole town would rise up and use all and every
means to defeat her ends. Why, they had tried to “confiscate” the prince
already; she would have to retrieve him by force, and if she should succeed
in luring or forcing him back now, she could not keep him tied to her apron-
strings for ever. Again, what was to prevent this whole troop of Mordasoff
gossips from coming en masse to her salon, under such a plausible plea,
too, that she would not be able to turn them out. She knew well that if
kicked out of the door these good people would get in at the window—a
thing which had actually happened before now at Mordasoff.

In a word, there was not an hour, not a moment to be lost; and meanwhile
things were not even begun. A brilliant idea now struck Maria
Alexandrovna. We shall hear what this idea was in its proper place,
meanwhile I will only state that my heroine dashed through the streets of
Mordasoff, looking like a threatening storm-cloud as she swept along full of
the stern and implacable resolve that the prince should come back if she had
to drag him, and fight for him; and that all Mordasoff might fall in ruins but
she should have her way!

Her first move was successful—it could not have been more so.

She chanced to meet the prince in the street, and carried him off to dinner
with her.

If my reader wishes to know how this feat was accomplished with such a
circle of enemies about and around her, and how she managed to make such
a fool of Mrs. Antipova, then I must be allowed to point out that such a
question is an insult to Maria Alexandrovna. As if she were not capable of
outwitting any Antipova that ever breathed!

She simply “arrested” the prince at her rival's very door, as he alighted there
with Mosgliakoff, in spite of the latter's terror of a scandal, and in spite of
everything else; and she popped the old man into the carriage beside her. Of
course the prince made very little resistance, and as usual, forgot all about
the episode in a couple of minutes, and was as happy as possible.

At dinner he was hilarious to a degree; he made jokes and fun, and told
stories which had no ends, or which he tacked on to ends belonging to other
stories, without remarking the fact.

He had had three glasses of champagne at lunch at Natalie Dimitrievna's.
He now took more wine, and his old head whirled with it. Maria
Alexandrovna plied him well. The dinner was very good: the mistress of the
house kept the company alive with most bewitching airs and manners,—at
least so it should have been, but all excepting herself and the prince were
terribly dull on this occasion. Zina sat silent and grave. Mosgliakoff was
clearly off his feed: he was very thoughtful; and as this was unusual Maria
Alexandrovna was considerably anxious about him. The widow looked

cross and cunning; she continually made mysterious signs to Mosgliakoff
on the sly; but the latter took no notice of them.

If the mistress herself had not been so amiable and bewitching, the dinner
party might have been mistaken for a lunch at a funeral!

Meanwhile Maria Alexandrovna's condition of mind was in reality excited
and agitated to a terrible degree. Zina alone terrified her by her tragic look
and tearful eyes. And there was another difficulty—for that accursed
Mosgliakoff would probably sit about and get in the way of business! One
could not well set about it with him in the room!

So, Maria Alexandrovna rose from the table in some agitation.

But what was her amazement, her joyful surprise, when Mosgliakoff came
up to her after dinner, of his own accord, and suddenly and most
unexpectedly informed her that he must—to his infinite regret—leave the
house on important business for a short while.

“Why, where are you going to?” she asked, with great show of regret.

“Well, you see,” began Mosgliakoff, rather disconcerted and uncomfortable,
“I have to—may I come to you for advice?”

“What is it—what is it?”

“Why, you see, my godfather Borodueff—you know the man; I met him in
the street to-day, and he is dreadfully angry with me, says I am grown so
proud, that though I have been in Mordasoff three times I have never shown
my nose inside his doors. He asked me to come in for a cup of tea at five—
it's four now. He has no children, you know,—and he is worth a million of
roubles—more, they say; and if I marry Zina—you see,—and he's seventy
years old now!”

“Why, my good boy, of course, of course!—what are you thinking of? You
must not neglect that sort of thing—go at once, of course! I thought you
looked preoccupied at dinner. You ought to have gone this morning and

shewn him that you cared for him, and so on. Oh, you boys, you boys!”
cried Maria Alexandrovna with difficulty concealing her joy.

“Thanks, thanks, Maria Alexandrovna! you've made a man of me again! I
declare I quite feared telling you—for I know you didn't think much of the
connection.—He is a common sort of old fellow, I know! So good-bye—my
respects to Zina, and apologies—I must be off, of course I shall be back
soon!”

“Good-bye—take my blessing with you; say something polite to the old
man for me; I have long changed my opinion of him; I have grown to like
the real old Russian style of the man. Au revoir, mon ami, au revoir!”

“Well, it is a mercy that the devil has carried him off, out of the way!” she
reflected, flushing with joy as Paul took his departure out of the room. But
Paul had only just reached the hall and was putting on his fur coat when to
him appeared—goodness knows whence—the widow, Nastasia Petrovna.
She had been waiting for him.

“Where are you going to?” she asked, holding him by the arm.

“To my godfather Borodueff's—a rich old fellow; I want him to leave me
money. Excuse me—I'm in rather a hurry!”

Mosgliakoff was in a capital humour!

“Oh! then say good-bye to your betrothed!” remarked the widow, cuttingly.

“And why ‘good-bye’?”

“Why; you think she's yours already, do you? and they are going to marry
her to the prince! I heard them say so myself!”

“To the prince? Oh, come now, Nastasia Petrovna!”

“Oh, it's not a case of 'come now' at all! Would you like to see and hear it
for yourself? Put down your coat, and come along here,—this way!”

“Excuse me, Nastasia Petrovna, but I don't understand what you are driving
at!”

“Oh! you'll understand fast enough if you just bend down here and listen!
The comedy is probably just beginning!”

“What comedy?”

“Hush! don't talk so loud! The comedy of humbugging you. This morning,
when you went away with the prince, Maria Alexandrovna spent a whole
hour talking Zina over into marrying the old man! She told her that nothing
was easier than to lure the prince into marrying her; and all sorts of other
things that were enough to make one sick! Zina agreed. You should have
heard the pretty way in which you were spoken of! They think you simply a
fool! Zina said plump out that she would never marry you! Listen now,
listen!”

“Why—why—it would be most godless cunning,” Paul stammered, looking
sheepishly into Nastasia's eyes.

“Well, just you listen—you'll hear that, and more besides!”

“But how am I to listen?”

“Here, bend down here. Do you see that keyhole!”

“Oh! but, Nastasia Petrovna, I can't eavesdrop, you know!”

“Oh, nonsense, nonsense! Put your pride in your pocket! You've come, and
you must listen now!”

“Well, at all events——”

“Oh! if you can't bear to be an eavesdropper, let it alone, and be made a fool
of! One goes out of one's way solely out of pity for you, and you must
needs make difficulties! What is it to me? I'm not doing this for myself! I
shall leave the house before night, in any case!”

Paul, steeling his heart, bent to the keyhole.

His pulses were raging and throbbing. He did not realise what was going
on, or what he was doing, or where he was.

CHAPTER VIII.

“So you were very gay, prince, at Natalia Dimitrievna's?” asked Maria
Alexandrovna, surveying the battlefield before her; she was anxious to
begin the conversation as innocently as possible; but her heart beat loud
with hope and agitation.

After dinner the Prince had been carried off to the salon, where he was first
received in the morning. Maria Alexandrovna prided herself on this room,
and always used it on state occasions.

The old man, after his six glasses of champagne, was not very steady on his
legs; but he talked away all the more, for the same reason.

Surveying the field of battle before the fray, Maria Alexandrovna had
observed with satisfaction that the voluptuous old man had already begun to
regard Zina with great tenderness, and her maternal heart beat high with joy.

“Oh! ch—charming—very gay indeed!” replied the prince, “and, do you
know, Nat—alia Dimitrievna is a wo—wonderful woman, a ch—charming
woman!”

Howsoever busy with her own high thoughts and exalted ideas, Maria
Alexandrovna's heart waxed wrathful to hear such a loud blast of praise on
her rival's account.

“Oh! Prince,” she began, with flashing eyes, “if Natalia Dimitrievna is a
charming woman in your eyes, then I really don't know what to think! After
such a statement, dear Prince, you must not claim to know society here—
no, no!”

“Really! You sur—pr—prise me!”

“I assure you—I assure you, mon cher Prince! Listen Zina, I must just tell
the prince that absurd story about what Natalia Dimitrievna did when she
was here last week. Dearest prince, I am not a scandal-monger, but I must, I
really must tell you this, if only to make you laugh, and to show you a
living picture, as it were, of what people are like in this place! Well, last
week this Natalia Dimitrievna came to call upon me. Coffee was brought in,
and I had to leave the room for a moment—I forget why—at all events, I
went out. Now, I happened to have remarked how much sugar there was in
the silver sugar basin; it was quite full. Well, I came back in a few minutes
—looked at the sugar basin, and!——three lumps—three little wretched
lumps at the very bottom of the basin, prince!—and she was all alone in the
room, mind! Now that woman has a large house of her own, and lots of
money! Of course this is merely a funny story—but you can judge from this
what sort of people one has to deal with here!”

“N—no! you don't mean it!” said the prince, in real astonishment. “What a
gr—eedy woman! Do you mean to say she ate it all up?”

“There, prince, and that's your ‘charming woman!’ What do you think of
that nice little bit of lady-like conduct? I think I should have died of shame
if I had ever allowed myself to do such a dirty thing as that!”

“Ye—yes, ye—yes! but, do you know, she is a real ‘belle femme’ all the
same!”

“What! Natalia Dimitrievna? My dear prince; why, she is a mere tub of a
woman! Oh! prince, prince! what have you said? I expected far better taste
of you, prince!”

“Ye—yes, tub—tub, of course! but she's a n—nice figure, a nice figure!
And the girl who danced—oh! a nice figure too, a very nice figure of a wo
—woman!”

“What, Sonia? Why she's a mere child, prince? She's only thirteen years
old.”

“Ye—yes, ye—yes, of course; but her figure de—velops very fast—
charming, charming! And the other da—ancing girl, she's de—veloping too

—nicely: she's dirty rather—she might have washed her hands, but very at
—tractive, charming!” and the prince raised his glass again and hungrily
inspected Zina. “Mais quelle charmante personne!—what a lovely girl!” he
muttered, melting with satisfaction.

“Zina, play us something, or—better still, sing us a song! How she sings,
prince! she's an artiste—a real artiste; oh if you only knew, dear prince,”
continued Maria Alexandrovna, in a half whisper, as Zina rose to go to the
piano with her stately but quiet gait and queenly composure, which
evidently told upon the old man; “if you only knew what a daughter that is
to me! how she can love; how tender, how affectionate she is to me! what
taste she has, what a heart!”

“Ye—yes! ye—yes! taste. And do you know, I have only known one
woman in all my life who could compare with her in love—liness. It was
the late C—ountess Nainsky: she died thirty years ago, a w—onderful
woman, and her beauty was quite sur—passing. She married her co—ook at
last.”

“Her cook, prince?”

“Ye—yes, her cook, a Frenchman, abroad. She bought him a count's title a
—broad; he was a good-looking fellow enough, with little moustaches
——”

“And how did they get on?”

“Oh, very well indeed; however, they p—arted very soon; they quarrelled
about some sa—sauce. He robbed her—and bo—olted.”

“Mamma, what shall I play?” asked Zina.

“Better sing us something, Zina. How she sings, prince! Do you like
music?”

“Oh, ye—yes! charming, charming. I love music pass—sionately. I knew
Beethoven, abroad.”

“Knew Beethoven!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, ecstatically. “Imagine,
Zina, the prince knew Beethoven! Oh, prince, did you really, really know
the great Beethoven?”

“Ye—yes, we were great friends, Beet—hoven and I; he was always taking
snuff—such a funny fellow!”

“What, Beethoven?”

“Yes, Beethoven; or it may have been some other German fellow—I don't
know; there are a great many Germans there. I forget.”

“Well, what shall I sing, mamma?” asked Zina again.

“Oh Zina darling, do sing us that lovely ballad all about knights, you know,
and the girl who lived in a castle and loved a troubadour. Don't you know!
Oh, prince, how I do love all those knightly stories and songs, and the
castles! Oh! the castles, and life in the middle ages, and the troubadours,
and heralds and all. Shall I accompany you, Zina? Sit down near here,
prince. Oh! those castles, those castles!”

“Ye—yes, ye—yes, castles; I love ca—astles too!” observed the prince,
staring at Zina all the while with the whole of his one eye, as if he would
like to eat her up at once. “But, good heavens,” he cried, “that song! I know
that s—song. I heard that song years—years ago! Oh! how that song
reminds me of so—omething. Oh, oh.”

I will not attempt to describe the ecstatic state of the prince while Zina sang.

She warbled an old French ballad which had once been all the fashion. Zina
sang it beautifully; her lovely face, her glorious eyes, her fine sweet
contralto voice, all this went to the prince's heart at once; and her dark thick
hair, her heaving bosom, her proud, beautiful, stately figure as she sat at the
piano, and played and sang, quite finished him. He never took his eyes off
her, he panted with excitement. His old heart, partially revivified with
champagne, with the music, and with awakening recollections (and who is
there who has no beloved memories of the past?), his old heart beat faster
and faster. It was long since it had last beat in this way. He was ready to fall

on his knees at her feet, when Zina stopped singing, and he was almost in
tears with various emotions.

“Oh, my charming, charming child,” he cried, putting his lips to her fingers,
“you have ra—vished me quite—quite! I remember all now. Oh charming,
charming child!——”

The poor prince could not finish his sentence.

Maria Alexandrovna felt that the moment had arrived for her to make a
move.

“Why, why do you bury yourself alive as you do, prince?” she began,
solemnly. “So much taste, so much vital energy, so many rich gifts of the
mind and soul—and to hide yourself in solitude all your days; to flee from
mankind, from your friends. Oh, it is unpardonable! Prince, bethink
yourself. Look up at life again with open eyes. Call up your dear memories
of the past; think of your golden youth—your golden, careless, happy days
of youth! Wake them, wake them from the dead, Prince! and wake yourself,
too; and recommence life among men and women and society! Go abroad
—to Italy, to Spain, oh, to Spain, Prince! You must have a guide, a heart
that will love and respect, and sympathize with you! You have friends;
summon them about you! Give the word, and they will rally round you in
crowds! I myself will be the first to throw up everything, and answer to
your cry! I remembered our old friendship, my Prince; and I will sacrifice
husband, home, all, and follow you. Yes, and were I but young and lovely,
like my daughter here, I would be your fellow, your friend, your wife, if you
said but the word!”

“And I am convinced that you were a most charming creature in your day,
too!” said the prince, blowing his nose violently. His eyes were full of tears.

“We live again in our children,” said Maria Alexandrovna, with great
feeling. “I, too, have my guardian angel, and that is this child, my daughter,
Prince, the partner of my heart and of all my thoughts! She has refused
seven offers because she is unwilling to leave me! So that she will go too,
when you accompany me abroad.”

“In that case, I shall certainly go abroad,” cried the prince with animation.
“As—suredly I shall go! And if only I could ve—venture to hope—oh! you
be—witching child, charming, be—witching child!” And the prince
recommenced to kiss Zina's fingers. The poor old man was evidently
meditating going down on his knees before her.

“But, Prince,” began Maria Alexandrovna again, feeling that the
opportunity had arrived for another display of eloquence. “But, Prince, you
say, ‘If only I could flatter myself into indulging any hope!’ Why, what a
strange man you are, Prince. Surely you do not suppose that you are
unworthy the flattering attention of any woman! It is not only youth that
constitutes true beauty. Remember that you are, so to speak, a chip of the
tree of aristocracy. You are a representative of all the most knightly, most
refined taste and culture and manners. Did not Maria fall in love with the
old man Mazeppa? I remember reading that Lauzun, that fascinating
marquis of the court of Louis (I forget which), when he was an old, bent
and bowed man, won the heart of one of the youngest and most beautiful
women about the court.

“And who told you you are an old man? Who taught you that nonsense? Do
men like you ever grow old? You, with your wealth of taste and wit, and
animation and vital energy and brilliant manners! Just you make your
appearance at some watering-place abroad with a young wife on your arm
—some lovely young girl like my Zina, for instance—of course I merely
mention her as an example, nothing more,—and you will see at once what a
colossal effect you will produce: you, a scion of our aristocracy; she a
beauty among beauties! You will lead her triumphantly on your arm; she,
perhaps, will sing in some brilliant assemblage; you will delight the
company with your wit. Why, all the people of the place will crowd to see
you! All Europe will ring with your renown, for every newspaper and
feuilleton at the Waters will be full of you. And yet you say, ‘If I could but
venture to hope,’ indeed!”

“The feuilletons! yes—ye—yes, and the newspapers,” said the prince,
growing more and more feeble with love, but not understanding half of
Maria Alexandrovna's tall talk. “But, my child, if you're not tired, do repeat
that song which you have just sung so cha—armingly once more.”

“Oh! but, Prince, she has other lovely songs, still prettier ones; don't you
remember L'Hirondelle? You must have heard it, haven't you?”

“Ye—yes, I remember it; at least I've for—gotten it. No, no! the one you
have just sung. I don't want the Hir—ondelle! I want that other song,”
whined the prince, just like any child.

Zina sang again.

This time the prince could not contain himself; he fell on his knees at her
feet, he cried, he sobbed:

“Oh, my beautiful chatelaine!” he cried in his shaky old voice—shaky with
old age and emotion combined. “Oh, my charming, charming chatelaine!
oh, my dear child! You have re—minded me of so much that is long, long
passed! I always thought then that things must be fairer in the future than in
the present. I used to sing duets with the vis—countess in this very ballad!
And now, oh! I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do!”

The prince panted and choked as he spoke; his tongue seemed to find it
difficult to move; some of his words were almost unintelligible. It was clear
that he was in the last stage of emotional excitement. Maria Alexandrovna
immediately poured oil on the fire.

“Why, Prince, I do believe you are falling in love with my Zina,” she cried,
feeling that the moment was a solemn one.

The prince's reply surpassed her fondest expectations.

“I am madly in love with her!” cried the old man, all animated, of a sudden.
He was still on his knees, and he trembled with excitement as he spoke. “I
am ready to give my life for her! And if only I could hope, if only I might
have a little hope—I,—but, lift me up; I feel so weak. I—if only she would
give me the hope that I might offer her my heart, I—she should sing ballads
to me every day; and I could look at her, and look and gaze and gaze at her.
——Oh, my God! my God!”

“Prince, Prince! you are offering her your hand. You want to take her from
me, my Zina! my darling, my ange, my own dear child, Zina! No, Zina, no,
I can't let you go! They must tear you from me, Zina. They must tear you
first from your mother's arms!”

Maria Alexandrovna sprang to her daughter, and caught her up in a close
embrace, conscious, withal, of serious physical resistance on Zina's part.
The fond mother was a little overdoing it.

Zina felt this with all her soul, and she looked on at the whole comedy with
inexpressible loathing.

However, she held her tongue, and that was all the fond mother required of
her.

“She has refused nine men because she will not leave me!” said Maria. “But
this time, I fear—my heart tells me that we are doomed to part! I noticed
just now how she looked at you, Prince. You have impressed her with your
aristocratic manner, with your refinement. Oh! Prince, you are going to
separate us—I feel it, I feel it!”

“I ad—ore her!” murmured the poor old man, still trembling like an
autumnal leaf.

“And you'll consent to leave your mother!” cried Maria Alexandrovna,
throwing herself upon her daughter once more. Zina made haste to bring
this, to her, painful scene to an end. She stretched her pretty hand silently to
the prince, and even forced herself to smile. The prince reverently took the
little hand into his own, and covered it with kisses.

“I am only this mo—ment beginning to live,” he mutterred, in a voice that
seemed choking with rapture and ecstasy.

“Zina,” began Maria Alexandrovna, solemnly, “look well at this man! This
is the most honest and upright and noble man of all the men I know. He is a
knight of the middle ages! But she knows it, Prince, she knows it too well;
to my grief I say it. Oh! why did you come here? I am surrendering my

treasure to you—my angel! Oh! take care of her, Prince. Her mother
entreats you to watch over her. And what mother could blame my grief!”

“Enough, mamma! that's enough,” said Zina, quietly.

“Protect her from all hurt and insult, Prince! Can I rely upon your sword to
flash in the face of the vile scandal-monger who dares to offend my Zina?”

“Enough, mother, I tell you! am I——?”

“Ye—yes, ye—yes, it shall flash all right,” said the prince. “But I want to
be married now, at once. I—I'm only just learning what it is to live. I want
to send off to Donchanovo at once. I want to send for some di—iamonds I
have there. I want to lay them at her feet.——I——”

“What noble ardour! what ecstasy of love! what noble, generous feelings
you have, Prince!” cried Maria Alexandrovna. “And you could bury
yourself—bury yourself, far from the world and society! I shall remind you
of this a thousand times! I go mad when I think of that hellish woman.”

“What could I do? I was fri—ghtened!” stammered the prince in a whining
voice: “they wanted to put me in a lu—unatic asylum! I was dreadfully
alarmed!”

“In a lunatic asylum? Ah, the scoundrels! oh, the inhuman wretches! Ah, the
low cunning of them! Yes, Prince; I had heard of it. But the lunacy was in
these people, not in you. Why, why was it—what for?”

“I don't know myself, what it was for,” replied the poor old man, feebly
sinking into his chair; “I was at a ball, don't you know, and told some an—
ecdote or other and they didn't like it; and so they got up a scandal and a ro
—ow.”

“Surely that was not all, Prince?”

“No;—the—I was playing cards with Prince Paul De—mentieff, and I was
cleared out: you see, I had two kings and three quee—ns, three kings and

two qu—eens; or I should say—one king—and some queens—I know I had
——.”

“And it was for this? Oh, the hellish inhumanity of some people! You are
weeping, Prince; but be of good cheer—it is all over now! Now I shall be at
hand, dearest Prince,—I shall not leave Zina; and we shall see which of
them will dare to say a word to you, then! And do you know, my Prince,
your marriage will expose them! it will shame them! They will see that you
are a man—that a lovely girl like our Zina would never have married a
madman! You shall raise your head proudly now, and look them straight in
the face!”

“Ye—yes; I shall look them straight in the f—ace!” murmured the prince,
slowly shutting his eyes.

Maria Alexandrovna saw that her work was done: the prince was tired out
with love and emotion. She was only wasting her eloquence!

“Prince, you are disturbed and tired, I see you are!” she said; “you must
rest, you must take a good rest after so much agitation,” she added, bending
over him maternally.

“Ye—yes, ye—yes; I should like to lie down a little,” said the old man.

“Of course, of course! you must lie down! those agitating scenes——stop, I
will escort you myself, and arrange your couch with my own hands! Why
are you looking so hard at that portrait, Prince? That is my mother's picture;
she was an angel—not a woman! Oh, why is she not among us at this joyful
moment!”

“Ye—yes; charming—charming! Do you know, I had a mother too,—a
princess, and imagine! a re—markably, a re—markably fat woman she was;
but that is not what I was going to say,——I—I feel a little weak, and——
Au revoir, my charming child—to-morrow—to-day—I will—I—I—Au
revoir, au revoir!” Here the poor old fellow tried to kiss his hand, but
slipped, and nearly fell over the threshold of the door.

“Take care, dear Prince—take care! lean on my arm!” cried Maria
Alexandrovna.

“Charming, ch—arming!” he muttered, as he left the room. “I am only now
le—learning to live!”

Zina was left alone.

A terrible oppression weighed down her heart. She felt a sensation of
loathing which nearly suffocated her. She despised herself—her cheeks
burned. With folded hands, and teeth biting hard into her lips, she stood in
one spot, motionless. The tears of shame streamed from her eyes,——and at
this moment the door opened, and Paul Mosgliakoff entered the room!

CHAPTER IX.

He had heard all—all.

He did not actually enter the room, but stood at the door, pale with
excitement and fury. Zina looked at him in amazement.

“So that's the sort of person you are!” he cried panting. “At last I have
found you out, have I?”

“Found me out?” repeated Zina, looking at him as though he were a
madman. Suddenly her eyes flashed with rage. “How dare you address me
like that?” she cried, advancing towards him.

“I have heard all!” said Mosgliakoff solemnly, but involuntarily taking a
step backwards.

“You heard? I see—you have been eavesdropping!” cried Zina, looking at
him with disdain.

“Yes, I have been eavesdropping! Yes—I consented to do a mean action,
and my reward is that I have found out that you, too, are——I don't know
how to express to you what I think you!” he replied, looking more and more
timid under Zina's eyes.

“And supposing that you have heard all: what right have you to blame me?
What right have you to speak to me so insolently, in any case?”

“I!—I? what right have I? and you can ask me this? You are going to marry
this prince, and I have no right to say a word! Why, you gave me your
promise—is that nothing?”

“When?”

“How, when?”

“Did not I tell you that morning, when you came to me with your
sentimental nonsense—did I not tell you that I could give you no decided
answer?”

“But you did not reject me; you did not send me away. I see—you kept me
hanging in reserve, in case of need! You lured me into your net! I see, I see
it all!”

An expression of pain flitted over Zina's careworn face, as though someone
had suddenly stabbed her to the heart; but she mastered her feelings.

“If I didn't turn you out of the house,” she began deliberately and very
clearly, though her voice had a scarcely perceptible tremor in it, “I refrained
from such a course purely out of pity. You begged me yourself to postpone,
to give you time, not to say you ‘No,’ to study you better, and ‘then,’ you
said, ‘then, when you know what a fine fellow I am, perhaps you will not
refuse me!’ These were your own words, or very like them, at the very
beginning of your courtship!—you cannot deny them! And now you dare to
tell me that I ‘lured you into my net,’ just as though you did not notice my
expression of loathing when you made your appearance this morning! You
came a fortnight sooner than I expected you, and I did not hide my disgust;
on the contrary, I made it evident—you must have noticed it—I know you
did; because you asked me whether I was angry because you had come
sooner than you promised! Let me tell you that people who do not, and do
not care to, hide their loathing for a man can hardly be accused of luring
that man into their net! You dare to tell me that I was keeping you in
reserve! Very well; my answer to that is, that I judged of you like this:
‘Though he may not be endowed with much intellect, still he may turn out
to be a good enough fellow; and if so, it might be possible to marry him.’
However, being persuaded, now, that you are a fool, and a mischievous fool
into the bargain,—having found out this fact, to my great joy,—it only
remains for me now to wish you every happiness and a pleasant journey.
Good-bye!”

With these words Zina turned her back on him, and deliberately made for
the door.

Mosgliakoff, seeing that all was lost, boiled over with fury.

“Oh! so I'm a fool!” he yelled; “I'm a fool, am I? Very well, good-bye! But
before I go, the whole town shall know of this! They shall all hear how you
and your mother made the old man drunk, and then swindled him! I shall let
the whole world know it! You shall see what Mosgliakoff can do!”

Zina trembled and stopped, as though to answer; but on reflection, she
contented herself by shrugging her shoulders; glanced contemptuously at
Mosgliakoff, and left the room, banging the door after her.

At this moment Maria Alexandrovna made her appearance. She heard
Mosgliakoff's exclamation, and, divining at once what had happened,
trembled with terror. Mosgliakoff still in the house, and near the prince!
Mosgliakoff about to spread the news all over the town! At this moment,
when secrecy, if only for a short time, was essential! But Maria
Alexandrovna was quick at calculations: she thought, with an eagle flight of
the mind, over all the circumstances of the case, and her plan for the
pacification of Mosgliakoff was ready in an instant!

“What is it, mon ami?” she said, entering the room, and holding out her
hand to him with friendly warmth.

“How—‘mon ami?’ ” cried the enraged Mosgliakoff. “Mon ami, indeed! the
moment after you have abused and reviled me like a pickpocket! No, no!
Not quite so green, my good lady! I'm not to be so easily imposed upon
again!”

“I am sorry, extremely sorry, to see you in such a strange condition of mind,
Paul Alexandrovitch! What expressions you use! You do not take the
trouble to choose your words before ladies—oh, fie!”

“Before ladies? Ho ho! You—you are—you are anything you like—but not
a lady!” yelled Mosgliakoff.

I don't quite know what he meant, but it was something very terrible, you
may be sure!

Maria Alexandrovna looked benignly in his face:

“Sit down!” she said, sorrowfully, showing him a chair, the same that the
old prince had reclined in a quarter of an hour before.

“But listen, will you listen, Maria Alexandrovna? You look at me just as
though you were not the least to blame; in fact, as though I were the guilty
party! Really, Maria Alexandrovna, this is a little too much of a good thing!
No human being can stand that sort of thing, Maria Alexandrovna! You
must be aware of that fact!”

“My dear friend,” replied Maria Alexandrovna—“you will allow me to
continue to call you by that name, for you have no better friend than I am!
—my friend, you are suffering—you are amazed and bewildered; your heart
is sore, and therefore the tone of your remarks to me is perhaps not
surprising. But I have made up my mind to open my heart to you, especially
as I am, perhaps, in some degree to blame before you. Sit down; let us talk
it over!”

Maria Alexandrovna's voice was tender to a sickly extent. Her face showed
the pain she was suffering. The amazed Mosgliakoff sat down beside her in
the arm-chair.

“You hid somewhere, and listened, I suppose?” she began, looking
reproachfully into his face.

“Yes I did, of course I did; and a good thing too! What a fool I should have
looked if I hadn't! At all events now I know what you have been plotting
against me!” replied the injured man, rudely; encouraging and supporting
himself by his own fury.

“And you—and you—with your principles, and with your bringing up,
could condescend to such an action—Oh, oh!”

Mosgliakoff jumped up.

“Maria Alexandrovna, this is a little too much!” he cried. “Consider what
you condescend to do, with your principles, and then judge of other
people.”

“One more question,” she continued, without replying to his outburst: “who
recommended you to be an eavesdropper; who told you anything; who is
the spy here? That's what I wish to know!”

“Oh, excuse me; that I shall not tell you!”

“Very well; I know already. I said, Paul, that I was in some degree to blame
before you. But if you look into the matter you will find that if I am to
blame it is solely in consequence of my anxiety to do you a good turn!”

“What? a good turn—me? No, no, madam! I assure you I am not to be
caught again! I'm not quite such a fool!”

He moved so violently in his arm-chair that it shook again.

“Now, do be cool, if you can, my good friend. Listen to me attentively, and
you will find that what I say is only the bare truth. In the first place I was
anxious to inform you of all that has just taken place, in which case you
would have learned everything, down to the smallest detail, without being
obliged to descend to eavesdropping! If I did not tell you all before, it was
simply because the whole matter was in an embryo condition in my mind. It
was then quite possible that what has happened would never happen. You
see, I am quite open with you.

“In the second place, do not blame my daughter. She loves you to
distraction; and it was only by the exercise of my utmost influence that I
persuaded her to drop you, and accept the prince's offer.”

“I have just had the pleasure of receiving convincing proof of her ‘love to
distraction!’ ” remarked Mosgliakoff, ironically and bitterly.

“Very well. But how did you speak to her? As a lover should speak? Again,
ought any man of respectable position and tone to speak like that? You
insulted and wounded her!”

“Never mind about my ‘tone’ now! All I can say is that this morning, when
I went away with the prince, in spite of both of you having been as sweet as
honey to me before, you reviled me behind my back like a pickpocket! I
know all about it, you see!”

“Yes, from the same dirty source, I suppose?” said Maria Alexandrovna,
smiling disdainfully. “Yes, Paul, I did revile you: I pitched into you
considerably, and I admit it frankly. But it was simply that I was bound to
blacken you before her. Why? Because, as I have said, I required her to
consent to leave you, and this consent was so difficult to tear from her!
Short-sighted man that you are! If she had not loved you, why should I have
required so to blacken your character? Why should I have been obliged to
take this extreme step? Oh! you don't know all! I was forced to use my
fullest maternal authority in order to erase you from her heart; and with all
my influence and skill I only succeeded in erasing your dear image
superficially and partially! If you saw and heard all just now, it cannot have
escaped you that Zina did not once, by either word or gesture, encourage or
confirm my words to the prince? Throughout the whole scene she said not
one word. She sang, but like an automaton! Her whole soul was in anguish,
and at last, out of pity for her, I took the prince away. I am sure, she cried,
when I left her alone! When you entered the room you must have observed
tears in her eyes?”

Mosgliakoff certainly did recall the fact that when he rushed into the room
Zina was crying.

“But you—you—why were you so against me, Maria Alexandrovna?” he
cried. “Why did you revile me and malign me, as you admit you did?”

“Ah, now that's quite a different question. Now, if you had only asked me
reasonably at the beginning, you should have had your answer long ago!
Yes, you are right. It was I, and I alone, who did it all. Do not think of Zina
in the matter. Now, why did I do it? I reply, in the first place, for Zina's sake.
The prince is rich, influential, has great connections, and in marrying him
Zina will make a brilliant match. Very well; then if the prince dies—as
perhaps he will die soon, for we are all mortal,—Zina is still young, a
widow, a princess, and probably very rich. Then she can marry whom she
pleases; she may make another brilliant match if she likes. But of course

she will marry the man she loves, and loved before, the man whose heart
she wounded by accepting the prince. Remorse alone would be enough to
make her marry the man whom she had loved and so deeply injured!”

“Hem!” said Paul, gazing at his boots thoughtfully.

“In the second place,” continued Maria, “and I will put this shortly,
because, though you read a great deal of your beloved Shakespeare, and
extract his finest thoughts and ideals, yet you are very young, and cannot,
perhaps, apply what you read. You may not understand my feelings in this
matter: listen, however. I am giving my Zina to this prince partly for the
prince's own sake, because I wish to save him by this marriage. We are old
friends; he is the dearest and best of men, he is a knightly, chivalrous
gentleman, and he lives helpless and miserable in the claws of that devil of
a woman at Donchanovo! Heaven knows that I persuaded Zina into this
marriage by putting it to her that she would be performing a great and noble
action. I represented her as being the stay and the comfort and the darling
and the idol of a poor old man, who probably would not live another year at
the most! I showed her that thus his last days should be made happy with
love and light and friendship, instead of wretched with fear and the society
of a detestable woman. Oh! do not blame Zina. She is guiltless. I am not—I
admit it; for if there have been calculations it is I who have made them! But
I calculated for her, Paul; for her, not myself! I have outlived my time; I
have thought but for my child, and what mother could blame me for this?”
Tears sparkled in the fond mother's eyes. Mosgliakoff listened in
amazement to all this eloquence, winking his eyes in bewilderment.

“Yes, yes, of course! You talk well, Maria Alexandrovna, but you forget—
you gave me your word, you encouraged me, you gave me my hopes; and
where am I now? I have to stand aside and look a fool!”

“But, my dear Paul, you don't surely suppose that I have not thought of you
too! Don't you see the huge, immeasurable gain to yourself in all this? A
gain so vast that I was bound in your interest to act as I did!”

“Gain for me! How so?” asked Paul, in the most abject state of confusion
and bewilderment.

“Gracious Heavens! do you mean to say you are really so simple and so
short-sighted as to be unable to see that?” cried Maria Alexandrovna,
raising her eyes to the ceiling in a pious manner. “Oh! youth, youth! That's
what comes of steeping one's soul in Shakespeare! You ask me, my dear
friend Paul, where is the gain to you in all this. Allow me to make a little
digression. Zina loves you—that is an undoubted fact. But I have observed
that at the same time, and in spite of her evident love, she is not quite sure
of your good feeling and devotion to her; and for this reason she is
sometimes cold and self-restrained in your presence. Have you never
observed this yourself, Paul?”

“Certainly; I did this very day; but go on, what do you deduce from that
fact?”

“There, you see! you have observed it yourself; then of course I am right.
She is not quite sure of the lasting quality of your feeling for her! I am a
mother, and I may be permitted to read the heart of my child. Now, then,
supposing that instead of rushing into the room and reproaching, vilifying,
even swearing at and insulting this sweet, pure, beautiful, proud being,
instead of hurling contempt and vituperation at her head—supposing that
instead of all this you had received the bad news with composure, with tears
of grief, maybe; perhaps even with despair—but at the same time with
noble composure of soul——”

“H'm!”

“No, no—don't interrupt me! I wish to show you the picture as it is. Very
well, supposing, then, that you had come to her and said, ‘Zina, I love you
better than my life, but family considerations must separate us; I understand
these considerations—they are devised for your greater happiness, and I
dare not oppose them. Zina, I forgive you; be happy, if you can!’—think
what effect such noble words would have wrought upon her heart!”

“Yes—yes, that's all very true, I quite understand that much! but if I had
said all this, I should have had to go all the same, without satisfaction!”

“No, no, no! don't interrupt me! I wish to show you the whole picture in all
its detail, in order to impress you fully and satisfactorily. Very well, then,

imagine now that you meet her in society some time afterwards: you meet
perhaps at a ball—in the brilliant light of a ball-room, under the soothing
strains of music, and in the midst of worldly women and of all that is gay
and beautiful. You alone are sad—thoughtful—pale,—you lean against
some pillar (where you are visible, however!) and watch her. She is
dancing. You hear the strains of Strauss, and the wit and merriment around
you, but you are sad and wretched.

“What, think you, will Zina make of it? With what sort of eyes will she gaze
on you as you stand there? ‘And I could doubt this man!’ she will think,
‘this man who sacrificed all, all, for my sake—even to the mortal wounding
of his heart!’ Of course the old love will awake in her bosom and will swell
with irresistible power!”

Maria Alexandrovna stopped to take breath. Paul moved violently from side
to side of his chair.

“Zina now goes abroad for the benefit of the prince's health—to Italy—to
Spain,” she continued, “where the myrtle and the lemon tree grow, where
the sky is so blue, the beautiful Guadalquiver flows! to the land of love,
where none can live without loving; where roses and kisses—so to speak—
breathe in the very air around. You follow her—you sacrifice your business,
friends, everything, and follow her. And so your love grows and increases
with irresistible might. Of course that love is irreproachable—innocent—
you will languish for one another—you will meet frequently; of course
others will malign and vilify you both, and call your love by baser names—
but your love is innocent, as I have purposely said; I am her mother—it is
not for me to teach you evil, but good. At all events the prince is not in the
condition to keep a very sharp look-out upon you; but if he did, as if there
would be the slightest ground for base suspicion? Well, the prince dies at
last, and then, who will marry Zina, if not yourself? You are so distant a
relative of the prince's that there could be no obstacle to the match; you
marry her—she is young still, and rich. You are a grandee in an instant!
you, too, are rich now! I will take care that the prince's will is made as it
should be; and lastly, Zina, now convinced of your loyalty and faithfulness,
will look on you hereafter as her hero, as her paragon of virtue and self-
sacrifice! Oh! you must be blind,—blind, not to observe and calculate your

own profit when it lies but a couple of strides from you, grinning at you, as
it were, and saying, ‘Here, I am yours, take me! Oh, Paul, Paul!’ ”

“Maria Alexandrovna!” cried Mosgliakoff, in great agitation and
excitement, “I see it all! I have been rude, and a fool, and a scoundrel too!”
He jumped up from his chair and tore his hair.

“Yes, and unbusinesslike, that's the chief thing—unbusinesslike, and blindly
so!” added Maria Alexandrovna.

“I'm an ass! Maria Alexandrovna,” he cried in despair. “All is lost now, and
I loved her to madness!”

“Maybe all is not lost yet!” said this successful orator softly, and as though
thinking out some idea.

“Oh! if only it could be so! help me—teach me. Oh! save me, save me!”

Mosgliakoff burst into tears.

“My dear boy,” said Maria Alexandrovna, sympathetically, and holding out
her hand, “you acted impulsively, from the depth and heat of your passion
—in fact, out of your great love for her; you were in despair, you had
forgotten yourself; she must understand all that!”

“Oh! I love her madly! I am ready to sacrifice everything for her!” cried
Mosgliakoff.

“Listen! I will justify you before her.”

“Oh, Maria Alexandrovna!”

“Yes, I will. I take it upon myself! You come with me, and you shall tell her
exactly what I said!”

“Oh, how kind, how good you are! Can't we go at once, Maria
Alexandrovna?”

“Goodness gracious, no! What a very green hand you are, Paul! She's far
too proud! she would take it as a new rudeness and impertinence! To-
morrow I shall arrange it all comfortably for you: but now, couldn't you get
out of the way somewhere for a while, to that godfather of yours, for
instance? You could come back in the evening, if you pleased; but my
advice would be to stay away!”

“Yes, yes! I'll go—of course! Good heavens, you've made a man of me
again!—Well, but look here—one more question:—What if the prince does
not die so soon?”

“Oh, my dear boy, how delightfully naïve you are! On the contrary, we must
pray for his good health! We must wish with all our hearts for long life to
this dear, good, and chivalrous old man! I shall be the first to pray day and
night for the happiness of my beloved daughter! But alas! I fear the prince's
case is hopeless; you see, they must visit the capital now, to bring Zina out
into society.—I dreadfully fear that all this may prove fatal to him;
however, we'll pray, Paul, we can't do more, and the rest is in the hands of a
kind Providence. You see what I mean? Very well—good-bye, my dear boy,
bless you! Be a man, and wait patiently—be a man, that's the chief thing! I
never doubted your generosity of character; but be brave—good-bye!” She
pressed his hand warmly, and Mosgliakoff walked out of the room on tip-
toes.

“There goes one fool, got rid of satisfactorily!” observed Maria
Alexandrovna to herself,—“but there are more behind——!”

At this moment the door opened, and Zina entered the room. She was paler
than usual, and her eyes were all ablaze.

“Mamma!” she said, “be quick about this business, or I shall not be able to
hold out. It is all so dirty and mean that I feel I must run out of the house if
it goes on. Don't drive me to desperation! I warn you—don't weary me out
—don't weary me out!”

“Zina—what is it, my darling? You—you've been listening?” cried Maria
Alexandrovna, gazing intently and anxiously at her daughter.

“Yes, I have; but you need not try to make me ashamed of myself as you
succeeded in doing with that fool. Now listen: I solemnly swear that if you
worry and annoy me by making me play various mean and odious parts in
this comedy of yours,—I swear to you that I will throw up the whole
business and put an end to it in a moment. It is quite enough that I have
consented to be a party in the main and essence of the base transactions; but
—but—I did not know myself, I am poisoned and suffocated with the
stench of it!”—So saying, she left the room and banged the door after her.

Maria Alexandrovna looked fixedly after her for a moment, and reflected.

“I must make haste,” she cried, rousing herself; “she is the greatest danger
and difficulty of all! If these detestable people do not let us alone, instead of
acting the town-criers all over the place (as I fear they are doing already!)—
all will be lost! She won't stand the worry of it—she'll drop the business
altogether!—At all hazards, I must get the prince to the country house, and
that quickly, too! I shall be off there at once, first, and bring my fool of a
husband up: he shall be made useful for once in his life! Meanwhile the
prince shall have his sleep out, and when he wakes up I shall be back and
ready to cart him away bodily!”

She rang the bell.

“Are the horses ready?” she inquired of the man.

“Yes, madam, long ago!” said the latter.

She had ordered the carriage the moment after she had taken the prince
upstairs.

Maria Alexandrovna dressed hurriedly, and then looked in at Zina's room
for a moment, before starting, in order to tell her the outlines of her plan of
operations, and at the same time to give Zina a few necessary instructions.
But her daughter could not listen to her. She was lying on her bed with face
hidden in the pillows, crying, and was tearing her beautiful hair with her
long white hands: occasionally she trembled violently for a moment, as
though a blast of cold had passed through all her veins. Her mother began to
speak to her, but Zina did not even raise her head!

Having stood over her daughter in a state of bewilderment for some little
while, Maria Alexandrovna left the room; and to make up for lost time bade
the coachman drive like fury, as she stepped into the carriage.

“I don't quite like Zina having listened!” she thought as she rattled away. “I
gave Mosgliakoff very much the same argument as to herself: she is proud,
and may easily have taken offence! H'm! Well, the great thing is to be in
time with all the arrangements,—before people know what I am up to!
Good heavens, fancy, if my fool of a husband were to be out!!”

And at the very thought of such a thing, Maria Alexandrovna's rage so
overcame her that it was clear her poor husband would fare badly for his
sins if he proved to be not at home! She twisted and turned in her place with
impatience,—the horses almost galloped with the carriage at their heels.

CHAPTER X.

On they flew.

I have said already that this very day, on her first drive after the prince,
Maria Alexandrovna had been inspired with a great idea! and I promised to
reveal this idea in its proper place. But I am sure the reader has guessed it
already!—It was, to “confiscate” the prince in her turn, and carry him off to
the village where, at this moment, her husband Afanassy Matveyevitch
vegetated alone.

I must admit that our heroine was growing more and more anxious as the
day went on; but this is often the case with heroes of all kinds, just before
they attain their great ends! Some such instinct whispered to her that it was
not safe to remain in Mordasoff another hour, if it could be avoided;—but
once in the country house, the whole town might go mad and stand on its
head, for all she cared!

Of course she must not lose time, even there! All sorts of things might
happen—even the police might interfere. (Reader, I shall never believe, for
my part, that my heroine really had the slightest fear of the vulgar police
force; but as it has been rumoured in Mordasoff that at this moment such a
thought did pass through her brain, why, I must record the fact.)

In a word she saw clearly that Zina's marriage with the prince must be
brought about at once, without delay! It was easily done: the priest at the
village should perform the ceremony; why not the day after to-morrow? or
indeed, in case of need, to-morrow? Marriages had often been brought
about in less time than this—in two hours, she had heard! It would be easy
enough to persuade the prince that haste and simplicity would be in far
better taste than all the usual pomps and vanities of common everyday
weddings. In fact, she relied upon her skill in putting the matter to the old

man as a fitting dramatic issue to a romantic story of love, and thus to touch
the most sensitive string of his chivalrous heart.

In case of absolute need there was always the possibility of making him
drunk, or rather of keeping him perpetually drunk. And then, come what
might, Zina would be a princess! And if this marriage were fated to produce
scandal among the prince's relations and friends in St. Petersburg and
Moscow, Maria Alexandrovna comforted herself with the reflection that
marriages in high life nearly always were productive of scandal; and that
such a result might fairly be looked upon as “good form,” and as peculiar to
aristocratic circles.

Besides, she felt sure that Zina need only show herself in society, with her
mamma to support her, and every one of all those countesses and princes
should very soon either acknowledge her of their own accord, or yield to
the head-washing that Maria Alexandrovna felt herself so competent to give
to any or all of them, individually or collectively.

It was in consequence of these reflections that Maria Alexandrovna was
now hastening with all speed towards her village, in order to bring back
Afanassy Matveyevitch, whose presence she considered absolutely
necessary at this crisis. It was desirable that her husband should appear and
invite the prince down to the country: she relied upon the appearance of the
father of the family, in dress-coat and white tie, hastening up to town on the
first rumours of the prince's arrival there, to produce a very favourable
impression upon the old man's self-respect: it would flatter him; and after
such a courteous action, followed by a polite and warmly-couched
invitation to the country, the prince would hardly refuse to go.

At last the carriage stopped at the door of a long low wooden house,
surrounded by old lime trees. This was the country house, Maria
Alexandrovna's village residence.

Lights were burning inside.

“Where's my old fool?” cried Maria Alexandrovna bursting like a hurricane
into the sitting-room.

“Whats this towel lying here for?—Oh!—he's been wiping his head, has he.
What, the baths again! and tea—of course tea!—always tea! Well, what are
you winking your eyes at me for, you old fool?—Here, why is his hair not
cropped? Grisha, Grisha!—here; why didn't you cut your master's hair, as I
told you?”

Maria Alexandrovna, on entering the room, had intended to greet her
husband more kindly than this; but seeing that he had just been to the baths
and that he was drinking tea with great satisfaction, as usual, she could not
restrain her irritable feelings.

She felt the contrast between her own activity and intellectual energy, and
the stolid indifference and sheep-like contentedness of her husband, and it
went to her heart!

Meanwhile the “old fool,” or to put it more politely, he who had been
addressed by that title, sat at the tea-urn, and stared with open mouth, in
abject alarm, opening and shutting his lips as he gazed at the wife of his
bosom, who had almost petrified him by her sudden appearance.

At the door stood the sleepy, fat Grisha, looking on at the scene, and
blinking both eyes at periodical intervals.

“I couldn't cut his hair as you wished, because he wouldn't let me!” he
growled at last. “ ‘You'd better let me do it!’—I said, ‘or the mistress'll be
down one of these days, and then we shall both catch it!’ ”

“No,” he says, “I want it like this now, and you shall cut it on Sunday. I like
it long!”

“What!—So you wish to curl it without my leave, do you! What an idea—
as if you could wear curls with your sheep-face underneath! Good gracious,
what a mess you've made of the place; and what's the smell—what have
you been doing, idiot, eh!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, waxing more and
more angry, and turning furiously upon the wretched and perfectly innocent
Afanassy!

“Mam—mammy!” muttered the poor frightened master of the house,
gazing with frightened eyes at the mistress, and blinking with all his might
—“mammy!”

“How many times have I dinned into your stupid head that I am not your
‘mammy.’ How can I be your mammy, you idiotic pigmy? How dare you
call a noble lady by such a name; a lady whose proper place is in the
highest circles, not beside an ass like yourself!”

“Yes—yes,—but—but, you are my legal wife, you know, after all;—so I—
it was husbandly affection you know——” murmured poor Afanassy,
raising both hands to his head as he spoke, to defend his hair from the tugs
he evidently expected.

“Oh, idiot that you are! did anyone ever hear such a ridiculous answer as
that—legal wife, indeed! Who ever heard the expression ‘legal wife,’ in
good society—nasty low expression! And how dare you remind me that I
am your wife, when I use all my power and do all I possibly can at every
moment to forget the fact, eh? What are you covering your head with your
hands for? Look at his hair—now: wet, as wet as reeds! it will take three
hours to dry that head! How on earth am I to take him like this? How can he
show his face among respectable people? What am I to do?”

And Maria Alexandrovna bit her finger-nails with rage as she walked
furiously up and down the room.

It was no very great matter, of course; and one that was easily set right; but
Maria Alexandrovna required a vent for her feelings and felt the need of
emptying out her accumulated wrath upon the head of the wretched
Afanassy Matveyevitch; for tyranny is a habit recallable at need.

Besides, everyone knows how great a contrast there is between the
sweetness and refinement shown by many ladies of a certain class on the
stage, as it were, of society life, and the revelations of character behind the
scenes at home; and I was anxious to bring out this contrast for my reader's
benefit.

Afanassy watched the movements of his terrible spouse in fear and
trembling; perspiration formed upon his brow as he gazed.

“Grisha!” she cried at last, “dress your master this instant! Dress-coat, black
trousers, white waistcoat and tie, quick! Where's his hairbrush—quick,
quick!”

“Mam—my! Why, I've just been to the bath. I shall catch cold if I go up to
town just now!”

“You won't catch cold!”

“But—mammy, my hair's quite wet!”

“We'll dry it in a minute. Here, Grisha, take this brush and brush away till
he's dry,—harder—harder—much harder! There, that's better!”

Grisha worked like a man. For the greater convenience of his herculean task
he seized his master's shoulder with one hand as he rubbed violently with
the other. Poor Afanassy grunted and groaned and almost wept.

“Now, then, lift him up a bit. Where's the pomatum? Bend your head,
duffer!—bend lower, you abject dummy!” And Maria Alexandrovna herself
undertook to pomade her husband's hair, ploughing her hands through it
without the slightest pity. Afanassy heartily wished that his shock growth
had been cut. He winced, and groaned and moaned, but did not cry out
under the painful operation.

“You suck my life-blood out of me—bend lower, you idiot!” remarked the
fond wife—“bend lower still, I tell you!”

“How have I sucked your life blood?” asked the victim, bending his head as
low as circumstances permitted.

“Fool!—allegorically, of course—can't you understand? Now, then, comb it
yourself. Here, Grisha, dress him, quick!”

Our heroine threw herself into an arm-chair, and critically watched the
ceremony of adorning her husband. Meanwhile the latter had a little

opportunity to get his breath once more and compose his feelings generally;
so that when matters arrived at the point where the tie is tied, he had even
developed so much audacity as to express opinions of his own as to how the
bow should be manufactured.

At last, having put his dress-coat on, the lord of the manor was his brave
self again, and gazed at his highly ornate person in the glass with great
satisfaction and complacency.

“Where are you going to take me to?” he now asked, smiling at his reflected
self.

Maria Alexandrovna could not believe her ears.

“What—what? How dare you ask me where I am taking you to, sir!”

“But—mammy—I must know, you know——”

“Hold your tongue! You let me hear you call me mammy again, especially
where we are going to now! you sha'n't have any tea for a month!”

The frightened consort held his peace.

“Look at that, now! You haven't got a single 'order' to put on—sloven!” she
continued, looking at his black coat with contempt.

“The Government awards orders, mammy; and I am not a sloven, but a
town councillor!” said Afanassy, with a sudden excess of noble wrath.

“What, what—what! So you've learned to argue now, have you—you
mongrel, you? However, I haven't time to waste over you now, or I'd——
but I sha'n't forget it. Here, Grisha, give him his fur coat and his hat—quick;
and look here, Grisha, when I'm gone, get these three rooms ready, and the
green room, and the corner bedroom. Quick—find your broom; take the
coverings off the looking-glasses and clocks, and see that all is ready and
tidy within an hour. Put on a dress coat, and see that the other men have
gloves: don't lose time. Quick, now!”

She entered the carriage, followed by Afanassy. The latter sat bewildered
and lost.

Meanwhile Maria Alexandrovna reflected as to how best she could drum
into her husband's thick skull certain essential instructions with regard to
the present situation of affairs. But Afanassy anticipated her.

“I had a very original dream to-day, Maria Alexandrovna,” he observed
quite unexpectedly, in the middle of a long silence.

“Tfu! idiot. I thought you were going to say something of terrific interest,
from the look of you. Dream, indeed! How dare you mention your
miserable dreams to me! Original, too! Listen here: if you dare so much as
remind me of the word ‘dream,’ or say anything else, either, where we are
going to-day, I—I don't know what I won't do to you! Now, look here:
Prince K. has arrived at my house. Do you remember Prince K.?”

“Oh, yes, mammy, I remember; and why has he done us this honour?”

“Be quiet; that's not your business. Now, you are to invite him, with all the
amiability you can, to come down to our house in the country, at once! That
is what I am taking you up for. And if you dare so much as breathe another
word of any kind, either to-day or to-morrow, or next day, without leave
from me, you shall herd geese for a whole year. You're not to say a single
word, mind! and that's all you have to think of. Do you understand, now?”

“Well, but if I'm asked anything?”

“Hold your tongue all the same!”

“Oh, but I can't do that—I can't do——”

“Very well, then; you can say ‘H'm,’ or something of that sort, to give them
the idea that you are very wise indeed, and like to think well before
answering.”

“H'm.”

“Understand me, now. I am taking you up because you are to make it
appear that you have just heard of the prince's visit, and have hastened up to
town in a transport of joy to express your unbounded respect and gratitude
to him, and to invite him at once to your country house! Do you understand
me?”

“H'm.”

“I don't want you to say ‘H'm’ now, you fool! You must answer me when I
speak!”

“All right—all right, mammy. All shall be as you wish; but why am I to ask
the prince down?”

“What—what! arguing again. What business is it of yours why you are to
invite him? How dare you ask questions!”

“Why it's all the same thing, mammy. How am I to invite him if I must not
say a word?”

“Oh, I shall do all the talking. All you have to do is to bow. Do you hear?
Bow; and hold your hat in your hand and look polite. Do you understand, or
not?”

“I understand, mam—Maria-Alexandrovna.”

“The prince is very witty, indeed; so mind, if he says anything either to
yourself or anyone else, you are to laugh cordially and merrily. Do you hear
me?”

“H'm.”

“Don't say ‘H'm’ to me, I tell you. You are to answer me plainly and simply.
Do you hear me, or not?”

“Yes, yes; I hear you, of course. That's all right. I only say ‘H'm,’ for
practice; I want to get into the way of saying it. But look here, mammy, it's
all very well; you say I'm not to speak, and if he speaks to me I'm to look at
him and laugh—but what if he asks me a question?”

“Oh—you dense log of a man! I tell you again, you are to be quiet. I'll
answer for you. You have simply got to look polite, and smile!”

“But he'll think I am dumb!” said Afanassy.

“Well, and what if he does. Let him! You'll conceal the fact that you are a
fool, anyhow!”

“H'm, and if other people ask me questions?”

“No one will; there'll be no one to ask you. But if there should be anyone
else in the room, and they ask you questions, all you have to do is to smile
sarcastically. Do you know what a sarcastic smile is?”

“What, a witty sort of smile, is it, mammy?”

“I'll let you know about it! Witty, indeed! Why, who would think of
expecting anything witty from a fool like you. No, sir, a jesting smile—
jesting and contemptuous!”

“H'm.”

“Good heavens. I'm afraid for this idiot,” thought Maria Alexandrovna to
herself. “I really think it would have been almost better to leave him behind,
after all.” So thinking, nervous and anxious, Maria Alexandrovna drove on.
She looked out of the window, and she fidgeted, and she bustled the
coachman up. The horses were almost flying through the air; but to her they
appeared to be crawling. Afanassy sat silent and thoughtful in the corner of
the carriage, practising his lessons. At last the carriage arrived at the town
house.

Hardly, however, had Maria Alexandrovna mounted the outer steps when
she became aware of a fine pair of horses trotting up—drawing a smart
sledge with a hood to it. In fact, the very “turn-out” in which Anna
Nicolaevna Antipova was generally to be seen.

Two ladies sat in the sledge. One of these was, of course, Mrs. Antipova
herself; the other was Natalia Dimitrievna, of late the great friend and ally

of the former lady.

Maria Alexandrovna's heart sank.

But she had no time to say a word, before another smart vehicle drove up,
in which there reclined yet another guest. Exclamations of joy and delight
were now heard.

“Maria Alexandrovna! and Afanassy Matveyevitch! Just arrived, too!
Where from? How extremely delightful! And here we are, you see, just
driven up at the right moment. We are going to spend the evening with you.
What a delightful surprise.”

The guests alighted and fluttered up the steps like so many swallows.

Maria Alexandrovna could neither believe her eyes nor her ears.

“Curse you all!” she said to herself. “This looks like a plot—it must be seen
to; but it takes more than a flight of magpies like you to get to windward of
me. Wait a little!!”

CHAPTER XI.

Mosgliakoff went out from Maria Alexandrovna's house to all appearances
quite pacified. She had fired his ardour completely. His imagination was
kindled.

He did not go to his godfather's, for he felt the need of solitude. A terrific
rush of heroic and romantic thoughts surged over him, and gave him no
rest.

He pictured to himself the solemn explanation he should have with Zina,
then the generous throbs of his all-forgiving heart; his pallor and despair at
the future ball in St. Petersburg; then Spain, the Guadalquiver, and love, and
the old dying prince joining their hands with his last blessing. Then came
thoughts of his beautiful wife, devoted to himself, and never ceasing to
wonder at and admire her husband's heroism and exalted refinement of taste
and conduct. Then, among other things, the attention which he should
attract among the ladies of the highest circles, into which he would of
course enter, thanks to his marriage with Zina—widow of the Prince K.:
then the inevitable appointments, first as a vice-governor, with the
delightful accompaniment of salary: in a word, all, all that Maria
Alexandrovna's eloquence had pictured to his imagination, now marched in
triumphant procession through his brain, soothing and attracting and
flattering his self-love.

And yet—(I really cannot explain this phenomenon, however!)—and yet,
no sooner did the first flush of this delightful sunrise of future delights pass
off and fade away, than the annoying thought struck him: this is all very
well, but it is in the future: and now, to-day, I shall look a dreadful fool. As
he reflected thus, he looked up and found that he had wandered a long way,
to some of the dirty back slums of the town. A wet snow was falling; now
and again he met another belated pedestrian like himself. The outer

circumstances began to anger Mosgliakoff, which was a bad sign; for when
things are going well with us we are always inclined to see everything in a
rose-coloured light.

Paul could not help remembering that up to now he had been in the habit of
cutting a dash at Mordasoff. He had enjoyed being treated at all the houses
he went to in the town, as Zina's accepted lover, and to be congratulated, as
he often was, upon the honour of that distinction. He was proud of being
her future husband; and here he was now with notice to quit. He would be
laughed at. He couldn't tell everybody about the future scene in the ball-
room at St. Petersburg, and the Guadalquiver, and all that! And then a
thought came out into prominence, which had been uncomfortably fidgeting
about in his brain for some time: “Was it all true? Would it really come
about as Maria Alexandrovna had predicted?”

Here it struck him that Maria Alexandrovna was an amazingly cunning
woman; that, however worthy she might be of universal esteem, still she
was a known scandal-monger, and lied from morning to night! that, again,
she probably had some good reason for wishing him out of the place to-
night. He next bethought him of Zina, and of her parting look at him, which
was very far from being expressive of passionate love; he remembered also,
that, less than an hour ago she had called him a fool.

As he thought of the last fact Paul stopped in his tracks, as though shot;
blushed, and almost cried for very shame! At this very moment he was
unfortunate enough to lose his footing on the slippery pavement, and to go
head-first into a snow-heap. As he stood shaking himself dry, a whole troop
of dogs, which had long trotted barking at his heels, flew at him. One of
them, a wretched little half-starved beast, went so far as to fix her teeth into
his fur coat and hang therefrom. Swearing and striking out, Paul cleared his
way out of the yelping pack at last, in a fury, and with rent clothes; and
making his way as fast as he could to the corner of the street, discovered
that he hadn't the slightest idea where he was. He walked up lanes, and
down streets, and round corners, and lost himself more and more
hopelessly; also his temper. “The devil take all these confounded exalted
ideas!” he growled, half aloud; “and the archfiend take every one of you,
you and your Guadalquivers and humbug!”

Mosgliakoff was not in a pretty humour at this moment.

At last, tired and horribly angry, after two hours of walking, he reached the
door of Maria Alexandrovna's house.

Observing a host of carriages standing outside, he paused to consider.

“Surely she has not a party to-night!” he thought, “and if she has, why has
she a party?”

He inquired of the servants, and found out that Maria Alexandrovna had
been out of town, and had fetched up Afanassy Matveyevitch, gorgeous in
his dress-suit and white tie. He learned, further, that the prince was awake,
but had not as yet made his appearance in the “salon.”

On receiving this information, Paul Mosgliakoff said not a word, but quietly
made his way upstairs to his uncle's room.

He was in that frame of mind in which a man determines to commit some
desperate act, out of revenge, aware at the time, and wide awake to the fact
that he is about to do the deed, but forgetting entirely that he may very
likely regret it all his life afterwards!

Entering the prince's room, he found that worthy seated before the glass,
with a perfectly bare head, but with whiskers and napoleon stuck on. His
wig was in the hands of his old and grey valet, his favourite Ivan
Pochomitch, and the latter was gravely and thoughtfully combing it out.

As for the prince, he was indeed a pitiable object! He was not half awake
yet, for one thing; he sat as though he were still dazed with sleep; he kept
opening and shutting his mouth, and stared at Mosgliakoff as though he did
not know him!

“Well, how are you, uncle?” asked Mosgliakoff.

“What, it's you, is it!” said the prince. “Ye—yes; I've been as—leep a little
while! Oh, heavens!” he cried suddenly, with great animation, “why, I've
got no wi—ig on!”

“Oh, never mind that, uncle; I'll help you on with it, if you like!”

“Dear me; now you've found out my se—ecret! I told him to shut the door.
Now, my friend, you must give me your word in—stantly, that you'll never
breathe a hint of this to anyone—I mean about my hair being ar—tificial!”

“Oh, uncle! As if I could be guilty of such meanness?” cried Paul, who was
anxious to please the prince, for reasons of his own.

“Ye—yes, ye—yes. Well, as I see you are a good fe—ellow, I—I'll just as—
tonish you a little: I'll tell you all my secrets! How do you like my mous—
tache, my dear boy?”

“Wonderful, uncle, wonderful! It astonishes me that you should have been
able to keep it so long!”

“Sp—are your wonder, my friend, it's ar—tificial!”

“No!! That's difficult to believe! Well, and your whiskers, uncle! admit—
you black them, now don't you?”

“Black them? Not—only I don't black them, but they, too, are ar—tificial!”
said the Prince, regarding Mosgliakoff with a look of triumph.

“What! Artificial? No, no, uncle! I can't believe that! You're laughing at
me!”

“Parole d'honneur, mon ami!” cried the delighted old man; “and fancy, all
—everybody is taken in by them just as you were! Even Stepanida
Matveyevna cannot believe they are not real, sometimes, although she often
sticks them on herself! But, I am sure, my dear friend, you will keep my se
—cret. Give me your word!”

“I do give you my word, uncle! But surely you do not suppose I would be
so mean as to divulge it?”

“Oh, my boy! I had such a fall to-day, without you. The coachman upset me
out of the carriage again!”

“How? When?”

“Why, we were driving to the mo—nastery, when?——”

“I know, uncle: that was early this morning!”

“No, no! A couple of hours ago, not more! I was driving along with him,
and he suddenly took and up—set me!”

“Why, my dear uncle, you were asleep,” began Paul, in amazement!

“Ye—yes, ye—yes. I did have a sleep; and then I drove away, at least I—at
least I—dear me, how strange it all seems!”

“I assure you, uncle, you have been dreaming! You saw all this in a dream!
You have been sleeping quietly here since just after dinner!”

“No!” And the prince reflected. “Ye—yes. Perhaps I did see it all in a
dream! However, I can remember all I saw quite well. First, I saw a large
bull with horns; and then I saw a pro—curor, and I think he had huge horns
too. Then there was Napoleon Buonaparte. Did you ever hear, my boy, that
people say I am so like Napoleon Buonaparte? But my profile is very like
some old pope. What do you think about it, my bo—oy?”

“I think you are much more like Napoleon Buonaparte, uncle!”

“Why, ye—yes, of course—full face; so I am, my boy, so I am! I dreamt of
him on his is—land, and do you know he was such a merry, talk—ative
fellow, he quite am—used me!”

“Who, uncle—Napoleon?” asked Mosgliakoff, looking thoughtfully at the
old man. A strange idea was beginning to occupy his brain—an idea which
he could not quite put into shape as yet.

“Ye—yes, ye—yes, Nap—oleon. We talked about philosophical subjects.
And do you know, my boy, I became quite sorry that the English had been
so hard upon him. Of course, though, if one didn't chain him up, he would
be flying at people's throats again! Still I'm sorry for him. Now I should

have managed him quite differently. I should have put him on an
uninhabited island.”

“Why uninhabited, uncle?” asked Mosgliakoff, absently.

“Well, well, an inhabited one, then; but the in—habitants must be good sort
of people. And I should arrange all sorts of amusements for him, at the
State's charge: theatres, balle's, and so on. And, of course, he should walk
about, under proper su—pervision. Then he should have tarts (he liked tarts,
you know), as many tarts as ever he pleased. I should treat him like a fa—
ather; and he would end by being sorry for his sins, see if he wouldn't!”

Mosgliakoff listened absently to all this senile gabble, and bit his nails with
impatience. He was anxious to turn the conversation on to the subject of
marriage. He did not know quite clearly why he wished to do so, but his
heart was boiling over with anger.

Suddenly the old man made an exclamation of surprise.

“Why, my dear boy, I declare I've forgotten to tell you about it. Fancy, I
made an offer of marriage to-day!”

“An offer of marriage, uncle?” cried Paul, brightening up.

“Why, ye—yes! an offer. Pachomief, are you going? All right! Away with
you! Ye—yes, c'est une charmante personne. But I confess, I took the step
rather rash—ly. I only begin to see that now. Dear me! dear, dear me!”

“Excuse me, uncle; but when did you make this offer?”

“Well, I admit I don't know exactly when I made it! Perhaps I dre—dreamed
it; I don't know. Dear me, how very strange it all seems!”

Mosgliakoff trembled with joy: his new idea blazed forth in full developed
glory.

“And whom did you propose to?” he asked impatiently.

“The daughter of the house, my boy; that beau—tiful girl. I—I forget what
they call her. Bu—but, my dear boy, you see I—I can't possibly marry.
What am I to do?”

“Oh! of course, you are done for if you marry, that's clear. But let me ask
you one more question, uncle. Are you perfectly certain that you actually
made her an offer of marriage?”

“Ye—yes, I'm sure of it; I—I——.”

“And what if you dreamed the whole thing, just as you did that you were
upset out of the carriage a second time?”

“Dear me! dear me! I—I really think I may have dreamed it; it's very
awkward. I don't know how to show myself there, now. H—how could I
find out, dear boy, for certain? Couldn't I get to know by some outside way
whether I really did make her an offer of ma—arriage or not? Why, just you
think of my dreadful po—sition!”

“Do you know, uncle, I don't think we need trouble ourselves to find out at
all.”

“Why, wh—what then?”

“I am convinced that you were dreaming.”

“I—I think so myself, too, my dear fellow; es—pecially as I often have that
sort of dream.”

“You see, uncle, you had a drop of wine for lunch, and then another drop or
two for dinner, don't you know; and so you may easily have——”

“Ye—yes, quite so, quite so; it may easily have been that.”

“Besides, my dear uncle, however excited you may have been, you would
never have taken such a senseless step in your waking moments. So far as I
know you, uncle, you are a man of the highest and most deliberate
judgment, and I am positive that——”

“Ye—yes, ye—yes.”

“Why, only imagine—if your relations were to get to hear of such a thing.
My goodness, uncle! they were cruel enough to you before. What do you
suppose they would do now, eh?”

“Goodness gracious!” cried the frightened old prince. “Good—ness
gracious! Wh—why, what would they do, do you think?”

“Do? Why, of course, they would all screech out that you had acted under
the influence of insanity: in fact, that you were mad; that you had been
swindled, and that you must be put under proper restraint. In fact, they'd
pop you into some lunatic asylum.”

Mosgliakoff was well aware of the best method of frightening the poor old
man out of his wits.

“Gracious heavens!” cried the latter, trembling like a leaflet with horror.
“Gra—cious heavens! would they really do that?”

“Undoubtedly; and, knowing this, uncle, think for yourself. Could you
possibly have done such a thing with your eyes open? As if you don't
understand what's good for you just as well as your neighbours. I solemnly
affirm that you saw all this in a dream!”

“Of course, of course; un—doubtedly in a dream, un—doubtedly so! What
a clever fellow you are, my dear boy; you saw it at once. I am deeply grate
—ful to you for putting me right. I was really quite under the im—pression
I had actually done it.”

“And how glad I am that I met you, uncle, before you went in there! Just
fancy, what a mess you might have made of it! You might have gone in
thinking you were engaged to the girl, and behaved in the capacity of
accepted lover. Think how fearfully dangerous——.”

“Ye—yes, of course; most dangerous!”

“Why, remember, this girl is twenty-three years old. Nobody will marry her,
and suddenly you, a rich and eminent man of rank and title, appear on the
scene as her accepted swain. They would lay hold of the idea at once, and
act up to it, and swear that you really were her future husband, and would
marry you off, too. I daresay they would even count upon your speedy
death, and make their calculations accordingly.”

“No!”

“Then again, uncle; a man of your dignity——”

“Ye—yes, quite so, dig—nity!”

“And wisdom,—and amiability——”

“Quite so; wis—dom—wisdom!”

“And then—a prince into the bargain! Good gracious, uncle, as if a man
like yourself would make such a match as that, if you really did mean
marrying! What would your relations say?”

“Why, my dear boy, they'd simply ea—eat me up,—I—I know their
cunning and malice of old! My dear fellow—you won't believe it—but I
assure you I was afraid they were going to put me into a lun—atic asylum!
a common ma—ad-house! Goodness me, think of that! Whatever should I
have done with myself all day in a ma—ad-house?”

“Of course, of course! Well, I won't leave your side, then, uncle, when you
go downstairs. There are guests there too!”

“Guests? dear me! I—I——”

“Don't be afraid, uncle; I shall be by you!”

“I—I'm so much obliged to you, my dear boy; you have simply sa—ved
me, you have indeed! But, do you know what,—I think I'd better go away
altogether!”

“To-morrow, uncle! to-morrow morning at seven! and this evening you
must be sure to say, in the presence of everybody, that you are starting away
at seven next morning: you must say good-bye to-night!”

“Un—doubtedly, undoubtedly—I shall go;—but what if they talk to me as
though I were engaged to the young wo—oman?”

“Don't you fear, uncle! I shall be there! And mind, whatever they say or hint
to you, you must declare that you dreamed the whole thing—as indeed you
did, of course?”

“Ye—yes, quite so, un—doubtedly so! But, do you know my dear boy, it
was a most be—witching dream, for all that! She is a wond—erfully lovely
girl, my boy,—such a figure—bewitching—be—witching!”

“Well, au revoir, uncle! I'm going down, now, and you——”

“How! How! you are not going to leave me alone?” cried the old man,
greatly alarmed.

“No, no—oh no, uncle; but we must enter the room separately. First, I will
go in, and then you come down; that will be better!”

“Very well, very well. Besides, I just want to note down one little i—dea
——”

“Capital, uncle! jot it down, and then come at once; don't wait any longer;
and to-morrow morning——”

“And to-morrow morning away we go to the Her—mitage, straight to the
Her—mitage! Charming—charm—ing! but, do you know, my boy,—she's a
fas—cinating girl—she is indeed! be—witching! Such a bust! and, really, if
I were to marry, I—I—really——”

“No, no, uncle! Heaven forbid!”

“Yes—yes—quite so—Heaven for—bid!—well, au revoir, my friend—I'll
come directly; by the bye—I meant to ask you, have you read Kazanoff's
Memoirs?”

“Yes, uncle. Why?”

“Yes, yes, quite so—I forget what I wanted to say——”

“You'll remember afterwards, uncle! au revoir!”

“Au revoir, my boy, au revoir—but, I say, it was a bewitching dream, a
most be—witching dream!”

CHAPTER XII.

“Here we all are, all of us, come to spend the evening; Proskovia Ilinishna
is coming too, and Luisa Karlovna and all!” cried Mrs. Antipova as she
entered the salon, and looked hungrily round. She was a neat, pretty little
woman! she was well-dressed, and knew it.

She looked greedily around, as I say, because she had an idea that the prince
and Zina were hidden together somewhere about the room.

“Yes, and Katerina Petrovna, and Felisata Michaelovna are coming as
well,” added Natalia Dimitrievna, a huge woman—whose figure had
pleased the prince so much, and who looked more like a grenadier than
anything else. This monster had been hand and glove with little Mrs.
Antipova for the last three weeks; they were now quite inseparable. Natalia
looked as though she could pick her little friend up and swallow her, bones
and all, without thinking.

“I need not say with what rapture I welcome you both to my house, and for
a whole evening, too!” piped Maria Alexandrovna, a little recovered from
her first shock of amazement; “but do tell me, what miracle is it that has
brought you all to-day, when I had quite despaired of ever seeing anyone of
you in my house again?”

“Oh, oh! my dear Maria Alexandrovna!” said Natalia, very affectedly, but
sweetly. The attributes of sweetness and affectation were a curious contrast
to her personal appearance.

“You see, dearest Maria Alexandrovna,” chirped Mrs. Antipova, “we really
must get on with the private theatricals question! It was only this very day
that Peter Michaelovitch was saying how bad it was of us to have made no
progress towards rehearsing, and so on; and that it was quite time we

brought all our silly squabbles to an end! Well, four of us got together to-
day, and then it struck us ‘Let's all go to Maria Alexandrovna's, and settle
the matter once for all!’ So Natalia Dimitrievna let all the rest know that we
were to meet here! We'll soon settle it—I don't think we should allow it to
be said that we do nothing but ‘squabble’ over the preliminaries and get no
farther, do you, dear Maria Alexandrovna?” She added, playfully, and
kissing our heroine affectionately, “Goodness me, Zenaida, I declare you
grow prettier every day!” And she betook herself to embracing Zina with
equal affection.

“She has nothing else to do, but sit and grow more and more beautiful!”
said Natalia with great sweetness, rubbing her huge hands together.

“Oh, the devil take them all! they know I care nothing about private
theatricals—cursed magpies!” reflected Maria Alexandrovna, beside herself
with rage.

“Especially, dear, as that delightful prince is with you just now. You know
there is a private theatre in his house at Donchanof, and we have discovered
that somewhere or other there, there are a lot of old theatrical properties and
decorations and scenery. The prince was at my house to-day, but I was so
surprised to see him that it all went clean out of my head and I forgot to ask
him. Now we'll broach the subject before him. You must support me and
we'll persuade him to send us all the old rubbish that can be found. We want
to get the prince to come and see the play, too! He is sure to subscribe, isn't
he—as it is for the poor? Perhaps he would even take a part; he is such a
dear, kind, willing old man. If only he did, it would make the fortune of our
play!”

“Of course he will take a part! why, he can be made to play any part!”
remarked Natalia significantly.

Mrs. Antipova had not exaggerated. Guests poured in every moment! Maria
Alexandrovna hardly had time to receive one lot and make the usual
exclamations of surprise and delight exacted by the laws of etiquette before
another arrival would be announced.

I will not undertake to describe all these good people. I will only remark
that every one of them, on arrival, looked about her cunningly; and that
every face wore an expression of expectation and impatience.

Some of them came with the distinct intention of witnessing some scene of
a delightfully scandalous nature, and were prepared to be very angry indeed
if it should turn out that they were obliged to leave the house without the
gratification of their hopes.

All behaved in the most amiable and affectionate manner towards their
hostess; but Maria Alexandrovna firmly braced her nerves for battle.

Many apparently natural and innocent questions were asked about the
prince; but in each one might be detected some hint or insinuation.

Tea came in, and people moved about and changed places: one group
surrounded the piano; Zina was requested to play and sing, but answered
drily that she was not quite well—and the paleness of her face bore out this
assertion. Inquiries were made for Mosgliakoff; and these inquiries were
addressed to Zina.

Maria Alexandrovna proved that she had the eyes and ears of ten ordinary
mortals. She saw and heard all that was going on in every corner of the
room; she heard and answered every question asked, and answered readily
and cleverly. She was dreadfully anxious about Zina, however, and
wondered why she did not leave the room, as she usually did on such
occasions.

Poor Afanassy came in for his share of notice, too. It was the custom of
these amiable people of Mordasoff to do their best to set Maria
Alexandrovna and her husband “by the ears;” but to-day there were hopes
of extracting valuable news and secrets out of the candid simplicity of the
latter.

Maria Alexandrovna watched the state of siege into which the wretched
Afanassy was thrown, with great anxiety; he was answering “H'm!” to all
questions put to him, as instructed; but with so wretched an expression and

so extremely artificial a mien that Maria Alexandrovna could barely restrain
her wrath.

“Maria Alexandrovna! your husband won't have a word to say to me!”
remarked a sharp-faced little lady with a devil-may-care manner, as though
she cared nothing for anybody, and was not to be abashed under any
circumstances. “Do ask him to be a little more courteous towards ladies!”

“I really don't know myself what can have happened to him to-day!” said
Maria Alexandrovna, interrupting her conversation with Mrs. Antipova and
Natalia, and laughing merrily; “he is so dreadfully uncommunicative! He
has scarcely said a word even to me, all day! Why don't you answer Felisata
Michaelovna, Afanassy? What did you ask him?”

“But, but—why, mammy, you told me yourself”—began the bewildered and
lost Afanassy. At this moment he was standing at the fireside with one hand
placed inside his waistcoat, in an artistic position which he had chosen
deliberately, on mature reflection,—and he was sipping his tea. The
questions of the ladies had so confused him that he was blushing like a girl.

When he began the justification of himself recorded above, he suddenly met
so dreadful a look in the eyes of his infuriated spouse that he nearly lost all
consciousness, for terror!

Uncertain what to do, but anxious to recover himself and win back her
favour once more, he said nothing, but took a gulp of tea to restore his
scattered senses.

Unfortunately the tea was too hot; which fact, together with the hugeness of
the gulp he took—quite upset him. He burned his throat, choked, sent the
cup flying, and burst into such a fit of coughing that he was obliged to leave
the room for a time, awakening universal astonishment by his conduct.

In a word, Maria Alexandrovna saw clearly enough that her guests knew all
about it, and had assembled with malicious intent! The situation was
dangerous! They were quite capable of confusing and overwhelming the
feeble-minded old prince before her very eyes! They might even carry him

off bodily—after stirring up a quarrel between the old man and herself!
Anything might happen.

But fate had prepared her one more surprise. The door opened and in came
Mosgliakoff—who, as she thought, was far enough away at his godfather's,
and would not come near her to-night! She shuddered as though something
had hurt her.

Mosgliakoff stood a moment at the door, looking around at the company.
He was a little bewildered, and could not conceal his agitation, which
showed itself very clearly in his expression.

“Why, it's Paul Alexandrovitch! and you told us he had gone to his
godfather's, Maria Alexandrovna. We were told you had hidden yourself
away from us, Paul Alexandrovitch!” cried Natalia.

“Hidden myself?” said Paul, with a crooked sort of a smile. “What a strange
expression! Excuse me, Natalia Dimitrievna, but I never hide from anyone;
I have no cause to do so, that I know of! Nor do I ever hide anyone else!”
he added, looking significantly at Maria Alexandrovna.

Maria Alexandrovna trembled in her shoes.

“Surely this fool of a man is not up to anything disagreeable!” she thought.
“No, no! that would be worse than anything!” She looked curiously and
anxiously into his eyes.

“Is it true, Paul Alexandrovitch, that you have just been politely dismissed?
—the Government service, I mean, of course!” remarked the daring Felisata
Michaelovna, looking impertinently into his eyes.

“Dismissed! How dismissed? I'm simply changing my department, that's
all! I am to be placed at Petersburg!” Mosgliakoff answered, drily.

“Oh! well, I congratulate you!” continued the bold young woman. “We
were alarmed to hear that you were trying for a—a place down here at
Mordasoff. The berths here are wretched, Paul Alexandrovitch—no good at
all, I assure you!”

“I don't know—there's a place as teacher at the school, vacant, I believe,”
remarked Natalia.

This was such a crude and palpable insinuation that even Mrs. Antipova
was ashamed of her friend, and kicked her, under the table.

“You don't suppose Paul Alexandrovitch would accept the place vacated by
a wretched little schoolmaster!” said Felisata Michaelovna.

But Paul did not answer. He turned at this moment, and encountered
Afanassy Matveyevitch, just returning into the room. The latter offered him
his hand. Mosgliakoff, like a fool, looked beyond poor Afanassy, and did
not take his outstretched hand: annoyed to the limits of endurance, he
stepped up to Zina, and muttered, gazing angrily into her eyes:

“This is all thanks to you! Wait a bit; you shall see this very day whether I
am a fool or not!”

“Why put off the revelation? It is clear enough already!” said Zina, aloud,
staring contemptuously at her former lover.

Mosgliakoff hurriedly left her. He did not half like the loud tone she spoke
in.

“Have you been to your godfather's?” asked Maria Alexandrovna at last,
determined to sound matters in this direction.

“No, I've just been with uncle.”

“With your uncle! What! have you just come from the prince now?”

“Oh—oh! and we were told the prince was asleep!” added Natalia
Dimitrievna, looking daggers at Maria Alexandrovna.

“Do not be disturbed about the prince, Natalia Dimitrievna,” replied Paul,
“he is awake now, and quite restored to his senses. He was persuaded to
drink a good deal too much wine, first at your house, and then here; so that
he quite lost his head, which never was too strong. However, I have had a
talk with him, and he now seems to have entirely recovered his judgment,

thank God! He is coming down directly to take his leave, Maria
Alexandrovna, and to thank you for all your kind hospitality; and to-
morrow morning early we are off to the Hermitage. Thence I shall myself
see him safe home to Donchanovo, in order that he may be far from the
temptation to further excesses like that of to-day. There I shall give him
over into the hands of Stepanida Matveyevna, who must be back at home
by this time, and who will assuredly never allow him another opportunity of
going on his travels, I'll answer for that!”

So saying, Mosgliakoff stared angrily at Maria Alexandrovna. The latter sat
still, apparently dumb with amazement. I regret to say—it gives me great
pain to record it—that, perhaps for the first time in her life, my heroine was
decidedly alarmed.

“So the prince is off to-morrow morning! Dear me; why is that?” inquired
Natalia Dimitrievna, very sweetly, of Maria Alexandrovna.

“Yes. How is that?” asked Mrs. Antipova, in astonishment.

“Yes; dear me! how comes that, I wonder!” said two or three voices. “How
can that be? When we were told—dear me! How very strange!”

But the mistress of the house could not find words to reply in.

However, at this moment the general attention was distracted by a most
unwonted and eccentric episode. In the next room was heard a strange noise
—sharp exclamations and hurrying feet, which was followed by the sudden
appearance of Sophia Petrovna, the fidgety guest who had called upon
Maria Alexandrovna in the morning.

Sophia Petrovna was a very eccentric woman indeed—so much so that even
the good people of Mordasoff could not support her, and had lately voted
her out of society. I must observe that every evening, punctually at seven,
this lady was in the habit of having, what she called, “a snack,” and that
after this snack, which she declared was for the benefit of her liver, her
condition was well emancipated, to use no stronger term. She was in this
very condition, as described, now, as she appeared flinging herself into
Maria Alexandrovna's salon.

“Oho! so this is how you treat me, Maria Alexandrovna!” she shouted at the
top of her voice. “Oh! don't be afraid, I shall not inflict myself upon you for
more than a minute! I won't sit down. I just came in to see if what they said
was true! Ah! so you go in for balls and receptions and parties, and Sophia
Petrovna is to sit at home alone, and knit stockings, is she? You ask the
whole town in, and leave me out, do you? Yes, and I was mon ange, and
‘dear,’ and all the rest of it when I came in to warn you of Natalia
Dimitrievna having got hold of the prince! And now this very Natalia
Dimitrievna, whom you swore at like a pickpocket, and who was just about
as polite when she spoke of you, is here among your guests? Oh, don't mind
me, Natalia Dimitrievna, I don't want your chocolat à la santé at a penny
the ounce, six cups to the ounce! thanks, I can do better at home; t'fu, a
good deal better.”

“Evidently!” observed Natalia Dimitrievna.

“But—goodness gracious, Sophia Petrovna!” cried the hostess, flushing
with annoyance; “what is it all about? Do show a little common sense!”

“Oh, don't bother about me, Maria Alexandrovna, thank you! I know all
about it—oh, dear me, yes!—I know all about it!” cried Sophia Petrovna, in
her shrill squeaky voice, from among the crowd of guests who now
surrounded her, and who seemed to derive immense satisfaction from this
unexpected scene. “Oh, yes, I know all about it, I assure you! Your friend
Nastasia came over and told me all! You got hold of the old prince, made
him drunk and persuaded him to make an offer of marriage to your daughter
Zina—whom nobody else will marry; and I daresay you suppose you are
going to be a very great lady, indeed—a sort of duchess in lace and
jewellery. Tfu! Don't flatter yourself; you may not be aware that I, too, am a
colonel's lady! and if you don't care to ask me to your betrothal parties, you
needn't: I scorn and despise you and your parties too! I've seen honester
women than you, you know! I have dined at Countess Zalichvatsky's; a
chief commissioner proposed for my hand! A lot I care for your invitations.
Tfu!”

“Look here, Sophia Petrovna,” said Maria Alexandrovna, beside herself
with rage; “I assure you that people do not indulge in this sort of sally at
respectable houses; especially in the condition you are now in! And let me

tell you that if you do not immediately relieve me of your presence and
eloquence, I shall be obliged to take the matter into my own hands!”

“Oh, I know—you'll get your people to turn me out! Don't trouble yourself
—I know the way out! Good-bye,—marry your daughter to whom you
please, for all I care. And as for you, Natalia Dimitrievna, I will thank you
not to laugh at me! I may not have been asked here, but at all events I did
not dance a can-can for the prince's benefit. What may you be laughing at,
Mrs. Antipova? I suppose you haven't heard that your great friend Lushiloff
has broken his leg?—he has just been taken home. Tfu! Good-bye, Maria
Alexandrovna—good luck to you! Tfu!”

Sophia Petrovna now disappeared. All the guests laughed; Maria
Alexandrovna was in a state of indescribable fury.

“I think the good lady must have been drinking!” said Natalia Dimitrievna,
sweetly.

“But what audacity!”

“Quelle abominable femme!”

“What a raving lunatic!”

“But really, what excessively improper things she says!”

“Yes, but what could she have meant by a 'betrothal party?' What sort of a
betrothal party is this?” asked Felisata Michaelovna innocently.

“It is too bad—too bad!” Maria Alexandrovna burst out at last. “It is just
such abominable women as this that sow nonsensical rumours about! it is
not the fact that there are such women about, Felisata Michaelovna, that is
so surprising; the astonishing part of the matter is that ladies can be found
who support and encourage them, and believe their abominable tales, and
——”

“The prince, the prince!” cried all the guests at once.

“Oh, oh, here he is—the dear, dear prince!”

“Well, thank goodness, we shall hear all the particulars now!” murmured
Felisata Michaelovna to her neighbour.

CHAPTER XIII.

The prince entered and smiled benignly around.

All the agitation which his conversation with Mosgliakoff, a quarter of an
hour since, had aroused in his chicken-heart vanished at the sight of the
ladies.

Those gentle creatures received him with chirps and exclamations of joy.
Ladies always petted our old friend the prince, and were—as a rule—
wonderfully familiar with him. He had a way of amusing them with his own
individuality which was astonishing! Only this morning Felisata
Michaelovna had announced that she would sit on his knee with the greatest
pleasure, if he liked; “because he was such a dear old pet of an old man!”

Maria Alexandrovna fastened her eyes on him, to read—if she could—if it
were but the slightest indication of his state of mind, and to get a possible
idea for a way out of this horribly critical position. But there was nothing to
be made of his face; it was just as before—just as ever it was!

“Ah—h! here's the prince at last!” cried several voices. “Oh, Prince, how
we have waited and waited for you!”

“With impatience, Prince, with impatience!” another chorus took up the
strain.

“Dear me, how very flat—tering!” said the old man, settling himself near
the tea-table.

The ladies immediately surrounded him. There only remained Natalia
Dimitrievna and Mrs. Antipova with the hostess. Afanassy stood and smiled
with great courtesy.

Mosgliakoff also smiled as he gazed defiantly at Zina, who, without taking
the slightest notice of him, took a chair near her father, and sat down at the
fireside.

“Prince, do tell us—is it true that you are about to leave us so soon?” asked
Felisata Michaelovna.

“Yes, yes, mesdames; I am going abroad almost im—mediately!”

“Abroad, Prince, abroad? Why, what can have caused you to take such a
step as that?” cried several ladies at once.

“Yes—yes, abroad,” said the prince; “and do you know it is principally for
the sake of the new i—deas——”

“How, new ideas? what new ideas—what does he mean?” the astonished
ladies asked of one another.

“Ye—yes. Quite so—new ideas!” repeated the prince with an air of deep
conviction, “everybody goes abroad now for new ideas, and I'm going too,
to see if I can pick any up.”

Up to this moment Maria Alexandrovna had listened to the conversation
observantly; but it now struck her that the prince had entirely forgotten her
existence—which would not do!

“Allow me, Prince, to introduce my husband, Afanassy Matveyevitch. He
hastened up from our country seat so soon as ever he heard of your arrival
in our house.”

Afanassy, under the impression that he was being praised, smiled amiably
and beamed all over.

“Very happy, very happy—Afanassy Mat—veyevitch!” said the prince.
“Wait a moment: your name reminds me of something, Afanassy Mat—

veyevitch; ye—yes, you are the man down at the village! Charming, charm
—ing! Very glad, I'm sure. Do you remember, my boy,” (to Paul) “the nice
little rhyme we fitted out to him? What was it?”

“Oh, I know, prince,” said Felisata Michaelovna—

“ ‘When the husband's away
The wife will play!”

“Wasn't that it? We had it last year at the theatre.”

“Yes, yes, quite so, ye—yes, ‘the wife will play!’ That's it: charming,
charming. So you are that ve—ry man? Dear me, I'm very glad, I'm sure,”
said the prince, stretching out his hand, but not rising from his chair. “Dear
me, and how is your health, my dear sir?”

“H'm!”

“Oh, he's quite well, thank you, prince, quite well,” answered Maria
Alexandrovna quickly.

“Ye—yes, I see he is—he looks it! And are you still at the vill—age? Dear
me, very pleased, I'm sure; why, how red he looks, and he's always laugh—
ing.”

Afanassy smiled and bowed, and even “scraped,” as the prince spoke, but at
the last observation he suddenly, and without warning or apparent reason,
burst into loud fits of laughter.

The ladies were delighted. Zina flushed up, and with flashing eyes darted a
look at her mother, who, in her turn, was boiling over with rage.

It was time to change the conversation.

“Did you have a nice nap, prince?” she inquired in honied accents; but at
the same time giving Afanassy to understand, with very un-honied looks
that he might go—well, anywhere!

“Oh, I slept won—derfully, wonderfully? And do you know, I had such a
most fascinating, be—witching dream!”

“A dream? how delightful! I do so love to hear people tell their dreams,”
cried Felisata.

“Oh, a fas—cinating dream,” stammered the old man again, “quite be—
witching, but all the more a dead secret for that very reas—on.”

“Oh, Prince, you don't mean to say you can't tell us?” said Mrs. Antipova. “I
suppose it's an extraordinary dream, isn't it?”

“A dead secret!” repeated the prince, purposely whetting the curiosity of the
ladies, and enjoying the fun.

“Then it must be interesting, oh, dreadfully interesting,” cried other ladies.

“I don't mind taking a bet that the prince dreamed that he was kneeling at
some lovely woman's feet and making a declaration of love,” said Felisata
Michaelovna. “Confess, now, prince, that it was so? confess, dear prince,
confess.”

“Yes, Prince, confess!” the chorus took up the cry. The old man listened
solemnly until the last voice was hushed. The ladies' guesswork flattered his
vanity wonderfully; he was as pleased as he could be. “Though I did say
that my dream was a dead se—cret,” he replied at last, “still I am obliged to
confess, dear lady, that to my great as—tonishment you have almost exactly
guessed it.”

“I've guessed it, I've guessed it,” cried Felisata, in a rapture of joy. “Well,
prince, say what you like, but it's your plain duty to tell us the name of your
beauty; come now, isn't it?”

“Of course, of course, prince.”

“Is she in this town?”

“Dear prince, do tell us.”

“Darling prince, do, do tell us; you positively must,” was heard on all sides.

“Mesdames, mes—dames; if you must know, I will go so far as to say that it
is the most charming, and be—witching, and vir—tuous lady I know,” said
the prince, unctuously.

“The most bewitching? and belonging to this place? Who can it be?” cried
the ladies, interchanging looks and signs.

“Why, of course, the young lady who is considered the reigning beauty
here,” remarked Natalia Dimitrievna, rubbing her hands and looking hard at
Zina with those cat's-eyes of hers. All joined her in staring at Zina.

“But, prince, if you dream those sort of things, why should not you marry
somebody bona fide?” asked Felisata, looking around her with a significant
expression.

“We would marry you off beautifully, prince!” said somebody else.

“Oh, dear prince, do marry!” chirped another.

“Marry, marry, do marry!” was now the cry on all sides.

“Ye—yes. Why should I not ma—arry!” said the old man, confused and
bewildered with all the cries and exclamations around him.

“Uncle!” cried Mosgliakoff.

“Ye—yes, my boy, quite so; I un—derstand what you mean. I may as well
tell you, ladies, that I am not in a position to marry again; and having
passed one most delightful evening with our fascinating hostess, I must start
away to-morrow to the Hermitage, and then I shall go straight off abroad,
and study the question of the enlightenment of Europe.”

Zina shuddered, and looked over at her mother with an expression of
unspeakable anguish.

But Maria Alexandrovna had now made up her mind how to act; all this
while she had played a mere waiting game, observing closely and carefully

all that was said or done, although she could see only too clearly that her
plans were undermined, and that her foes had come about her in numbers
which were too great to be altogether pleasant.

At last, however, she comprehended the situation, she thought, completely.
She had gauged how the matter stood in all its branches, and she
determined to slay the hundred-headed hydra at one fell blow!

With great majesty, then, she rose from her seat, and approached the tea-
table, stalking across the room with firm and dignified tread, as she looked
around upon her pigmy foes. The fire of inspiration blazed in her eyes. She
resolved to smite once, and annihilate this vile nest of poisonous scandal-
adders: to destroy the miserable Mosgliakoff, as though he were a
blackbeetle, and with one triumphant blow to reassert all her influence over
this miserable old idiot-prince!

Some audacity was requisite for such a performance, of course; but Maria
Alexandrovna had not even to put her hand in her pocket for a supply of
that particular commodity.

“Mesdames,” she began, solemnly, and with much dignity (Maria
Alexandrovna was always a great admirer of solemnity); “mesdames, I have
been a listener to your conversation—to your witty remarks and merry
jokes—long enough, and I consider that my turn has come, at last, to put in
a word in contribution.

“You are aware we have all met here accidentally (to my great joy, I must
add—to my very great joy); but, though I should be the first to refuse to
divulge a family secret before the strictest rules of ordinary propriety
rendered such a revelation necessary, yet, as my dear guest here appears to
me to have given us to understand, by covert hints and insinuations, that he
is not averse to the matter becoming common property (he will forgive me
if I have mistaken his intentions!)—I cannot help feeling that the prince is
not only not averse, but actually desires me to make known our great family
secret. Am I right, Prince?”

“Ye—yes, quite so, quite so! Very glad, ve—ry glad, I'm sure!” said the
prince, who had not the remotest idea what the good lady was talking

about!

Maria Alexandrovna, for greater effect, now paused to take breath, and
looked solemnly and proudly around upon the assembled guests, all of
whom were now listening with greedy but slightly disturbed curiosity to
what their hostess was about to reveal to them.

Mosgliakoff shuddered; Zina flushed up, and arose from her seat; Afanassy,
seeing that something important was about to happen, blew his nose
violently, in order to be ready for any emergency.

“Yes, ladies; I am ready—nay, gratified—to entrust my family secret to
your keeping!——This evening, the prince, overcome by the beauty and
virtues of my daughter, has done her the honour of proposing to me for her
hand. Prince,” she concluded, in trembling tearful accents, “dear Prince;
you must not, you cannot blame me for my candour! It is only my
overwhelming joy that could have torn this dear secret prematurely from
my heart: and what mother is there who will blame me in such a case as
this?”

Words fail me to describe the effect produced by this most unexpected sally
on the part of Maria Alexandrovna. All present appeared to be struck dumb
with amazement. These perfidious guests, who had thought to frighten
Maria Alexandrovna by showing her that they knew her secret; who thought
to annihilate her by the premature revelation of that secret; who thought to
overwhelm her, for the present, with their hints and insinuations; these
guests were themselves struck down and pulverized by this fearless candour
on her part! Such audacious frankness argued the consciousness of strength.

“So that the prince actually, and of his own free-will is really going to
marry Zina? So they did not drink and bully and swindle him into it? So he
is not to be married burglariously and forcibly? So Maria Alexandrovna is
not afraid of anybody? Then we can't knock this marriage on the head—
since the prince is not being married compulsorily!”

Such were the questions and exclamations the visitors now put to
themselves and each other.

But very soon the whispers which the hostess's words had awakened all
over the room, suddenly changed to chirps and exclamations of joy.

Natalia Dimitrievna was the first to come forward and embrace Maria
Alexandrovna; then came Mrs. Antipova; next Felisata Michaelovna. All
present were shortly on their feet and moving about, changing places. Many
of the ladies were pale with rage. Some began to congratulate Zina, who
was confused enough without; some attached themselves to the wretched
Afanassy Matveyevitch. Maria Alexandrovna stretched her arms
theatrically, and embraced her daughter—almost by force.

The prince alone gazed upon the company with a sort of confused wonder;
but he smiled on as before. He seemed to be pleased with the scene. At sight
of the mother and daughter embracing, he took out his handkerchief, and
wiped his eye, in the corner of which there really was a tear.

Of course the company fell upon him with their congratulations before very
long.

“I congratulate you, Prince! I congratulate you!” came from all sides at
once.

“So you are going to be married, Prince?”

“So you really are going to marry?”

“Dear Prince! You really are to be married, then?”

“Ye—yes, ye—yes; quite so, quite so!” replied the old fellow, delighted
beyond measure with all the rapture and atmosphere of congratulation
around him; “and I confess what I like best of all, is the ve—ery kind in—
terest you all take in me! I shall never forget it, never for—get it!
Charming! charming! You have brought the tears to my eyes!”

“Kiss me, prince!” cried Felisata Michaelovna, in stentorian tones.

“And I con—fess further,” continued the Prince, as well as the constant
physical interruptions from all sides allowed him; “I confess I am beyond

measure as—tonished that Maria Alexandrovna, our revered hostess, should
have had the extraordinary penet—ration to guess my dream! She might
have dreamed it herself, instead of me. Ex—traordinary perspicacity! Won
—derful, wonderful!”

“Oh, prince; your dream again!”

“Oh, come, prince! admit—confess!” cried one and all.

“Yes, prince, it is no use concealing it now; it is time we divulged this secret
of ours!” said Maria Alexandrovna, severely and decidedly. “I quite entered
into your refined, allegorical manner; the delightful delicacy with which
you gave me to understand, by means of subtle insinuations, that you
wished the fact of your engagement to be made known. Yes, ladies, it is all
true! This very evening the prince knelt at my daughter's feet, and actually,
and by no means in a dream, made a solemn proposal of marriage to her!”

“Yes—yes, quite so! just exactly like that; and under the very cir—
cumstances she describes: just like re—ality,” said the old man. “My dear
young lady,” he continued, bowing with his greatest courtesy to Zina, who
had by no means recovered from her amazement as yet; “my dear young
lady, I swear to you, I should never have dared thus to bring your name into
pro—minence, if others had not done so before me! It was a most be—
witching dream! a be—witching dream! and I am doubly happy that I have
been per—mitted to describe it. Charming—charming!”

“Dear me! how very curious it is: he insists on sticking to his idea about a
dream!” whispered Mrs. Antipova to the now slightly paling Maria
Alexandrovna. Alas! that great woman had felt her heart beating more
quickly than she liked without this last little reminder!

“What does it mean?” whispered the ladies among themselves.

“Excuse me, prince,” began Maria Alexandrovna, with a miserable attempt
at a smile, “but I confess you astonish me a great deal! What is this strange
idea of yours about a dream? I confess I had thought you were joking up to
this moment; but—if it be a joke on your part, it is exceedingly out of

place! I should like—I am anxious to ascribe your conduct to absence of
mind, but——”

“Yes; it may really be a case of absence of mind!” put in Natalia
Dimitrievna in a whisper.

“Yes—yes—of course, quite so; it may easily be absence of mind!”
confirmed the prince, who clearly did not in the least comprehend what they
were trying to get out of him; “and with regard to this subject, let me tell
you a little an—ecdote. I was asked to a funeral at Petersburg, and I went
and made a little mis—take about it and thought it was a birthday par—ty!
So I brought a lovely bouquet of cam—ellias! When I came in and saw the
master of the house lying in state on a table, I didn't know where to lo—ok,
or what to do with my ca—mellias, I assure you!”

“Yes; but, Prince, this is not the moment for stories!” observed Maria
Alexandrovna, with great annoyance. “Of course, my daughter has no need
to beat up a husband; but at the same time, I must repeat that you yourself
here, just by the piano, made her an offer of marriage. I did not ask you to
do it! I may say I was amazed to hear it! However, since the episode of your
proposal, I may say that I have thought of nothing else; and I have only
waited for your appearance to talk the matter over with you. But now—
well, I am a mother, and this is my daughter. You speak of a dream. I
supposed, naturally, that you were anxious to make your engagement
known by the medium of an allegory. Well, I am perfectly well aware that
someone may have thought fit to confuse your mind on this matter; in fact, I
may say that I have my suspicions as to the individual responsible for such
a——however, kindly explain yourself, Prince; explain yourself quickly
and satisfactorily. You cannot be permitted to jest in this fashion in a
respectable house.”

“Ye—yes—quite so, quite so; one should not jest in respectable houses,”
remarked the prince, still bewildered, but beginning gradually to grow a
little disconcerted.

“But that is no answer to my question, Prince. I ask you to reply
categorically. I insist upon your confirming—confirming here and at once

—the fact that this very evening you made a proposal of marriage to my
daughter!”

“Quite so—quite so; I am ready to confirm that! But I have told the com—
pany all about it, and Felisata Michaelovna ac—tually guessed my dream!”

“Not dream! it was not a dream!” shouted Maria Alexandrovna furiously.
“It was not a dream, Prince, but you were wide awake. Do you hear? Awake
—you were awake!”

“Awake?” cried the prince, rising from his chair in astonishment. “Well,
there you are, my friend; it has come about just as you said,” he added,
turning to Mosgliakoff. “But I assure you, most es—teemed Maria
Alexandrovna, that you are under a del—usion. I am quite convinced that I
saw the whole scene in a dream!”

“Goodness gracious!” cried Maria Alexandrovna.

“Do not disturb yourself, dear Maria Alexandrovna,” said Natalia
Dimitrievna, “probably the prince has forgotten; he will recollect himself by
and by.”

“I am astonished at you, Natalia Dimitrievna!” said the now furious hostess.
“As if people forget this sort of thing! Excuse me, Prince, but are you
laughing at us, or what are you doing? Are you trying to act one of Dumas'
heroes, or Lauzun or Ferlacourt, or somebody? But, if you will excuse me
saying so, you are a good deal too old for that sort of thing, and I assure
you, your amiable little play-acting will not do here! My daughter is not a
French viscountess! I tell you, this very evening and in this very spot here,
my daughter sang a ballad to you, and you, amazed at the beauty of her
singing, went down on your knees and made her a proposal of marriage. I
am not talking in my sleep, am I? Surely I am wide awake? Speak, Prince,
am I asleep, or not?”

“Ye—yes, of course, of course—quite so. I don't know,” said the bewildered
old man. “I mean, I don't think I am drea—ming now; but, a little while ago
I was asleep, you see; and while asleep I had this dream, that I——”

“Goodness me, Prince, I tell you you were not dreaming. Not dreaming, do
you hear? Not dreaming! What on earth do you mean? Are you raving,
Prince, or what?”

“Ye—yes; deuce only knows. I don't know! It seems to me I'm getting be—
wildered,” said the prince, looking around him in a state of considerable
mental perturbation.

“But, my dear Prince, how can you possibly have dreamed this, when I can
tell you all the minutest details of your proposal and of the circumstances
attending it? You have not told any of us of these details. How could I
possibly have known what you dreamed?”

“But, perhaps the prince did tell someone of his dream, in detail,” remarked
Natalia Dimitrievna.

“Ye—yes, quite so—quite so! Perhaps I did tell someone all about my
dream, in detail,” said the now completely lost and bewildered prince.

“Here's a nice comedy!” whispered Felisata Michaelovna to her neighbour.

“My goodness me! this is too much for anybody's patience!” cried Maria
Alexandrovna, beside herself with helpless rage. “Do you hear me, Prince?
She sang you a ballad—sang you a ballad! Surely you didn't dream that
too?”

“Certainly—cer—tainly, quite so. It really did seem to me that she sang me
a ballad,” murmured the prince; and a ray of recollection seemed to flash
across his face. “My friend,” he continued, addressing Mosgliakoff, “I
believe I forgot to tell you, there was a ballad sung—a ballad all about
castles and knights; and some trou—badour or other came in. Of course, of
course, I remember it all quite well. I recoll—ect I did turn over the ballad.
It puzzles me much, for now it seems as though I had really heard the
ballad, and not dreamt it all.”

“I confess, uncle,” said Mosgliakoff, as calmly as he could, though his
voice shook with agitation, “I confess I do not see any difficulty in bringing
your actual experience and your dream into strict conformity; it is

consistent enough. You probably did hear the ballad. Miss Zenaida sings
beautifully; probably you all adjourned into this room and Zenaida
Afanassievna sang you the song. Of course, I was not there myself, but in
all probability this ballad reminded you of old times; very likely it reminded
you of that very vicomtesse with whom you used once to sing, and of whom
you were speaking to-day; well, and then, when you went up for your nap
and lay down, thinking of the delightful impressions made upon you by the
ballad and all, you dreamed that you were in love and made an offer of
marriage to the lady who had inspired you with that feeling.”

Maria Alexandrovna was struck dumb by this display of barefaced audacity.

“Why, ye—yes, my boy, yes, of course; that's exactly how it really wa—
as!” cried the prince, in an ecstasy of delight. “Of course it was the de—
lightful impressions that caused me to dream it. I certainly re—member the
song; and then I went away and dreamed about my pro—posal, and that I
really wished to marry! The viscountess was there too. How beautifully you
have unravelled the diffi—culty, my dear boy. Well, now I am quite
convinced that it was all a dream. Maria Alex—androvna! I assure you, you
are under a delu—usion: it was a dream. I should not think of trifling with
your feelings otherwise.”

“Oh, indeed! Now I perceive very clearly whom we have to thank for
making this dirty mess of our affairs!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, beside
herself with rage, and turning to Mosgliakoff: “You are the man, sir—the
dishonest person. It is you who stirred up this mud! It is you that puzzled an
unhappy old idiot into this eccentric behaviour, because you yourself were
rejected! But we shall be quits, my friend, for this offence! You shall pay,
you shall pay! Wait a bit, my dishonest friend; wait a bit!”

“Maria Alexandrovna!” cried Mosgliakoff, blushing in his turn until he
looked as red as a boiled lobster, “your words are so, so——to such an
extent—I really don't know how to express my opinion of you. No lady
would ever permit herself to—to—. At all events I am but protecting my
relative. You must allow that to allure an old man like this is, is——.”

“Quite so, quite so; allure,” began the prince, trying to hide himself behind
Mosgliakoff.

“Afanassy Matveyevitch!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, in unnatural tones;
“do you hear, sir, how these people are shaming and insulting me? Have
you quite exempted yourself from all the responsibilities of a man? Or are
you actually a—a wooden block, instead of the father of a family? What do
you stand blinking there for? eh! Any other husband would have wiped out
such an insult to his family with the blood of the offender long ago.”

“Wife!” began Afanassy, solemnly, delighted, and proud to find that a need
for him had sprung up for once in his life. “Wife, are you quite certain, now,
that you did not dream all this? You might so easily have fallen asleep and
dreamed it, and then muddled it all up with what really happened, you
know, and so——”

But Afanassy Matveyevitch was never destined to complete his ingenious,
but unlucky guess.

Up to this moment the guests had all restrained themselves, and had
managed, cleverly enough, to keep up an appearance of solid and judicial
interest in the proceedings. But at the first sound, almost, of Afanassy's
voice, a burst of uncontrollable laughter rose like a tempest from all parts of
the room.

Maria Alexandrovna, forgetting all the laws of propriety in her fury, tried to
rush at her unlucky consort; but she was held back by force, or, doubtless,
she would have scratched out that gentleman's eyes.

Natalia Dimitrievna took advantage of the occasion to add a little, if only a
little, drop more of poison to the bitter cup.

“But, dear Maria Alexandrovna,” she said, in the sweetest honied tones,
“perhaps it may be that it really was so, as your husband suggests, and that
you are actually under a strange delusion?”

“How! What was a delusion?” cried Maria Alexandrovna, not quite
catching the remark.

“Why, my dear Maria, I was saying, mightn't it have been so, dear, after all?
These sort of things do happen sometimes, you know!”

“What sort of things do happen, eh? What are you trying to do with me?
What am I to make of you?”

“Why, perhaps, dear, you really did dream it all!”

“What? dream it! I dreamed it? And you dare suggest such a thing to me—
straight to my face?”

“Oh, why not? Perhaps it really was the case,” observed Felisata
Michaelovna.

“Ye—yes, quite so, very likely it act—ually was the case,” muttered the old
prince.

“He, too—gracious Heaven!” cried poor Maria Alexandrovna, wringing her
hands.

“Dear me, how you do worry yourself, Maria Alexandrovna. You should
remember that dreams are sent us by a good Providence. If Providence so
wills it, there is no more to be said. Providence gives the word, and we can
neither weep nor be angry at its dictum.”

“Quite so, quite so. We can't be a—angry about it,” observed the prince.

“Look here; do you take me for a lunatic, or not?” said Maria
Alexandrovna. She spoke with difficulty, so dreadfully was she panting
with fury. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. She hurriedly
grasped a chair, and fell fainting into it. There was a scene of great
excitement.

“She has fainted in obedience to the laws of propriety!” observed Natalia
Dimitrievna to Mrs. Antipova. But at this moment—at this moment when
the general bewilderment and confusion had reached its height, and when
the scene was strained to the last possible point of excitement, another actor
suddenly stepped to the front; one who had been silent hitherto, but who
immediately threw quite a different complexion on the scene.

CHAPTER XIV.

Zenaida, or Zina Afanassievna, was an individual of an extremely romantic
turn of mind.

I don't know whether it really was that she had read too much of “that fool
Shakespeare,” with her “little tutor fellow,” as Maria Alexandrovna insisted;
but, at all events she was very romantic. However, never, in all her
experience of Mordasoff life, had Zina before made such an ultra-romantic,
or perhaps I might call it heroic, display as on the occasion of the sally
which I am now about to describe.

Pale, and with resolution in her eyes, yet almost trembling with agitation,
and wonderfully beautiful in her anger and scorn, she stepped to the front.

Gazing around at all, defiantly, she approached her mother in the midst of
the sudden silence which had fallen on all present. Her mother roused
herself from her swoon at the first indication of a projected movement on
Zina's part, and she now opened her eyes.

“Mamma!” cried Zina, “why should we deceive anyone? Why befoul
ourselves with more lies? Everything is so foul already that surely it is not
worth while to bemean ourselves any further by attempting to gloss over the
filth!”

“Zina, Zina! what are you thinking of? Do recollect yourself!” cried Maria
Alexandrovna, frightened out of her wits, and jumping briskly up from her
chair.

“I told you, mamma—I told you before, that I should not be able to last out
the length of this shameful and ignominious business!” continued Zina.
“Surely we need no further bemean and befoul ourselves! I will take it all

on myself, mamma. I am the basest of all, for lending myself, of my own
free will, to this abominable intrigue! You are my mother; you love me, I
know, and you wished to arrange matters for my happiness, as you thought
best, and according to your lights. Your conduct, therefore, is pardonable;
but mine! oh, no! never, never!”

“Zina, Zina! surely you are not going to tell the whole story? Oh! woe,
woe! I felt that the knife would pierce my heart!”

“Yes, mamma, I shall tell all; I am disgraced, you—we all of us are
disgraced——”

“Zina, you are exaggerating! you are beside yourself; and you don't know
what you are saying. And why say anything about it? The ignominy and
disgrace is not on our side, dear child; I will show in a moment that it is not
on our side!”

“No, mamma, no!” cried Zina, with a quiver of rage in her voice, “I do not
wish to remain silent any longer before these—persons, whose opinion I
despise, and who have come here for the purpose of laughing at us. I do not
wish to stand insult from any one of them; none of them have any right to
throw dirt at me; every single one of them would be ready at any moment to
do things thirty times as bad as anything either I or you have done or would
do! Dare they, can they constitute themselves our judges?”

“Listen to that!”

“There's a pretty little speech for you!”

“Why, that's us she's abusing”!

“A nice sort of creature she is herself!”

These and other such-like exclamations greeted the conclusion of Zina's
speech.

“Oh, she simply doesn't know what she's talking about!” observed Natalia
Dimitrievna.

We will make a digression, and remark that Natalia Dimitrievna was quite
right there!

For if Zina did not consider these women competent to judge herself, why
should she trouble herself to make those exposures and admissions which
she proposed to reveal in their presence? Zina was in much too great a
hurry. (She always was,—so the best heads in Mordasoff had agreed!) All
might have been set right; all might have been satisfactorily arranged!
Maria Alexandrovna was a great deal to blame this night, too! She had been
too much “in a hurry,” like her daughter,—and too arrogant! She should
have simply raised the laugh at the old prince's expense, and turned him out
of the house! But Zina, in despite of all common sense (as indicated above),
and of the sage opinions of all Mordasoff, addressed herself to the prince:

“Prince,” she said to the old man, who actually rose from his arm-chair to
show his respect for the speaker, so much was he struck by her at this
moment!—“Prince forgive us; we have deceived you; we entrapped you
——”

“Will you be quiet, you wretched girl?” cried Maria Alexandrovna, wild
with rage.

“My dear young lady—my dear child, my darling child!” murmured the
admiring prince.

But the proud haughty character of Zina had led her on to cross the barrier
of all propriety;—she even forgot her own mother who lay fainting at her
feet—a victim to the self-exposure her daughter indulged in.

“Yes, prince, we both cheated you. Mamma was in fault in that she
determined that I must marry you; and I in that I consented thereto. We
filled you with wine; I sang to you and postured and posed for your
admiration. We tricked you, a weak defenceless old man, we tricked you (as
Mr. Mosgliakoff would express it!) for the sake of your wealth, and your
rank. All this was shockingly mean, and I freely admit the fact. But I swear
to you, Prince, that I consented to all this baseness from motives which
were not base. I wished,—but what a wretch I am! it is doubly mean to
justify one's conduct in such a case as this! But I will tell you, Prince, that if

I had accepted anything from you, I should have made it up to you for it, by
being your plaything, your servant, your—your ballet dancer, your slave—
anything you wished. I had sworn to this, and I should have kept my oath.”

A severe spasm at the throat stopped her for a moment; while all the guests
sat and listened like so many blocks of wood, their eyes and mouths wide
open.

This unexpected, and to them perfectly unintelligible sally on Zina's part
had utterly confounded them. The old prince alone was touched to tears,
though he did not understand half that Zina said.

“But I will marry you, my beau—t—iful child, I will marry you, if you
like”—he murmured, “and est—eem it a great honour, too! But I as—sure
you it was all a dream,—what does it mat—ter what I dream? Why should
you take it so to heart? I don't seem to under—stand it all; please explain,
my dear friend, what it all means!” he added, to Paul.

“As for you, Pavel Alexandrovitch,” Zina recommenced, also turning to
Mosgliakoff, “you whom I had made up my mind, at one time, to look upon
as my future husband; you who have now so cruelly revenged yourself
upon me; must you needs have allied yourself to these people here, whose
object at all times is to humiliate and shame me? And you said that you
loved me! However, it is not for me to preach moralities to you, for I am
worse than all! I wronged you, distinctly, in holding out false hopes and half
promises. I never loved you, and if I had agreed to be your wife, it would
have been solely with the view of getting away from here, out of this
accursed town, and free of all this meanness and baseness. However, I
swear to you that had I married you, I should have been a good and faithful
wife! You have taken a cruel vengeance upon me, and if that flatters your
pride, then——”

“Zina!” cried Mosgliakoff.

“If you still hate me——”

“Zina!!”

“If you ever did love me——”

“Zenaida Afanassievna!”

“Zina, Zina—my child!” cried Maria Alexandrovna.

“I am a blackguard, Zina—a blackguard, and nothing else!” cried
Mosgliakoff; while all the assembled ladies gave way to violent agitation.
Cries of amazement and of wrath broke upon the silence; but Mosgliakoff
himself stood speechless and miserable, without a thought and without a
word to plead for him!

“I am an ass, Zina,” he cried at last, in an outburst of wild despair,—“an
ass! oh far, far worse than an ass. But I will prove to you, Zina, that even an
ass can behave like a generous human being! Uncle, I cheated you! I, I—it
was I who cheated you: you were not asleep,—you were wide awake when
you made this lady an offer of marriage! And I—scoundrel that I was—out
of revenge because I was rejected by her myself, persuaded you that you
had dreamed it all!”

“Dear me, what wonderful and interesting revelations we are being treated
to now!” whispered Natalia to Mrs. Antipova.

“My dear friend,” replied the prince, “com—pose yourself, do! I assure you
—you quite start—led me with that sudden ex—clamation of yours!
Besides, you are labouring under a delusion;—I will marr—y the lady, of
course, if ne—cessary. But you told me, yourself, it was all a dre—eam!”

“Oh, how am I to tell you? Do show me, somebody, how to explain to him!
Uncle, uncle! this is an important matter—a most important family affair!
Think of that, uncle—just try to realise that——”

“Wait a bit, my boy—wait a bit: let me think! First there was my coachman,
Theophile——”

“Oh, never mind Theophile now, for goodness sake!”

“Of course we need not waste time over The—ophile. Well—then came Na
—poleon; and then we seemed to be sitting at tea, and some la—dy came
and ate up all our su—gar!”

“But, uncle!” cried Mosgliakoff, at his wits' end, “it was Maria
Alexandrovna herself told us that anecdote about Natalia Dimitrievna! I
was here myself and heard it!—I was a blackguard, and listened at the
keyhole!”

“How, Maria Alexandrovna!” cried Natalia, “you've told the prince too,
have you, that I stole sugar out of your basin? So I come to you to steal
your sugar, do I, eh! do I?”

“Get away from me!” cried Maria Alexandrovna, with the abandonment of
utter despair.

“Oh, dear no! I shall do nothing of the sort, Maria Alexandrovna! I steal
your sugar, do I? I tell you you shall not talk of me like that, madam—you
dare not! I have long suspected you of spreading this sort of rubbish abroad
about me! Sophia Petrovna came and told me all about it. So I stole your
sugar, did I, eh?”

“But, my dear la—dies!” said the prince, “it was only part of a dream! What
do my dreams matter?——”

“Great tub of a woman!” muttered Maria Alexandrovna through her teeth.

“What! what! I'm a tub, too, am I?” shrieked Natalia Dimitrievna. “And
what are you yourself, pray? Oh, I have long known that you call me a tub,
madam. Never mind!—at all events my husband is a man, madam, and not
a fool, like yours!”

“Ye—yes—quite so! I remember there was something about a tub, too!”
murmured the old man, with a vague recollection of his late conversation
with Maria Alexandrovna.

“What—you, too? you join in abusing a respectable woman of noble
extraction, do you? How dare you call me names, prince—you wretched old

one-legged misery! I'm a tub am I, you one-legged old abomination?”

“Wha—at, madam, I one-legged?”

“Yes—one-legged and toothless, sir; that's what you are!”

“Yes, and one-eyed too!” shouted Maria Alexandrovna.

“And what's more, you wear stays instead of having your own ribs!” added
Natalia Dimitrievna.

“His face is all on wire springs!”

“He hasn't a hair of his own to swear by!”

“Even the old fool's moustache is stuck on!” put in Maria Alexandrovna.

“Well, Ma—arie Alexandrovna, give me the credit of having a nose of my
ve—ry own, at all events!” said the prince, overwhelmed with confusion
under these unexpected disclosures. “My friend, it must have been you
betrayed me! you must have told them that my hair is stuck on?”

“Uncle, what an idea, I——!”

“My dear boy, I can't stay here any lon—ger, take me away somewhere—
quelle société! Where have you brought me to, eh?—Gracious Hea—eaven,
what dreadful soc—iety!”

“Idiot! scoundrel!” shrieked Maria Alexandrovna.

“Goodness!” said the unfortunate old prince. “I can't quite remember just
now what I came here for at all—I suppose I shall reme—mber directly.
Take me away, quick, my boy, or I shall be torn to pieces here! Besides, I
have an i—dea that I want to make a note of——”

“Come along, uncle—it isn't very late; I'll take you over to an hotel at once,
and I'll move over my own things too.”

“Ye—yes, of course, a ho—tel! Good-bye, my charming child; you alone,
you—are the only vir—tuous one of them all; you are a no—oble child.
Good-bye, my charming girl! Come along, my friend;—oh, good gra—
cious, what people!”

I will not attempt to describe the end of this disagreeable scene, after the
prince's departure.

The guests separated in a hurricane of scolding and abuse and mutual
vituperation, and Maria Alexandrovna was at last left alone amid the ruins
and relics of her departed glory.

Alas, alas! Power, glory, weight—all had disappeared in this one
unfortunate evening. Maria Alexandrovna quite realised that there was no
chance of her ever again mounting to the height from which she had now
fallen. Her long preeminence and despotism over society in general had
collapsed.

What remained to her? Philosophy? She was wild with the madness of
despair all night! Zina was dishonoured—scandals would circulate, never-
ceasing scandals; and—oh! it was dreadful!

As a faithful historian, I must record that poor Afanassy was the scapegoat
this night; he “caught it” so terribly that he eventually disappeared; he had
hidden himself in the garret, and was there starved to death almost, with
cold, all night.

The morning came at last; but it brought nothing good with it! Misfortunes
never come singly.

CHAPTER XV.

If fate makes up its mind to visit anyone with misfortune, there is no end to
its malice! This fact has often been remarked by thinkers; and, as if the
ignominy of last night were not enough, the same malicious destiny had
prepared for this family more, yea, and worse—evils to come!

By ten o'clock in the morning a strange and almost incredible rumour was
in full swing all over the town: it was received by society, of course, with
full measure of spiteful joy, just as we all love to receive delightfully
scandalous stories of anyone about us.

“To lose one's sense of shame to such an extent!” people said one to
another.

“To humiliate oneself so, and to neglect the first rules of propriety! To loose
the bands of decency altogether like this, really!” etc., etc.

But here is what had happened.

Early in the morning, something after six o'clock, a poor piteous-looking
old woman came hurriedly to the door of Maria Alexandrovna's house, and
begged the maid to wake Miss Zina up as quickly, as possible,—only Miss
Zina, and very quietly, so that her mother should not hear of it, if possible.

Zina, pale and miserable, ran out to the old woman immediately.

The latter fell at Zina's feet and kissed them and begged her with tears to
come with her at once to see poor Vaísia, her son, who had been so bad, so
bad all night that she did not think he could live another day.

The old woman told Zina that Vaísia had sent to beg her to come and bid
him farewell in this his death hour: he conjured her to come by all the
blessed angels, and by all their past—otherwise he must die in despair.

Zina at once decided to go, in spite of the fact that, by so doing, she would
be justifying all the scandal and slanders disseminated about her in former
days, as to the intercepted letter, her visits to him, and so on. Without a
word to her mother, then, she donned her cloak and started off with the old
woman, passing through the whole length of the town, into one of the
poorest slums of Mordasof—and stopped at a little low wretched house,
with small miserable windows, and snow piled round the basement for
warmth.

In this house, in a tiny room, more than half of which was occupied by an
enormous stove, on a wretched bed, and covered with a miserably thin quilt,
lay a young man, pale and haggard: his eyes were ablaze with the fire of
fever, his hands were dry and thin, and he was breathing with difficulty and
very hoarsely. He looked as though he might have been handsome once, but
disease had put its finger on his features and made them dreadful to look
upon and sad withal, as are so many dying consumptive patients' faces.

His old mother who had fed herself for a year past with the conviction that
her son would recover, now saw at last that Vaísia was not to live. She stood
over him, bowed down with her grief—tearless, and looked and looked, and
could not look enough; and felt, but could not realize, that this dear son of
hers must in a few days be buried in the miserable Mordasof churchyard,
far down beneath the snow and frozen earth!

But Vaísia was not looking at her at this moment! His poor suffering face
was at rest now, and happy; for he saw before him the dear image which he
had thought of, dreamed of, and loved through all the long sad nights of his
illness, for the last year and a half! He realised that she forgave him, and
had come, like an angel of God, to tell him of her forgiveness, here, on his
deathbed.

She pressed his hands, wept over him, stood and smiled over him, looked at
him once more with those wonderful eyes of hers, and all the past, the
undying ever-present past rose up before the mind's eye of the dying man.

The spark of life flashed up again in his soul, as though to show, now that it
was about to die out for ever on this earth, how hard, how hard it was to see
so sweet a light fade away.

“Zina, Zina!” he said, “my Zina, do not weep; don't grieve, Zina, don't
remind me that I must die! Let me gaze at you, so—so,—and feel that our
two souls have come together once more—that you have forgiven me! Let
me kiss your dear hands again, as I used, and so let me die without noticing
the approach of death.

“How thin you have grown, Zina! and how sweetly you are looking at me
now, my Zina! Do you remember how you used to laugh, in bygone days?
Oh, Zina, my angel, I shall not ask you to forgive me,—I will not remember
anything about—that, you know what! for if you do forgive me, I can never
forgive myself!

“All the long, long nights, Zina, I have lain here and thought, and thought;
and I have long since decided that I had better die, Zina; for I am not fit to
live!”

Zina wept, and silently pressed his hands, as though she would stop him
talking so.

“Why do you cry so?” continued the sick man. “Is it because I am dying?
but all the past is long since dead and buried, Zina, my angel! You are wiser
than I am, you know I am a bad, wicked man; surely you cannot love me
still? Do you know what it has cost me to realise that I am a bad man? I,
who have always prided myself before the world—and what on? Purity of
heart, generosity of aim! Yes, Zina, so I did, while we read Shakespeare;
and in theory I was pure and generous. Yet, how did I prove these qualities
in practice?”

“Oh, don't! don't!” sobbed Zina, “you are not fair to yourself: don't talk like
this, please don't!”

“Don't stop me, Zina! You forgave me, my angel; I know you forgave me
long ago, but you must have judged me, and you know what sort of man I
really am; and that is what tortures me so! I am unworthy of your love,

Zina! And you were good and true, not only in theory, but in practice too!
You told your mother you would marry me, and no one else, and you would
have kept your word! Do you know, Zina, I never realized before what you
would sacrifice in marrying me! I could not even see that you might die of
hunger if you did so! All I thought of was that you would be the bride of a
great poet (in the future), and I could not understand your reasons for
wishing to delay our union! So I reproached you and bullied you, and
despised you and suspected you, and at last I committed the crime of
showing your letter! I was not even a scoundrel at that moment! I was
simply a worm-man. Ah! how you must have despised me! No, it is well
that I am dying; it is well that you did not marry me! I should not have
understood your sacrifice, and I should have worried you, and perhaps, in
time, have learned to hate you, and ... but now it is good, it is best so! my
bitter tears can at least cleanse my heart before I die. Ah! Zina! Zina! love
me, love me as you did before for a little, little while! just for the last hour
of my life. I know I am not worthy of it, but—oh, my angel, my Zina!”

Throughout this speech Zina, sobbing herself, had several times tried to
stop the speaker; but he would not listen. He felt that he must unburden his
soul by speaking out, and continued to talk—though with difficulty,
panting, and with choking and husky utterance.

“Oh, if only you had never seen me and never loved me,” said Zina, “you
would have lived on now! Ah, why did we ever meet?”

“No, no, darling, don't blame yourself because I am dying! think of all my
self-love, my romanticism! I am to blame for all, myself! Did they ever tell
you my story in full? Do you remember, three years ago, there was a
criminal here sentenced to death? This man heard that a criminal was never
executed whilst ill! so he got hold of some wine, mixed tobacco in it, and
drank it. The effect was to make him so dreadfully sick, with blood-spitting,
that his lungs became affected; he was taken to a hospital, and a few weeks
after he died of virulent consumption! Well, on that day, you know, after the
letter, it struck me that I would do the same; and why do you think I chose
consumption? Because I was afraid of any more sudden death? Perhaps.
But, oh, Zina! believe me, a romantic nonsense played a great part in it; at
all events, I had an idea that it would be striking and grand for me to be

lying here, dying of consumption, and you standing and wringing your
hands for woe that love should have brought me to this! You should come, I
thought, and beg my pardon on your knees, and I should forgive you and
die in your arms!”

“Oh, don't! don't!” said Zina, “don't talk of it now, dear! you are not really
like that. Think of our happy days together, think of something else—not
that, not that!”

“Oh, but it's so bitter to me, darling; and that's why I must speak of it. I
havn't seen you for a year and a half, you know, and all that time I have
been alone; and I don't think there was one single minute of all that time
when I have not thought of you, my angel, Zina! And, oh! how I longed to
do something to earn a better opinion from you! Up to these very last days I
have never believed that I should really die; it has not killed me all at once,
you know. I have long walked about with my lungs affected. For instance, I
have longed to become a great poet suddenly, to publish a poem such as has
never appeared before on this earth; I intended to pour my whole soul and
being into it, so that wherever I was, or wherever you were, I should always
be with you and remind you of myself in my poems! And my greatest
longing of all was that you should think it all over and say to yourself at last
some day, 'No, he is not such a wretch as I thought, after all!' It was stupid
of me, Zina, stupid—stupid—wasn't it, darling?”

“No, no, Vaísia—no!” cried Zina. She fell on his breast and kissed his poor
hot, dry hands.

“And, oh! how jealous I have been of you all this time, Zina! I think I
should have died if I had heard of your wedding. I kept a watch over you,
you know; I had a spy—there!” (he nodded towards his mother). “She used
to go over and bring me news. You never loved Mosgliakoff—now did you,
Zina? Oh, my darling, my darling, will you remember me when I am dead?
Oh, I know you will; but years go by, Zina, and hearts grow cold, and yours
will cool too, and you'll forget me, Zina!”

“No, no, never! I shall never marry. You are my first love, and my only—
only—undying love!”

“But all things die, Zina, even our memories, and our good and noble
feelings die also, and in their place comes reason. No, no, Zina, be happy,
and live long. Love another if you can, you cannot love a poor dead man for
ever! But think of me now and then, if only seldom; don't think of my
faults: forgive them! For oh, Zina, there was good in that sweet love of ours
as well as evil. Oh, golden, golden days never to be recalled! Listen,
darling, I have always loved the sunset hour—remember me at that time,
will you? Oh no, no! why must I die? oh how I should love to live on now.
Think of that time—oh, just think of it! it was all spring then, the sun shone
so bright, the flowers were so sweet, ah me! and look, now—look!”

And the poor thin finger pointed to the frozen window-pane. Then he seized
Zina's hand and pressed it tight over his eyes, and sighed bitterly—bitterly!
His sobs nearly burst his poor suffering breast.... And so he continued
suffering and talking all the long day. Zina comforted and soothed him as
she best could, but she too was full of deadly grief and pain. She told him—
she promised him—never to forget; that she would never love again as she
loved him; and he believed her and wept, and smiled again, and kissed her
hands. And so the day passed.

Meanwhile, Maria Alexandrovna had sent some ten times for Zina, begging
her not to ruin her reputation irretrievably. At last, at dusk, she determined
to go herself; she was out of her wits with terror and grief.

Having called Zina out into the next room, she proceeded to beg and pray
her, on her knees, “to spare this last dagger at her heart!”

Zina had come out from the sick-room ill: her head was on fire,—she heard,
but could not comprehend, what her mother said; and Marie Alexandrovna
was obliged to leave the house again in despair, for Zina had determined to
sit up all night with Vaísia.

She never left his bedside, but the poor fellow grew worse and worse.
Another day came, but there was no hope that the sick man would see its
close. His old mother walked about as though she had lost all control of her
actions; grief had turned her head for the time; she gave her son medicines,
but he would none of them! His death agony dragged on and on! He could
not speak now, and only hoarse inarticulate sounds proceeded from his

throat. To the very last instant he stared and stared at Zina, and never took
his eyes off her; and when their light failed them he still groped with
uncertain fingers for her hand, to press and fondle it in his own!

Meanwhile the short winter day was waning! And when at even the last
sunbeam gilded the frozen window-pane of the little room, the soul of the
sufferer fled in pursuit of it out of the emaciated body that had kept it
prisoner.

The old mother, seeing that there was nothing left her now but the lifeless
body of her beloved Vaísia, wrung her hands, and with a loud cry flung
herself on his dead breast.

“This is your doing, you viper, you cursed snake,” she yelled to Zina, in her
despair; “it was you ruined and killed him, you wicked, wretched girl.” But
Zina heard nothing. She stood over the dead body like one bereft of her
senses.

At last she bent over him, made the sign of the Cross, kissed him, and
mechanically left the room. Her eyes were ablaze, her head whirled. Two
nights without sleep, combined with her turbulent feelings, were almost too
much for her reason; she had a sort of confused consciousness that all her
past had just been torn out of her heart, and that a new life was beginning
for her, dark and threatening.

But she had not gone ten paces when Mosgliakoff suddenly seemed to start
up from the earth at her feet.

He must have been waiting for her here.

“Zenaida Afanassievna,” he began, peering all around him in what looked
like timid haste; it was still pretty light. “Zenaida Afanassievna, of course I
am an ass, or, if you please, perhaps not quite an ass, for I really think I am
acting rather generously this time. Excuse my blundering, but I am rather
confused, from a variety of causes.”

Zina glanced at him almost unconsciously, and silently went on her way.
There was not much room for two on the narrow pavement, and as Zina did

not make way for Paul, the latter was obliged to walk on the road at the
side, which he did, never taking his eyes off her face.

“Zenaida Afanassievna,” he continued, “I have thought it all over, and if
you are agreeable I am willing to renew my proposal of marriage. I am even
ready to forget all that has happened; all the ignominy of the last two days,
and to forgive it—but on one condition: that while we are still here our
engagement is to remain a strict secret. You will depart from this place as
soon as ever you can, and I shall quietly follow you. We will be married
secretly, somewhere, so that nobody shall know anything about it; and then
we'll be off to St. Petersburg by express post—don't take more than a small
bag—eh? What say you, Zenaida Afanassievna; tell me quick, please, I
can't stay here. We might be seen together, you know.”

Zina did not answer a word; she only looked at Mosgliakoff; but it was such
a look that he understood all instantly, bowed, and disappeared down the
next lane.

“Dear me,” he said to himself, “what's the meaning of this? The day before
yesterday she became so jolly humble, and blamed herself all round. I've
come on the wrong day, evidently!”

Meanwhile event followed event in Mordasof.

A very tragical circumstance occurred.

The old prince, who moved over to the hotel with Mosgliakoff, fell very ill
that same night, dangerously ill. All Mordasof knew of it in the morning;
the doctor never left his side. That evening a consultation of all the local
medical talent was held over the old man (the invitations to which were
issued in Latin); but in spite of the Latin and all they could do for him, the
poor prince was quite off his head; he raved and asked his doctor to sing
him some ballad or other; raved about wigs, and occasionally cried out as
though frightened.

The Mordasof doctors decided that the hospitality of the town had given the
prince inflammation of the stomach, which had somehow “gone to the
head.”

There might be some subordinate moral causes to account for the attack;
but at all events he ought to have died long ago; and so he would certainly
die now.

In this last conclusion they were not far wrong; for the poor old prince
breathed his last three days after, at the hotel.

This event impressed the Mordasof folk considerably. No one had expected
such a tragical turn of affairs. They went in troops to the hotel to view the
poor old body, and there they wagged their heads wisely and ended by
passing severe judgment upon “the murderers of the unfortunate Prince,”—
meaning thereby, of course, Maria Alexandrovna and her daughter. They
predicted that this matter would go further. Mosgliakoff was in a dreadful
state of perturbation: he did not know what to do with the body. Should he
take it back to Donchanof! or what? Perhaps he would be held responsible
for the old man's death, as he had brought him here? He did not like the
look of things. The Mordasof people were less than useless for advice, they
were all far too frightened to hazard a word.

But suddenly the scene changed.

One fine evening a visitor arrived—no less a person than the eminent
Prince Shepetiloff, a young man of thirty-five, with colonel's epaulettes, a
relative of the dead man. His arrival created a great stir among all classes at
Mordasof.

It appeared that this gentleman had lately left St. Petersburg, and had called
in at Donchanof. Finding no one there, he had followed the prince to
Mordasof, where the news and circumstances of the old man's death fell
upon him like a thunder-clap!

Even the governor felt a little guilty while detailing the story of the prince's
death: all Mordasof felt and looked guilty.

This visitor took the matter entirely into his own hands, and Mosgliakoff
made himself scarce before the presence of the prince's real nephew, and
disappeared, no one knew whither.

The body was taken to the monastery, and all the Mordasof ladies flocked
thither to the funeral. It was rumoured that Maria Alexandrovna was to be
present, and that she was to go on her knees before the coffin, and loudly
pray for pardon; and that all this was in conformity with the laws of the
country.

Of course this was all nonsense, and Maria Alexandrovna never went near
the place!

I forgot to state that the latter had carried off Zina to the country house, not
deeming it possible to continue to live in the town. There she sat, and
trembled over all the second-hand news she could get hold of as to events
occurring at Mordasof.

The funeral procession passed within half a mile of her country house; so
that Maria Alexandrovna could get a good view of the long train of
carriages looking black against the white snow roads; but she could not bear
the sight, and left the window.

Before the week was out, she and her daughter moved to Moscow, taking
Afanassy Matveyevitch with them; and, within a month, the country house
and town house were both for sale.

And so Mordasof lost its most eminent inhabitant for ever!

Afanassy Matveyevitch was said to be for sale with the country house.

A year—two years went by, and Mordasof had quite forgotten Maria
Alexandrovna, or nearly so! Alas! so wags the world! It was said that she
had bought another estate, and had moved over to some other provincial
capital; where, of course, she had everybody under her thumb; that Zina
was not yet married; and that Afanassy Matveyevitch—but why repeat all
this nonsense? None of it was true; it was but rumour!——

It is three years since I wrote the last words of the above chronicles of
Mordasof, and whoever would have believed that I should have to unfold
my MS., and add another piece of news to my narrative?

Well, to business!—

Let's begin with Paul Mosgliakoff.—After leaving Mordasof, he went
straight to St. Petersburg, where he very soon obtained the clerkship he had
applied for. He then promptly forgot all about Mordasof, and the events
enacted there. He enjoyed life, went into society, fell in love, made another
offer of marriage, and had to swallow another snub; became disgusted with
Petersburg life, and joined an expedition to one of the remote quarters of
our vast empire.

This expedition passed through its perils of land and water, and arrived in
due course at the capital of the remote province which was its destination.

There the members were well received by the governor, and a ball was
arranged for their entertainment.

Mosgliakoff was delighted. He donned his best Petersburg uniform, and
proceeded to the large ball-room with the full intention of producing a great
and startling effect. His first duty was to make his bow to the governor-
general's lady, of whom it was rumoured that she was young, and very
lovely.

He advanced then, with some little “swagger,” but was suddenly rooted to
the spot with amazement. Before him stood Zina, beautifully dressed, proud
and haughty, and sparkling with diamonds! She did not recognize him; her
eyes rested a moment on his face, and then passed on to glance at some
other person.

Paul immediately departed to a safe and quiet corner, and there button-
holed a young civilian whom he questioned, and from whom he learned
certain most interesting facts. He learned that the governor-general had
married a very rich and very lovely lady in Moscow, two years since; that
his wife was certainly very beautiful, but, at the same time, excessively
proud and haughty, and danced with none but generals. That the governor's

lady had a mother, a lady of rank and fashion, who had followed them from
Moscow; that this lady was very clever and wise, but that even she was
quite under the thumb of her daughter; as for the general (the governor), he
doted on his wife.

Mosgliakoff inquired after our old friend Afanassy; but in their “remote
province” nothing was known of that gentleman.

Feeling a little more at home presently, Paul began to walk about the room,
and shortly espied Maria Alexandrovna herself. She was wonderfully
dressed, and was surrounded by a bevy of ladies who evidently dwelt in the
glory of her patronage: she appeared to be exceedingly amiable to them—
wonderfully so!

Paul plucked up courage and introduced himself. Maria Alexandrovna
seemed to give a shudder at first sight of him, but in an instant she was
herself again. She was kind enough to recognise Paul, and to ask him all
sorts of questions as to his Petersburg experiences, and so on. She never
said a word about Mordasof, however. She behaved as though no such place
existed.

After a minute or so, and having dropped a question as to some Petersburg
prince whom Paul had never so much as heard of, she turned to speak to
another young gentleman standing by, and in a second or two was entirely
oblivious of Mosgliakoff. With a sarcastic smile our friend passed on into
the large hall. Feeling offended—though he knew not why—he decided not
to dance. So he leant his back against one of the pillars, and for a couple of
hours did nothing but follow Zina about with his eyes. But alas! all the
grace of his figure and attitude, and all the fascinations of his general
appearance were lost upon her, she never looked at him.

At last, with legs stiff from standing, tired, hungry, and feeling miserable
generally, he went home. Here he tossed about half the night thinking of the
past, and next morning, having the chance of joining a branch party of his
expedition, he accepted the opportunity with delight, and left the town at
once.

The bells tinkled, the horses trotted gaily along, kicking up snowballs as
they went. Paul Mosgliakoff fell to thinking, then he fell to snoring, and so
he continued until the third station from the start; there he awoke fresh and
jolly, and with the new scenery came newer, and healthier, and pleasanter
thoughts.

THE END OF “UNCLE'S DREAM.”

THE PERMANENT HUSBAND.

CHAPTER I.

Summer had come, and Velchaninoff, contrary to his expectations, was still
in St. Petersburg. His trip to the south of Russia had fallen through, and
there seemed no end to the business which had detained him.

This business—which was a lawsuit as to certain property—had taken a
very disagreeable aspect. Three months ago the thing had appeared to be by
no means complicated—in fact, there had seemed to be scarcely any
question as to the rights and wrongs of the matter, but all seemed to change
suddenly.

“Everything else seems to have changed for the worse, too!” said
Velchaninoff to himself, over and over again.

He was employing a clever lawyer—an eminent man, and an expensive
one, too; but in his impatience and suspicion he began to interfere in the
matter himself. He read and wrote papers—all of which the lawyer put into
his waste-paper basket—holus bolus; called in continually at the courts and
offices, made inquiries, and confused and worried everybody concerned in
the matter; so at least the lawyer declared, and begged him for mercy's sake
to go away to the country somewhere.

But he could not make up his mind to do so. He stayed in town and enjoyed
the dust, and the hot nights, and the closeness of the air of St. Petersburg,
things which are enough to destroy anyone's nerves. His lodgings were
somewhere near the Great Theatre; he had lately taken them, and did not
like them. Nothing went well with him; his hypochondria increased with
each day, and he had long been a victim to that disorder.

Velchaninoff was a man who had seen a great deal of the world; he was not
quite young, thirty-eight years old—perhaps thirty-nine, or so; and all this

“old age,” as he called it, had “fallen upon him quite unawares.” However,
as he himself well understood, he had aged more in the quality than in the
number of the years of his life; and if his infirmities were really creeping
upon him, they must have come from within and not from outside causes.
He looked young enough still. He was a tall, stout man, with light-brown
thick hair, without a suspicion of white about it, and a light beard that
reached half way down his chest. At first sight you might have supposed
him to be of a lax, careless disposition or character, but on studying him
more closely you would have found that, on the contrary, the man was
decidedly a stickler for the proprieties of this world, and withal brought up
in the ways and graces of the very best society. His manners were very good
—free but graceful—in spite of this lately-acquired habit of grumbling and
reviling things in general. He was still full of the most perfect, aristocratic
self-confidence: probably he did not himself suspect to how great an extent
this was so, though he was a most decidedly intelligent, I may say clever,
even talented man. His open, healthy-looking face was distinguished by an
almost feminine refinement, which quality gained him much attention from
the fair sex. He had large blue eyes—eyes which ten years ago had known
well how to persuade and attract; such clear, merry, careless eyes they had
been, that they invariably brought over to his side any person he wished to
gain. Now, when he was nearly forty years old, their ancient, kind, frank
expression had died out of them, and a certain cynicism—a cunning—an
irony very often, and yet another variety of expression, of late—an
expression of melancholy or pain, undefined but keen, had taken the place
of the earlier attractive qualities of his eyes. This expression of melancholy
especially showed itself when he was alone; and it was a strange fact that
the gay, careless, happy fellow of a couple of years ago, the man who could
tell a funny story so inimitably, should now love nothing so well as to be all
alone. He intended to throw up most of his friends—a quite unnecessary
step, in spite of his present financial difficulties. Probably his vanity was to
blame for this intention: he could not bear to see his old friends in his
present position; with his vain suspicious character it would be most
unpalatable to him.

But his vanity began to change its nature in solitude. It did not grow less, on
the contrary; but it seemed to develop into a special type of vanity which
was unlike its old self. This new vanity suffered from entirely different

causes, “higher causes, if I may so express it,” he said, “and if there really
be higher and lower motives in this world.”

He defined these “higher things” as matters which he could not laugh at, or
turn to ridicule when happening in his own individual experience. Of course
it would be quite another thing with the same subjects in society; by himself
he could not ridicule then; but put him among other people, and he would
be the first to tear himself from all of those secret resolutions of his
conscience made in solitude, and laugh them to scorn.

Very often, on rising from his bed in the morning, he would feel ashamed of
the thoughts and feelings which had animated him during the long sleepless
night—and his nights of late had been sleepless. He seemed suspicious of
everything and everybody, great and small, and grew mistrustful of himself.

One fact stood out clearly, and that was that during those sleepless nights
his thoughts and opinions took huge leaps and bounds, sometimes changing
entirely from the thoughts and opinions of the daytime. This fact struck him
very forcibly; and he took occasion to consult an eminent medical friend.
He spoke in fun, but the doctor informed him that the fact of feelings and
opinions changing during meditations at night, and during sleeplessness,
was one long recognised by science; and that that was especially the case
with persons of strong thinking power, and of acute feelings. He stated
further that very often the beliefs of a whole life are uprooted under the
melancholy influence of night and inability to sleep, and that often the most
fateful resolutions are made under the same influence; that sometimes this
impressionability to the mystic influence of the dark hours amounted to a
malady, in which case measures must be taken, the radical manner of living
should be changed, diet considered, a journey undertaken if possible, etc.,
etc.

Velchaninoff listened no further, but he was sure that in his own case there
was decided malady.

Very soon his morning meditations began to partake of the nature of those
of the night, but they were more bitter. Certain events of his life now began
to recur to his memory more and more vividly; they would strike him
suddenly, and without apparent reason: things which had been forgotten for

ten or fifteen years—some so long ago that he thought it miraculous that he
should have been able to recall them at all. But that was not all—for, after
all, what man who has seen any life has not hundreds of such recollections
of the past? The principal point was that all this past came back to him now
with an absolutely new light thrown upon it, and he seemed to look at it
from an entirely new and unexpected point of view. Why did some of his
acts appear to him now to be nothing better than crimes? It was not merely
in the judgment of his intellect that these things appeared so to him now—
had it been only his poor sick mind, he would not have trusted it; but his
whole being seemed to condemn him; he would curse and even weep over
these recollections of the past! If anyone had told him a couple of years
since that he would weep over anything, he would have laughed the idea to
scorn.

At first he recalled the unpleasant experiences of his life: certain failures in
society, humiliations; he remembered how some designing person had so
successfully blackened his character that he was requested to cease his
visits to a certain house; how once, and not so very long ago, he had been
publicly insulted, and had not challenged the offender; how once an
epigram had been fastened to his name by some witty person, in the midst
of a party of pretty women and he had not found a reply; he remembered
several unpaid debts, and how he had most stupidly run through two very
respectable fortunes.

Then he began to recall facts belonging to a “higher” order. He remembered
that he had once insulted a poor old grey-headed clerk, and that the latter
had covered his face with his hands and cried, which Velchaninoff had
thought a great joke at the time, but now looked upon in quite another light.
Then he thought how he had once, merely for fun, set a scandal going about
the beautiful little wife of a certain schoolmaster, and how the husband had
got to hear the rumour. He (Velchaninoff) had left the town shortly after and
did not know how the matter had ended; but now he fell to wondering and
picturing to himself the possible consequences of his action; and goodness
knows where this theme would not have taken him to if he had not suddenly
recalled another picture: that of a poor girl, whom he had been ashamed of
and never thought of loving, but whom he had betrayed and forsaken, her

and her child, when he left St. Petersburg. He had afterwards searched for
this girl and her baby for a whole year, but never found them.

Of this sort of recollections there were, alas! but too many; and each one
seemed to bring along with it a train of others. His vanity began to suffer,
little by little, under these memories. I have said that his vanity had
developed into a new type of vanity. There were moments (few albeit) in
which he was not even ashamed of having no carriage of his own, now; or
of being seen by one of his former friends in shabby clothes; or when, if
seen and looked at by such a person contemptuously, he was high-minded
enough to suppress even a frown. Of course such moments of self-oblivion
were rare; but, as I said before, his vanity began little by little to change
away from its former quarters and to centre upon one question which was
perpetually ranging itself before his intellect. “There is some power or
other,” he would muse, sarcastically, “somewhere, which is extremely
interested in my morals, and sends me these damnable recollections and
tears of remorse! Let them come, by all means; but they have not the
slightest effect on me! for I haven't a scrap of independence about me, in
spite of my wretched forty years, I know that for certain. Why, if it were to
happen so that I should gain anything by spreading another scandal about
that schoolmaster's wife, (for instance, that she had accepted presents from
me, or something of that sort), I should certainly spread it without a
thought.”

But though no other opportunity ever did occur of maligning the
schoolmistress, yet the very thought alone that if such an opportunity were
to occur he would inevitably seize it was almost fatal to him at times. He
was not tortured with memory at every moment of his life; he had intervals
of time to breathe and rest in. But the longer he stayed, the more unpleasant
did he find his life in St. Petersburg. July came in. At certain moments he
felt inclined to throw up his lawsuit and all, and go down to the Crimea; but
after an hour or so he would despise his own idea, and laugh at himself for
entertaining it.

“These thoughts won't be driven away by a mere journey down south,” he
said to himself, “when they have once begun to annoy me; besides, if I am
easy in my conscience now, I surely need not try to run away from any such

worrying recollections of past days!” “Why should I go after all?” he
resumed, in a strain of melancholy philosophizing; “this place is a very
heaven for a hypochondriac like myself, what with the dust and the heat,
and the discomfort of this house, what with the nonsensical swagger and
pretence of all these wretched little ‘civil servants’ in the departments I
frequent! Everyone is delightfully candid—and candour is undoubtedly
worthy of all respect! I won't go away—I'll stay and die here rather than
go!”

CHAPTER II.

It was the third of July. The heat and closeness of the air had become quite
unbearable. The day had been a busy one for Velchaninoff—he had been
walking and driving about without rest, and had still in prospect a visit in
the evening to a certain state councillor who lived somewhere on the
Chornaya Riéchka (black stream), and whom he was anxious to drop in
upon unexpectedly.

At six o'clock our hero issued from his house once more, and trudged off to
dine at a restaurant on the Nefsky, near the police-bridge—a second-rate
sort of place, but French. Here he took his usual corner, and ordered his
usual dinner, and waited.

He always had a rouble1 dinner, and paid for his wine extra, which
moderation he looked upon as a discreet sacrifice to the temporary financial
embarrassment under which he was suffering.

He regularly went through the ceremony of wondering how he could bring
himself to eat “such nastiness,” and yet as regularly he demolished every
morsel, and with excellent show of appetite too, just as though he had eaten
nothing for three days.

“This appetite can't be healthy!” he murmured to himself sometimes,
observing his own voracity. However, on this particular occasion, he sat
down to his dinner in a miserably bad humour: he threw his hat angrily
away somewhere, tipped his chair back,—and reflected.

He was in the sort of humour that if his next neighbour—dining at the little
table near him—were to rattle his plate, or if the boy serving him were to
make any little blunder, or, in fact, if any little petty annoyance were to put

him out of a sudden, he was quite capable of shouting at the offender, and,
in fact, of kicking up a serious row on the smallest pretext.

Soup was served to him. He took up his spoon, and was about to commence
operations, when he suddenly threw it down again, and started from his
seat. An unexpected thought had struck him, and in an instant he had
realized why he had been plunged in gloom and mental perturbation during
the last few days. Goodness knows why he thus suddenly became inspired,
as it were, with the truth; but so it was. He jumped from his chair, and in an
instant it all stood out before him as plain as his five fingers! “It's all that
hat!” he muttered to himself; “it's all simply and solely that damnable round
hat, with the crape band round it; that's the reason and cause of all my
worries these last days!”

He began to think; and the more he thought, the more dejected he became,
and the more astonishing appeared the “remarkable circumstance of the
hat.”

“But, hang it all, there is no circumstance!” he growled to himself. “What
circumstance do I mean? There's been nothing in the nature of an event or
occurrence!”

The fact of the matter was this: Nearly a fortnight since, he had met for the
first time, somewhere about the corner of the Podiacheskaya, a gentleman
with crape round his hat. There was nothing particular about the man—he
was just like all others; but as he passed Velchaninoff he had stared at him
so fixedly that it was impossible to avoid noticing him, and more than
noticing—observing him attentively.

The man's face seemed to be familiar to Velchaninoff. He had evidently
seen him somewhere and at some time or other.

“But one sees thousands of people during one's life,” thought Velchaninoff;
“one can't remember every face!” So he had gone on his way, and before he
was twenty yards further, to all appearances he had forgotten all about the
meeting, in spite of the strength of the first impression made upon him.

And yet he had not forgotten; for the impression remained all day, and a
very original impression it was, too,—a kind of objectless feeling of anger
against he knew not what. He remembered his exact feelings at this
moment, a fortnight after the occurrence: how he had been puzzled by the
angry nature of his sentiments at the time, and puzzled to such an extent
that he had never for a moment connected his ill-humour with the meeting
of the morning, though he had felt as cross as possible all day. But the
gentleman with the crape band had not lost much time about reminding
Velchaninoff of his existence, for the very next day he met the latter again,
on the Nefsky Prospect and again he had stared in a peculiarly fixed way at
him.

Velchaninoff flared up and spat on the ground in irritation—Russian like,
but a moment after he was wondering at his own wrath. “There are faces,
undoubtedly,” he reflected, “which fill one with disgust at first sight; but I
certainly have met that fellow somewhere or other.

“Yes, I have met him before!” he muttered again, half an hour later.

And again, as on the last occasion, he was in a vile humour all that evening,
and even went so far as to have a bad dream in the night; and yet it never
entered his head to imagine that the cause of his bad temper on both
occasions had been the accidental meeting with the gentleman in mourning,
although on the second evening he had remembered and thought of the
chance encounter two or three times.

He had even flared up angrily to think that “such a dirty-looking cad”
should presume to linger in his memory so long; he would have felt it
humiliating to himself to imagine for a moment that such a wretched
creature could possibly be in any way connected with the agitated condition
of his feelings.

Two days later the pair had met once more at the landing place of one of the
small Neva ferry steamers.

On the third occasion Velchaninoff was ready to swear that the man
recognised him, and had pressed through the crowd towards him; had even
dared to stretch out his hand and call him by name. As to this last fact he

was not quite certain, however. “At all events, who the deuce is he?”
thought Velchaninoff, “and why can't the idiot come up and speak to me if
he really does recognise me; and if he so much wishes to do so?” With these
thoughts Velchaninoff had taken a droshky and started off for the Smolney
Monastery, where his lawyer lived.

Half an hour later he was engaged in his usual quarrel with that gentleman.

But that same evening he was in a worse humour than ever, and his night
was spent in fantastic dreams and imaginings, which were anything but
pleasant. “I suppose it's bile!” he concluded, as he paid his matutinal visit to
the looking-glass.

This was the third meeting.

Then, for five days there was not a sign of the man; and yet, much to his
distaste, Velchaninoff could not, for the life of him, avoid thinking of the
man with the crape band.

He caught himself musing over the fellow. “What have I to do with him?”
he thought. “What can his business in St. Petersburg be?—he looks busy:
and whom is he in mourning for? He clearly recognises me, but I don't
know in the least who he is! And why do such people as he is put crape on
their hats? it doesn't seem 'the thing' for them, somehow! I believe I shall
recognise this fellow if I ever get a good close look at him!”

And there came over him that sensation we all know so well—the same
feeling that one has when one can't for the life of one think of the required
word; every other word comes up; associations with the right word come
up; occasions when one has used the word come up; one wanders round and
round the immediate vicinity of the word wanted, but the actual word itself
will not appear, though you may break your head to get at it!

“Let's see, now: it was—yes—some while since. It was—where on earth
was it? There was a—oh! devil take whatever there was or wasn't there!
What does it matter to me?” he broke off angrily of a sudden. “I'm not
going to lower myself by thinking of a little cad like that!”

He felt very angry; but when, in the evening, he remembered that he had
been so upset, and recollected the cause of his anger, he felt the
disagreeable sensation of having been caught by someone doing something
wrong.

This fact puzzled and annoyed him.

“There must be some reason for my getting so angry at the mere
recollection of that man's face,” he thought, but he didn't finish thinking it
out.

But the next evening he was still more indignant; and this time, he really
thought, with good cause. “Such audacity is unparalleled!” he said to
himself.

The fact of the matter is, there had been a fourth meeting with the man of
the crape hat band. The latter had apparently arisen from the earth and
confronted him. But let me explain what had happened.

It so chanced that Velchaninoff had just met, accidentally, that very state-
councillor mentioned a few pages back, whom he had been so anxious to
see, and on whom he had intended to pounce unexpectedly at his country
house. This gentleman evidently avoided Velchaninoff, but at the same time
was most necessary to the latter in his lawsuit. Consequently, when
Velchaninoff met him, the one was delighted, while the other was very
much the reverse. Velchaninoff had immediately button-holed him, and
walked down the street with him, talking; doing his very utmost to keep the
sly old fox to the subject on which it was so necessary that he should be
pumped. And it was just at this most important moment, when
Velchaninoff's intellect was all on the qui vive to catch up the slightest hints
of what he wished to get at, while the foxy old councillor (aware of the fact)
was doing his best to reveal nothing, that the former, taking his eyes from
his companion's face for one instant, beheld the gentleman of the crape
hatband walking along the other side of the road, and looking at him—nay,
watching him, evidently—and apparently smiling!

“Devil take him!” said Velchaninoff, bursting out into fury at once, while
the “old fox” instantly disappeared, “and I should have succeeded in

another minute. Curse that dirty little hound! he's simply spying me. I'll—
I'll hire somebody to—I'll take my oath he laughed at me! D—n him, I'll
thrash him. I wish I had a stick with me. I'll—I'll buy one! I won't leave this
matter so. Who the deuce is he? I will know! Who is he?”

At last, three days after this fourth encounter, we find Velchaninoff sitting
down to dinner at his restaurant, as recorded a page or two back, in a state
of mind bordering upon the furious. He could not conceal the state of his
feelings from himself, in spite of all his pride. He was obliged to confess at
last, that all his anxiety, his irritation, his state of agitation generally, must
undoubtedly be connected with, and absolutely attributed to, the appearance
of the wretched-looking creature with the crape hatband, in spite of his
insignificance.

“I may be a hypochondriac,” he reflected, “and I may be inclined to make
an elephant out of a gnat; but how does it help me? What use is it to me if I
persuade myself to believe that perhaps all this is fancy? Why, if every dirty
little wretch like that is to have the power of upsetting a man like myself,
why—it's—it's simply unbearable!”

Undoubtedly, at this last (fifth) encounter of to-day, the elephant had proved
himself a very small gnat indeed. The “crape man” had appeared suddenly,
as usual, and had passed by Velchaninoff, but without looking up at him this
time; indeed, he had gone by with downcast eyes, and had even seemed
anxious to pass unobserved. Velchaninoff had turned rapidly round and
shouted as loud as ever he could at him.

“Hey!” he cried. “You! Crape hatband! You want to escape notice this time,
do you? Who are you?”

Both the question and the whole idea of calling after the man were absurdly
foolish, and Velchaninoff knew it the moment he had said the words. The
man had turned round, stopped for an instant, lost his head, smiled—half
made up his mind to say something,—had waited half a minute in painful
indecision, then twisted suddenly round again, and “bolted” without a word.
Velchaninoff gazed after him in amazement. “What if it be I that haunt him,
and not he me, after all?” he thought. However, Velchaninoff ate up his

dinner, and then drove off to pounce upon the town councillor at the latter's
house, if he could.

The councillor was not in; and he was informed that he would scarcely be at
home before three or four in the morning, because he had gone to a
“name's-day party.”

Velchaninoff felt that this was too bad! In his rage he determined to follow
and hunt the fellow up at the party: he actually took a droshky, and started
off with that wild idea; but luckily he thought better of it on the way, got out
of the vehicle and walked away towards the “Great Theatre,” near which he
lived. He felt that he must have motion; also he must absolutely sleep well
this coming night: in order to sleep he must be tired; so he walked all the
way home—a fairly long walk, and arrived there about half-past ten, as
tired as he could wish.

His lodging, which he had taken last March, and had abused ever since,
apologising to himself for living “in such a hole,” and at the same time
excusing himself for the fact by the reflection that it was only for a while,
and that he had dropped quite accidentally into St. Petersburg—thanks to
that cursed lawsuit!—his lodging, I say, was by no means so bad as he
made it out to be!

The entrance certainly was a little dark, and dirty-looking, being just under
the arch of the gateway. But he had two fine large light rooms on the second
floor, separated by the entrance hall: one of these rooms overlooked the
yard and the other the street. Leading out of the former of these was a
smaller room, meant to be used as a bedroom; but Velchaninoff had filled it
with a disordered array of books and papers, and preferred to sleep in one of
the large rooms, the one overlooking the street, to wit.

His bed was made for him, every day, upon the large divan. The rooms were
full of good furniture, and some valuable ornaments and pictures were
scattered about, but the whole place was in dreadful disorder; the fact being
that at this time Velchaninoff was without a regular servant. His one
domestic had gone away to stay with her friends in the country; he thought
of taking a man, but decided that it was not worth while for a short time;
besides he hated flunkeys, and ended by making arrangements with his

dvornik's sister Martha, who was to come up every morning and “do out”
his rooms, he leaving the key with her as he went out each day. Martha did
absolutely nothing towards tidying the place and robbed him besides, but he
didn't care, he liked to be alone in the house. But solitude is all very well
within certain limits, and Velchaninoff found that his nerves could not stand
all this sort of thing at certain bilious moments; and it so fell out that he
began to loathe his room more and more every time he entered it.

However, on this particular evening he hardly gave himself time to undress;
he threw himself on his bed, and determined that nothing should make him
think of anything, and that he would fall asleep at once.

And, strangely enough, his head had hardly touched the pillow before he
actually was asleep; and this was the first time for a month past that such a
thing had occurred.

He awoke at about two, considerably agitated; he had dreamed certain very
strange dreams, reminding him of the incoherent wanderings of fever.

The subject seemed to be some crime which he had committed and
concealed, but of which he was accused by a continuous flow of people
who swarmed into his rooms for the purpose. The crowd which had already
collected within was enormous, and yet they continued to pour in in such
numbers that the door was never shut for an instant.

But his whole interest seemed to centre in one strange looking individual,—
a man who seemed to have once been very closely and intimately connected
with him, but who had died long ago and now reappeared for some reason
or other.

The most tormenting part of the matter was that Velchaninoff could not
recollect who this man was,—he could not remember his name,—though he
recollected the fact that he had once dearly loved him. All the rest of the
people swarming into the room seemed to be waiting for the final word of
this man,—either the condemnation or the justification of Velchaninoff was
to be pronounced by him,—and everyone was impatiently waiting to hear
him speak.

But he sat motionless at the table, and would not open his lips to say a word
of any sort.

The uproar continued, the general annoyance increased, and, suddenly,
Velchaninoff himself strode up to the man in a fury, and smote him because
he would not speak. Velchaninoff felt the strangest satisfaction in having
thus smitten him; his heart seemed to freeze in horror for what he had done,
and in acute suffering for the crime involved in his action,—but in that very
sensation of freezing at the heart lay the sense of satisfaction which he felt.

Exasperated more and more, he struck the man a second and a third time;
and then—in a sort of intoxication of fury and terror, which amounted to
actual insanity, and yet bore within it a germ of delightful satisfaction, he
ceased to count his blows, and rained them in without ceasing.

He felt he must destroy, annihilate, demolish all this.

Suddenly something strange happened; everyone present had given a
dreadful cry and turned expectantly towards the door, while at the same
moment there came three terrific peals of the hall-bell, so violent that it
appeared someone was anxious to pull the bell-handle out.

Velchaninoff awoke, started up in a second, and made for the door; he was
persuaded that the ring at the bell had been no dream or illusion, but that
someone had actually rung, and was at that moment standing at the front
door.

“It would be too unnatural if such a clear and unmistakable ring should turn
out to be nothing but an item of a dream!” he thought. But, to his surprise, it
proved that such was nevertheless the actual state of the case! He opened
the door and went out on to the landing; he looked downstairs and about
him, but there was not a soul to be seen. The bell hung motionless.
Surprised, but pleased, he returned into his room. He lit a candle, and
suddenly remembered that he had left the door closed, but not locked and
chained. He had often returned home before this evening and forgotten to
lock the door behind him, without attaching any special significance to the
fact; his maid had often respectfully protested against such neglect while
with him. He now returned to the entrance hall to make the door fast; before

doing so he opened it, however, and had one more look about the stairs. He
then shut the door and fastened the chain and hook, but did not take the
trouble to turn the key in the lock.

Some clock struck half-past two at this moment, so that he had had three
hours' sleep—more or less.

His dream had agitated him to such an extent that he felt unwilling to lie
down again at once; he decided to walk up and down the room two or three
times first, just long enough to smoke a cigar. Having half-dressed himself,
he went to the window, drew the heavy curtains aside and pulled up one of
the blinds, it was almost full daylight. These light summer nights of St.
Petersburg always had a bad effect upon his nerves, and of late they had
added to the causes of his sleeplessness, so that a few weeks since he had
invested in these thick curtains, which completely shut out the light when
drawn close.

Having thus let in the sunshine, quite oblivious of the lighted candle on the
table, he commenced to walk up and down the room. Still feeling the
burden of his dream upon him, its impression was even now at work upon
his mind, he still felt a painfully guilty sensation about him, caused by the
fact that he had allowed himself to raise his hand against “that man” and
strike him. “But, my dear sir!” he argued with himself, “it was not a man at
all! the whole thing was a dream! what's the use of worrying yourself for
nothing?”

Velchaninoff now became obstinately convinced that he was a sick man,
and that to his sickly state of body was to be attributed all his perturbation
of mind. He was an invalid.

It had always been a weak point with Velchaninoff that he hated to think of
himself as growing old or infirm; and yet in his moments of anger he loved
to exaggerate one or the other in order to worry himself.

“It's old age,” he now muttered to himself, as he paced up and down the
room. “I'm becoming an old fogey—that's the fact of the matter! I'm losing
my memory—see ghosts, and have dreams, and hear bells ring—curse it
all! I know these dreams of old, they always herald fever with me. I dare

swear that the whole business of this man with the crape hatband has been a
dream too! I was perfectly right yesterday, he isn't haunting me the least bit
in the world; it is I that am haunting him! I've invented a pretty little ghost-
story about him and then climb under the table in terror at my own creation!
Why do I call him a little cad, too? he may be a most respectable individual
for all I know! His face is a disagreeable one, certainly, though there is
nothing hideous about it! He dresses just like anyone else. I don't know—
there's something about his look—There I go again! What the devil have I
got to do with his look? what a fool I am—just as though I could not live
without the dirty little wretch—curse him!”

Among other thoughts connected with this haunting crape-man was one
which puzzled Velchaninoff immensely; he felt convinced that at some time
or other he had known the man, and known him very intimately; and that
now the latter, when meeting him, always laughed at him because he was
aware of some great secret of his former life, or because he was amused to
see Velchaninoff's present humiliating condition of poverty.

Mechanically our hero approached the window in order to get a breath of
fresh air—when he was suddenly seized with a violent fit of shuddering;—a
feeling came over him that something unusual and unheard-of was
happening before his very eyes.

He had not had time to open the window when something he saw caused
him to slip behind the corner of the curtain, and hide himself.

The man in the crape hatband was standing on the opposite side of the
street.

He was standing with his face turned directly towards Velchaninoff's
window, but evidently unaware of the latter's presence there, and was
carefully examining the house, and apparently considering some question
connected with it.

He seemed to come to a decision after a moment's thought, and raised his
finger to his forehead; then he looked quietly about him, and ran swiftly
across the road on tiptoe. He reached the gate, and entered it; this gate was
often left open on summer nights until two or three in the morning.

“He's coming to me,” muttered Velchaninoff, and with equal caution he left
the window, and ran to the front door; arrived in the hall, he stood in
breathless expectation before the door, and placed his trembling hand
carefully upon the hook which he had fastened a few minutes since, and
stood listening for the tread of the expected footfall on the stairs. His heart
was beating so loud that he was afraid he might miss the sound of the
cautious steps approaching.

He could understand nothing of what was happening, but it seemed clear
that his dream was about to be realised.

Velchaninoff was naturally brave. He loved risk for its own sake, and very
often ran into useless dangers, with no one by to see, to please himself. But
this was different, somehow; he was not himself, and yet he was as brave as
ever, but with something added. He made out every movement of the
stranger from behind his own door.

“Ah!—there he comes!—he's on the steps now!—here he comes!—he's up
now!—now he's looking down stairs and all about, and crouching down!
Aha! there's his hand on the door-handle—he's trying it!—he thought he
would find it unlocked!—then he must know that I do leave it unlocked
sometimes!—He's trying it again!—I suppose he thinks the hook may slip!
—he doesn't care to go away without doing anything!”

So ran Velchaninoff's thoughts, and so indeed followed the man's actions.
There was no doubt about it, someone was certainly standing outside and
trying the door-handle, carefully and cautiously pulling at the door itself,
and, in fact, endeavouring to effect an entrance; equally sure was it that the
person so doing must have his own object in trying to sneak into another
man's house at dead of night. But Velchaninoff's plan of action was laid, and
he awaited the proper moment; he was anxious to seize a good opportunity
—slip the hook and chain—open the door wide, suddenly, and stand face to
face with this bugbear, and then ask him what the deuce he wanted there.

No sooner devised than executed.

Awaiting the proper moment, Velchaninoff suddenly slipped the hook,
pushed the door wide, and almost tumbled over the man with the crape

hatband!

CHAPTER III.

The crape-man stood rooted to the spot dumb with astonishment.

Both men stood opposite one another on the landing, and both stared in
each other's eyes, silent and motionless.

So passed a few moments, and suddenly, like a flash of lightning,
Velchaninoff became aware of the identity of his guest.

At the same moment the latter seemed to guess that Velchaninoff had
recognised him. Velchaninoff could see it in his eyes. In one instant the
visitor's whole face was all ablaze with its very sweetest of smiles.

“Surely I have the pleasure of speaking to Aleksey Ivanovitch?” he asked,
in the most dulcet of voices, comically inappropriate to the circumstances
of the case.

“Surely you are Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky?” asked Velchaninoff, in return,
after a pause, and with an expression of much perplexity.

“I had the pleasure of your acquaintance ten years ago at T——, and, if I
may remind you of the fact, we were almost intimate friends.”

“Quite so—oh yes! but it is now three o'clock in the morning, and you have
been trying my lock for the last ten minutes.”

“Three o'clock!” cried the visitor, looking at his watch with an air of
melancholy surprise.

“Why, so it is! dear me—three o'clock! forgive me, Aleksey Ivanovitch! I
ought to have found it out before thinking of paying you a visit. I will do
myself the honour of calling to explain another day, and now I—.”

“Oh no;—no, no! If you are to explain at all let's have it at once; this
moment!” interrupted Velchaninoff warmly. “Kindly step in here, into the
room! You must have meant to come in, you know; you didn't come here at
night, like this, simply for the pleasure of trying my lock?”

He felt excited, and at the same time was conscious of a sort of timidity; he
could not collect his thoughts. He was ashamed of himself for it. There was
no danger, no mystery about the business, nothing but the silly figure of
Pavel Pavlovitch.

And yet he could not feel satisfied that there was nothing particular in it; he
felt afraid of something to come, he knew not what or when.

However, he made the man enter, seated him in a chair, and himself sat
down on the side of his bed, a yard or so off, and rested his elbows on his
knees while he quietly waited for the other to begin. He felt irritated; he
stared at his visitor and let his thoughts run. Strangely enough, the other
never opened his mouth; he seemed to be entirely oblivious of the fact that
it was his duty to speak. Nay, he was even looking enquiringly at
Velchaninoff as though quite expecting that the latter would speak to him!

Perhaps he felt a little uncomfortable at first, somewhat as a mouse must
feel when he finds himself unexpectedly in the trap.

Velchaninoff very soon lost his patience.

“Well?” he cried, “you are not a fantasy or a dream or anything of that kind,
are you? You aren't a corpse, are you? Come, my friend, this is not a game
or play. I want your explanation, please!”

The visitor fidgeted about a little, smiled, and began to speak cautiously.

“So far as I can see,” he said, “the time of night of my visit is what surprises
you, and that I should have come as I did; in fact, when I remember the

past, and our intimacy, and all that, I am astonished myself; but the fact is, I
did not mean to come in at all, and if I did so it was purely an accident.”

“An accident! Why, I saw you creeping across the road on tip-toes!”

“You saw me? Indeed! Come, then you know as much or more about the
matter than I do; but I see I am annoying you. This is how it was: I've been
in town three weeks or so on business. I am Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky,
you recognized me yourself, my business in town is to effect an exchange
of departments. I am trying for a situation in another place—one with a
large increase of salary; but all this is beside the point; the fact of the matter
is, I believe I have been delaying my business on purpose. I believe if
everything were settled at this moment I should still be dawdling in this St.
Petersburg of yours in my present condition of mind. I go wandering about
as though I had lost all interest in things, and were rather glad of the fact, in
my present condition of mind.”

“What condition of mind?” asked Velchaninoff, frowning.

The visitor raised his eyes to Velchaninoff's, lifted his hat from the ground
beside him, and with great dignity pointed out the black crape band.

“There, sir, in that condition of mind!” he observed.

Velchaninoff stared stupidly at the crape, and thence at the man's face.
Suddenly his face flushed up in a hot blush for a moment, and he was
violently agitated.

“Not Natalia Vasilievna, surely?”

“Yes, Natalia Vasilievna! Last March! Consumption, sir, and almost
suddenly—all over in two or three months—and here am I left as you see
me!”

So saying, Pavel Pavlovitch, with much show of feeling, bent his bald head
down and kept it bent for some ten seconds, while he held out his two
hands, in one of which was the hat with the band, in explanatory emotion.

This gesture, and the man's whole air, seemed to brighten Velchaninoff up;
he smiled sarcastically for one instant, not more at present, for the news of
this lady's death (he had known her so long ago, and had forgotten her many
a year since) had made a quite unexpected impression upon his mind.

“Is it possible!” he muttered, using the first words that came to his lips,
“and pray why did you not come here and tell me at once?”

“Thanks for your kind interest, I see and value it, in spite of——”

“In spite of what?”

“In spite of so many years of separation you at once sympathised with my
sorrow—and in fact with myself, and so fully too—that I feel naturally
grateful. That's all I had to tell you, sir! Don't suppose I doubt my friends,
you know; why, even here, in this place, I could put my finger on several
very sincere friends indeed (for instance, Stepan Michailovitch Bagantoff);
but remember, my dear Aleksey Ivanovitch—nine years have passed since
we were acquaintances—or friends, if you'll allow me to say so—and
meanwhile you have never been to see us, never written.”

The guest sang all this out as though he were reading it from music, but
kept his eyes fixed on the ground the while, although, of course, he saw
what was going on above his eyelashes exceedingly well all the same.

Velchaninoff had found his head by this time.

With a strange sort of fascinated attention, which strengthened itself every
moment, he continued to gaze at and listen to Pavel Pavlovitch, and of a
sudden, when the latter stopped speaking, a flood of curious ideas swept
unexpectedly through his brain.

“But look here,” he cried, “how is it that I never recognized you all this
while?—we've met five times, at least, in the streets!”

“Quite so—I am perfectly aware of the circumstance. You chanced to meet
me two or three times, and——”

“No, no! you met me, you know—not I you!” Velchaninoff suddenly burst
into a roar of laughter, and rose from his seat. Pavel Pavlovitch paused a
moment, looked keenly at Velchaninoff, and then continued:

“As to your not recognizing me, in the first place you might easily have
forgotten me by now; and besides, I have had small-pox since last we met,
and I daresay my face is a good deal marked.”

“Smallpox? why, how did you manage that?—he has had it, though, by
Jove!” cried Velchaninoff. “What a funny fellow you are—however, go on,
don't stop.”

Velchaninoff's spirits were rising higher and higher; he was beginning to
feel wonderfully light-hearted. That feeling of agitation which had lately so
disturbed him had given place to quite a different sentiment. He now began
to stride up and down the room, very quickly.

“I was going to say,” resumed Pavel Pavlovitch, “that though I have met
you several times, and though I quite intended to come and look you up,
when I was arranging my visit to Petersburg, still, I was in that condition of
mind, you know, and my wits have so suffered since last March, that——”

“Wits since last March,—yes, go on: wait a minute—do you smoke?”

“Oh—you know, Natalia Vasilievna, never—”

“Quite so; but since March—eh?”

“Well—I might, a cigarette or so.”

“Here you are, then! Light up and go on,—go on! you interest me
wonderfully.”

Velchaninoff lit a cigar and sat down on his bed again. Pavel Pavlovitch
paused a moment.

“But what a state of agitation you seem to be in yourself!” said he, “are you
quite well?”

“Oh, curse my health!” cried Velchaninoff,—“you go on!”

The visitor observed his host's agitation with satisfaction; he went on with
his share of the talking with more confidence.

“What am I to go on about?” he asked. “Imagine me, Alexey Ivanovitch—a
broken man,—not simply broken, but gone at the root, as it were; a man
forced to change his whole manner of living, after twenty years of married
life, wandering about the dusty roads without an object,—mind lost—
almost oblivious of his own self,—and yet, as it were, taking some sort of
intoxicated delight in his loneliness! Isn't it natural that if I should, at such a
moment of self-forgetfulness come across a friend—even a dear friend, I
might prefer to avoid him for that moment? and isn't it equally natural that
at another moment I should long to see and speak with some one who has
been an eye-witness of, or a partaker, so to speak, in my never-to-be-
recalled past? and to rush—not only in the day, but at night, if it so happens,
—to rush to the embrace of such a man?—yes, even if one has to wake him
up at three in the morning to do it! I was wrong in my time, not in my
estimate of my friend, though, for at this moment I feel the full rapture of
success; my rash action has been successful: I have found sympathy! As for
the time of night, I confess I thought it was not twelve yet! You see, one
sups of grief, and it intoxicates one,—at least, not grief, exactly, it's more
the condition of mind—the new state of things that affects me.”

“Dear me, how oddly you express yourself!” said Velchaninoff, rising from
his seat once more, and becoming quite serious again.

“Oddly, do I? Perhaps.”

“Look here: are you joking?”

“Joking!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, in shocked surprise; “joking—at the very
moment when I am telling you of——”

“Oh—be quiet about that! for goodness sake.”

Velchaninoff started off on his journey up and down the room again.

So matters stood for five minutes or so: the visitor seemed inclined to rise
from his chair, but Velchaninoff bade him sit still, and Pavel Pavlovitch
obediently flopped into his seat again.

“How changed you are!” said the host at last, stopping in front of the other
chair, as though suddenly struck with the idea; “fearfully changed!”

“Wonderful! you're quite another man!”

“That's hardly surprising! nine years, sir!”

“No, no, no! years have nothing to do with it! it's not in appearance you are
so changed: it's something else!”

“Well, sir, the nine years might account for anything.”

“Perhaps it's only since March, eh?”

“Ha-ha! you are playful, sir,” said Pavel Pavlovitch, laughing slyly. “But, if
I may ask it, wherein am I so changed?”

“Oh—why, you used to be such a staid, sober, correct Pavel Pavlovitch;
such a wise Pavel Pavlovitch; and now you're a good-for-nothing sort of
Pavel Pavlovitch.”

Velchaninoff was in that state of irritation when the steadiest, gravest people
will sometimes say rather more than they mean.

“Good-for-nothing, am I? and wise no longer, I suppose, eh?” chuckled
Pavel Pavlovitch, with disagreeable satisfaction.

“Wise, indeed! My dear sir, I'm afraid you are not sober,” replied
Velchaninoff; and added to himself, “I am pretty fairly insolent myself, but I
can't compare with this little cad! And what on earth is the fellow driving
at?”

“Oh, my dear, good, my best of Alexey Ivanovitches,” said the visitor
suddenly, most excitedly, and twisting about on his chair, “and why should I
be sober? We are not moving in the brilliant walks of society—you and I—

just now. We are but two dear old friends come together in the full sincerity
of perfect love, to recall and talk over that sweet mutual tie of which the
dear departed formed so treasured a link in our friendship.”

So saying, the sensitive gentleman became so carried away by his feelings
that he bent his head down once more, to hide his emotion, and buried his
face in his hat.

Velchaninoff looked on with an uncomfortable feeling of disgust.

“I can't help thinking the man is simply silly,” he thought; “and yet—no, no
—his face is so red he must be drunk. But drunk or not drunk, what does
the little wretch want with me? That's the puzzle.”

“Do you remember—oh, don't you remember—our delightful little
evenings—dancing sometimes, or sometimes literary—at Simeon
Simeonovitch's?” continued the visitor, gradually removing his hat from
before his face, and apparently growing more and more enthusiastic over
the memories of the past, “and our little readings—you and she and myself
—and our first meeting, when you came in to ask for information about
something connected with your business in the town, and commenced
shouting angrily at me; don't you remember—when suddenly in came
Natalia Vasilievna, and within ten minutes you were our dear friend, and so
remained for exactly a year? Just like Turgenieff's story ‘The
Provincialka!’ ”

Velchaninoff had continued his walk up and down the room during this
tirade, with his eyes on the ground, listening impatiently and with disgust—
but listening hard, all the same.

“It never struck me to think of 'The Provincialka' in connection with the
matter,” he interrupted. “And look here, why do you talk in that sneaking,
whining sort of voice? You never used to do that. Your whole manner is
unlike yourself.”

“Quite so, quite so. I used to be more silent, I know. I used to love to listen
while others talked. You remember how well the dear departed talked—the
wit and grace of her conversation. As to The Provincialka, I remember she

and I used often to compare your friendship for us to certain episodes in
that piece, and especially to the doings of one Stupendief. It really was
remarkably like that character and his doings.”

“What Stupendief do you mean, confound it all?” cried Velchaninoff,
stamping his foot with rage. The name seemed to have evoked certain most
irritating thoughts in his mind.

“Why, Stupendief, don't you know, the ‘husband’ in ‘Provincialka,’ ”
whined Pavel Pavlovitch, in the very sweetest of tones; “but that belongs to
another set of fond memories—after you departed, in fact, when Mr.
Bagantoff had honoured us with his friendship, just as you had done before
him, only that his lasted five whole years.”

“Bagantoff? What Bagantoff? Do you mean that same Bagantoff who was
serving down in your town? Why, he also——”

“Yes, yes! quite so. He also, he also!” cried the enthusiastic Pavel
Pavlovitch, seizing upon Velchaninoff's accidental slip. “Of course! So that
there you are—there's the whole company. Bagantoff played the ‘count,’ the
dear departed was the ‘Provincialka,’ and I was the ‘husband,’ only that the
part was taken away from me, for incapacity, I suppose!”

“Yes; fancy you a Stupendief. You're a—you're first a Pavel Pavlovitch
Trusotsky!” said Velchaninoff, contemptuously, and very unceremoniously.
“But look here! Bagantoff is in town; I know he is, for I have seen him.
Why don't you go to see him as well as myself?”

“My dear sir, I've been there every day for the last three weeks. He won't
receive me; he's ill, and can't receive! And, do you know, I have found out
that he really is very ill! Fancy my feelings—a five-year's friend! Oh, my
dear Alexey Ivanovitch! you don't know what my feelings are in my present
condition of mind. I assure you, at one moment I long for the earth to open
and swallow me up, and the next I feel that I must find one of those old
friends, eyewitnesses of the past, as it were, if only to weep on his bosom,
only to weep, sir—give you my word.”

“Well, that's about enough for to-night; don't you think so?” said
Velchaninoff, cuttingly.

“Oh, too—too much!” cried the other, rising. “It must be four o'clock; and
here am I agitating your feelings in the most selfish way.”

“Now, look here; I shall call upon you myself, and I hope that you will then
——but, tell me honestly, are you drunk to-night?”

“Drunk! not the least in the world!”

“Did you drink nothing before you came here, or earlier?”

“Do you know, my dear Alexey Ivanovitch, you are quite in a high fever!”

“Good-night. I shall call to-morrow.”

“And I have noticed it all the evening, really quite delirious!” continued
Pavel Pavlovitch, licking his lips, as it were, with satisfaction as he pursued
this theme. “I am really quite ashamed that I should have allowed myself to
be so awkward as to agitate you. Well, well; I'm going! Now you must lie
down at once and go to sleep.”

“You haven't told me where you live,” shouted Velchaninoff after him as he
left the room.

“Oh, didn't I? Pokrofsky Hotel.”

Pavel Pavlovitch was out on the stairs now.

“Stop!” cried Velchaninoff, once more. “You are not ‘running away,’ are
you?”

“How do you mean, ‘running away?’ ” asked Pavel Pavlovitch, turning
round at the third step, and grinning back at him, with his eyes staring very
wide open.

Instead of replying, Velchaninoff banged the door fiercely, locked and
bolted it, and went fuming back into his room. Arrived there, he spat on the

ground, as though to get rid of the taste of something loathsome.

He then stood motionless for at least five minutes, in the centre of the room;
after which he threw himself upon his bed, and fell asleep in an instant.

The forgotten candle burned itself out in its socket.

CHAPTER IV.

Velchaninoff slept soundly until half-past nine, at which hour he started up,
sat down on the side of his bed, and began to think.

His thoughts quickly fixed themselves upon the death of “that woman.”

The agitating impression wrought upon his mind by yesterday's news as to
her death had left a painful feeling of mental perturbation.

This morning the whole of the events of nine years back stood out before
his mind's eye with extraordinary distinctness.

He had loved this woman, Natalia Vasilievna—Trusotsky's wife,—he had
loved her, and had acted the part of her lover during the time which he had
spent in their provincial town (while engaged in business connected with a
legacy); he had lived there a whole year, though his business did not require
by any means so long a visit; in fact, the tie above mentioned had detained
him in the place.

He had been so completely under the influence of this passion, that Natalia
Vasilievna had held him in a species of slavery. He would have obeyed the
slightest whim or the wildest caprice of the woman, at that time. He had
never, before or since, experienced anything approaching to the infatuation
she had caused.

When the time came for departing, Velchaninoff had been in a state of such
absolute despair, though the parting was to have been but a short one, that
he had begged Natalia Vasilievna to leave all and fly across the frontier with
him; and it was only by laughing him out of the idea (though she had at first
encouraged it herself, probably for a joke), and by unmercifully chaffing
him, that the lady eventually persuaded Velchaninoff to depart alone.

However, he had not been a couple of months in St. Petersburg before he
found himself asking himself that question which he had never to this day
been able to answer satisfactorily, namely, “Did he love this woman at all,
or was it nothing but the infatuation of the moment?” He did not ask this
question because he was conscious of any new passion taking root in his
heart; on the contrary, during those first two months in town he had been in
that condition of mind that he had not so much as looked at a woman,
though he had met hundreds, and had returned to his old society ways at
once. And yet he knew perfectly well that if he were to return to T—— he
would instantly fall into the meshes of his passion for Natalia Vasilievna
once more, in spite of the question which he could not answer as to the
reality of his love for her.

Five years later he was as convinced of this fact as ever, although the very
thought of it was detestable to him, and although he did not remember the
name of Natalia Vasilievna but with loathing.

He was ashamed of that episode at T——. He could not understand how he
(Velchaninoff) could ever have allowed himself to become the victim of
such a stupid passion. He blushed whenever he thought of the shameful
business—blushed, and even wept for shame.

He managed to forget his remorse after a few more years—he felt sure that
he had “lived it down;” and yet now, after nine years, here was the whole
thing resuscitated by the news of Natalia's death.

At all events, however, now, as he sat on his bed with agitating thoughts
swarming through his brain, he could not but feel that the fact of her being
dead was a consolation, amidst all the painful reflections which the mention
of her name had called up.

“Surely I am a little sorry for her?” he asked himself.

Well, he certainly did not feel that sensation of hatred for her now; he could
think of her and judge her now without passion of any kind, and therefore
more justly.

He had long since been of opinion that in all probability there had been
nothing more in Natalia Vasilievna than is to be found in every lady of good
provincial society, and that he himself had created the whole “fantasy” of
his worship and her worshipfulness; but though he had formed this opinion,
he always doubted its correctness, and he still felt that doubt now. Facts
existed to contradict the theory. For instance, this Bagantoff had lived for
several years at T——, and had been no less a victim to passion for this
woman, and had been as helpless as Velchaninoff himself under her
witchery. Bagantoff, though a young idiot (as Velchaninoff expressed it),
was nevertheless a scion of the very highest society in St. Petersburg. His
career was in St. Petersburg, and it was significant that such a man should
have wasted five important years of his life at T—— simply out of love for
this woman. It was said that he had only returned to Petersburg even then
because the lady had had enough of him; so that, all things considered, there
must have been something which rendered Natalia Vasilievna preeminently
attractive among women.

Yet the woman was not rich; she was not even pretty (if not absolutely
plain!) Velchaninoff had known her when she was twenty-eight years old.
Her face was capable of taking a pleasing expression, but her eyes were not
good—they were too hard. She was a thin, bony woman to look at. Her
mind was intelligent, but narrow and one-sided. She had tact and taste,
especially as to dress. Her character was firm and overbearing. She was
never wrong (in her own opinion) or unjust. The unfaithfulness towards her
husband never caused her the slightest remorse; she hated corruption, and
yet she was herself corrupt; and she believed in herself absolutely. Nothing
could ever have persuaded her that she herself was actually depraved;
Velchaninoff believed that she really did not know that her own corruption
was corrupt. He considered her to be “one of those women who only exist
to be unfaithful wives.” Such women never remain unmarried,—it is the
law of their nature to marry,—their husband is their first lover, and he is
always to blame for anything that may happen afterwards; the unfaithful
wife herself being invariably absolutely in the right, and of course perfectly
innocent.

So thought Velchaninoff; and he was convinced that such a type of woman
actually existed; but he was no less convinced that there also existed a

corresponding type of men, born to be the husbands of such women. In his
opinion the mission of such men was to be, so to speak, “permanent
husbands,”—that is, to be husbands all their lives, and nothing else.

Velchaninoff had not the smallest doubt as to the existence of these two
types, and Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky was, in his opinion, an excellent
representative of the male type. Of course, the Pavel Pavlovitch of last night
was by no means the same Pavel Pavlovitch as he had known at T——. He
had found an extraordinary change in the man; and yet, on reflection, he
was bound to admit that the change was but natural, for that he could only
have remained what he was so long as his wife lived; and that now he was
but a part of a whole, allowed to wander at will—that is, an imperfect
being, a surprising, an incomprehensible sort of a thing, without proper
balance.

As for the Pavel Pavlovitch of T——, this is what Velchaninoff
remembered of him:

Pavel Pavlovitch had been a husband, of course,—a formality,—and that
was all. If, for instance, he was a clerk of department besides, he was so
merely in his capacity of, and as a part of his responsibility as—a husband.
He worked for his wife, and for her social position. He had been thirty-five
years old at that time, and was possessed of some considerable property. He
had not shown any special talent, nor, on the other hand, any marked
incapacity in his professional employment; his position had been decidedly
a good one.

Natalia Vasilievna had been respected and looked up to by all; not that she
valued their respect in the least,—she considered it merely as her due. She
was a good hostess, and had schooled Pavel Pavlovitch into polite manners,
so that he was able to receive and entertain the very best society passably
well.

He might be a clever man, for all Velchaninoff knew, but as Natalia
Vasilievna did not like her husband to talk much, there was little
opportunity of judging. He may have had many good qualities, as well as
bad; but the good ones were, so to speak, kept put away in their cases, and
the bad ones were stifled and not allowed to appear. Velchaninoff

remembered, for instance, that Pavel Pavlovitch had once or twice shown a
disposition to laugh at those about him, but this unworthy proclivity had
been very promptly subdued. He had been fond of telling stories, but this
was not allowed either; or, if permitted at all, the anecdote was to be of the
shortest and most uninteresting description.

Pavel Pavlovitch had a circle of private friends outside the house, with
whom he was fain, at times, to taste the flowing bowl; but this vicious
tendency was radically stamped out as soon as possible.

And yet, with all this, Natalia Vasilievna appeared, to the uninitiated, to be
the most obedient of wives, and doubtless considered herself so. Pavel
Pavlovitch may have been desperately in love with her,—no one could say
as to this.

Velchaninoff had frequently asked himself during his life at T——, whether
Pavel Pavlovitch ever suspected his wife of having formed the tie with
himself, of which mention has been made. Velchaninoff had several times
questioned Natalia Vasilievna on this point, seriously enough; but had
invariably been told, with some show of annoyance, that her husband
neither did know, nor ever could know; and that “all there might be to know
was not his business!”

Another trait in her character was that she never laughed at Pavel
Pavlovitch, and never found him funny in any sense; and that she would
have been down on any person who dared to be rude to him, at once!

Pavel Pavlovitch's reference to the pleasant little readings enjoyed by the
trio nine years ago was accurate; they used to read Dickens' novels together.
Velchaninoff or Trusotsky reading aloud, while Natalia Vasilievna worked.
The life at T—— had ended suddenly, and so far as Velchaninoff was
concerned, in a way which drove him almost to the verge of madness. The
fact is, he was simply turned out—although it was all managed in such a
way that he never observed that he was being thrown over like an old worn-
out shoe.

A young artillery officer had appeared in the town a month or so before
Velchaninoff's departure and had made acquaintance with the Trusotsky's.

The trio became a quartet. Before long Velchaninoff was informed that for
many reasons a separation was absolutely necessary; Natalia Vasilievna
adduced a hundred excellent reasons why this had become unavoidable—
and especially one which quite settled the matter. After his stormy attempt
to persuade Natalia Vasilievna to fly with him to Paris—or anywhere,—
Velchaninoff had ended by going to St. Petersburg alone—for two or three
months at the very most, as he said,—otherwise he would refuse to go at all,
in spite of every reason and argument Natalia might adduce.

Exactly two months later Velchaninoff had received a letter from Natalia
Vasilievna, begging him to come no more to T——, because that she
already loved another. As to the principal reason which she had brought
forward in favour of his immediate departure, she now informed him that
she had made a mistake. Velchaninoff remembered the young artilleryman,
and understood,—and so the matter had ended, once and for all. A year or
two after this Bagantoff appeared at T——, and an intimacy between
Natalia Vasilievna and the former had sprung up which lasted for five years.
This long period of constancy, Velchaninoff attributed to advancing age on
the part of Natalia. He sat on the side of his bed for nearly an hour and
thought. At last he roused himself, rang for Mavra and his coffee, drank it
off quickly—dressed—and punctually at eleven was on his way to the
Pokrofsky Hotel: he felt rather ashamed of his behaviour to Pavel
Pavlovitch last night. Velchaninoff put down all that phantasmagoria of the
trying of the lock and so on to Pavel Pavlovitch's drunken condition and to
other reasons,—but he did not know why he was now on his way to make
fresh relations with the husband of that woman, since their
acquaintanceship and intercourse had come to so natural and simple a
termination; yet something seemed to draw him thither—some strong
current of impulse,—and he went.

CHAPTER V.

Pavel Pavlovitch was not thinking of “running away,” and goodness knows
why Velchaninoff should have asked him such a question last night—he did
not know himself why he had said it!

He was directed to the Petrofsky Hotel, and found the building at once. At
the hotel he was told that Pavel Pavlovitch had now engaged a furnished
lodging in the back part of the same house.

Mounting the dirty and narrow stairs indicated, as far as the third storey, he
suddenly became aware of someone crying. It sounded like the weeping of
a child of some seven or eight years of age; it was a bitter, but a more or
less suppressed sort of crying, and with it came the sound of a grown man's
voice, apparently trying to quiet the child—anxious that its sobbing and
crying should not be heard,—and yet only succeeding in making it cry the
louder.

The man's voice did not seem in any way sympathetic with the child's grief;
and the latter appeared to be begging for forgiveness.

Making his way into a narrow dark passage with two doors on each side of
it, Velchaninoff met a stout-looking, elderly woman, in very careless
morning attire, and inquired for Pavel Pavlovitch.

She tapped the door with her fingers in response to his inquiry—the same
door, apparently, whence issued the noises just mentioned. Her fat face
seemed to flush with indignation as she did so.

“He appears to be amusing himself in there!” she said, and proceeded
downstairs.

Velchaninoff was about to knock, but thought better of it and opened the
door without ceremony.

In the very middle of a room furnished with plain, but abundant furniture,
stood Pavel Pavlovitch in his shirt-sleeves, very red in the face, trying to
persuade a little girl to do something or other, and using cries and gestures,
and what looked to Velchaninoff very like kicks, in order to effect his
purpose. The child appeared to be some seven or eight years of age, and
was poorly dressed in a short black stuff frock. She seemed to be in a most
hysterical condition, crying and stretching out her arms to Pavel Pavlovitch,
as though begging and entreating him to allow her to do whatever it might
be she desired.

On Velchaninoff's appearance the scene changed in an instant. No sooner
did her eyes fall on the visitor than the child made for the door of the next
room, with a cry of alarm; while Pavel Pavlovitch—thrown out for one little
instant—immediately relaxed into smiles of great sweetness—exactly as he
had done last night, when Velchaninoff suddenly opened his front door and
caught him standing outside.

“Alexey Ivanovitch!” he cried in real surprise; “who ever would have
thought it! Sit down—sit down—take the sofa—or this chair,—sit down,
my dear sir! I'll just put on——” and he rushed for his coat and threw it on,
leaving his waistcoat behind.

“Don't stand on ceremony with me,” said Velchaninoff sitting down; “stay
as you are!”

“No, sir, no! excuse me—I insist upon standing on ceremony. There, now!
I'm a little more respectable! Dear me, now, who ever would have thought
of seeing you here!—not I, for one!”

Pavel Pavlovitch sat down on the edge of a chair, which he turned so as to
face Velchaninoff.

“And pray why shouldn't you have expected me? I told you last night that I
was coming this morning!”

“I thought you wouldn't come, sir—I did indeed; in fact, when I thought
over yesterday's visit, I despaired of ever seeing you again: I did indeed,
sir!”

Velchaninoff glanced round the room meanwhile. The place was very
untidy; the bed was unmade; the clothes thrown about the floor; on the table
were two coffee tumblers with the dregs of coffee still in them, and a bottle
of champagne half finished, and with a tumbler standing alongside it. He
glanced at the next room, but all was quiet there; the little girl had hidden
herself, and was as still as a mouse.

“You don't mean to say you drink that stuff at this time of day?” he asked,
indicating the champagne bottle.

“It's only a remnant,” explained Pavel Pavlovitch, a little confused.

“My word! You are a changed man!”

“Bad habits, sir; and all of a sudden. All dating from that time, sir. Give you
my word, I couldn't resist it. But I'm all right now—I'm not drunk—I shan't
talk twaddle as I did last night; don't be afraid sir, it's all right! From that
very day, sir; give you my word it is! And if anyone had told me half a year
ago that I should become like this,—if they had shown me my face in a
glass then as I should be now, I should have given them the lie, sir; I should
indeed!”

“Hem! Then you were drunk last night?”

“Yes—I was!” admitted Pavel Pavlovitch, a little guiltily—“not exactly
drunk, a little beyond drunk!—I tell you this by way of explanation,
because I'm always worse after being drunk! If I'm only a little drunk, still
the violence and unreasonableness of intoxication come out afterwards, and
stay out too; and then I feel my grief the more keenly. I daresay my grief is
responsible for my drinking. I am capable of making an awful fool of
myself and offending people when I'm drunk. I daresay I seemed strange
enough to you last night?”

“Don't you remember what you said and did?”

“Assuredly I do—I remember everything!”

“Listen to me, Pavel Pavlovitch: I have thought it over and have come to
very much the same conclusion as you did yourself,” began Velchaninoff
gently; “besides—I believe I was a little too irritable towards you last night
—too impatient,—I admit it gladly; the fact is—I am not very well
sometimes, and your sudden arrival, you know, in the middle of the night
——”

“In the middle of the night: you are quite right—it was!” said Pavel
Pavlovitch, wagging his head assentingly; “how in the world could I have
brought myself to do such a thing? I shouldn't have come in, though, if you
hadn't opened the door. I should have gone as I came. I called on you about
a week ago, and did not find you at home, and I daresay I should never have
called again; for I am rather proud—Alexey Ivanovitch—in spite of my
present state. Whenever I have met you in the streets I have always said to
myself, ‘What if he doesn't know me and rejects me—nine years is no
joke!’ and I did not dare try you for fear of being snubbed. Yesterday,
thanks to that sort of thing, you know,” (he pointed to the bottle), “I didn't
know what time it was, and—it's lucky you are the kind of man you are,
Alexey Ivanovitch, or I should despair of preserving your acquaintance,
after yesterday! You remember old times, Alexey Ivanovitch!”

Velchaninoff listened keenly to all this. The man seemed to be talking
seriously enough, and even with some dignity; and yet he had not believed
a single word that Pavel Pavlovitch had uttered from the very first moment
that he entered the room.

“Tell me, Pavel Pavlovitch,” said Velchaninoff at last, “—I see you are not
quite alone here,—whose little girl is that I saw when I came in?”

Pavel Pavlovitch looked surprised and raised his eyebrow; but he gazed
back at Velchaninoff with candour and apparent amiability:

“Whose little girl? Why that's our Liza!” he said, smiling affably.

“What Liza?” asked Velchaninoff,—and something seemed to cause him to
shudder inwardly.

The sensation was dreadfully sudden. Just now, on entering the room and
seeing Liza, he had felt surprised more or less,—but had not been conscious
of the slightest feeling of presentiment,—indeed he had had no special
thought about the matter, at the moment.

“Why—our Liza!—our daughter Liza!” repeated Pavel Pavlovitch, smiling.

“Your daughter? Do you mean to say that you and Natalia Vasilievna had
children?” asked Velchaninoff timidly, and in a very low tone of voice
indeed!

“Of course—but—what a fool I am—how in the world should you know!
Providence sent us the gift after you had gone!”

Pavel Pavlovitch jumped off his chair in apparently pleasurable excitement.

“I heard nothing of it!” said Velchaninoff, looking very pale.

“How should you? how should you?” repeated Pavel Pavlovitch with
ineffable sweetness. “We had quite lost hope of any children—as you may
remember,—when suddenly Heaven sent us this little one. And, oh! my
feelings—Heaven alone knows what I felt! Just a year after you went, I
think—no, wait a bit—not a year by a long way!—Let's see, you left us in
October, or November, didn't you?”

“I left T—— on the twelfth of September, I remember well.”

“Hum! September was it? Dear me! Well, then, let's see—September,
October, November, December, January, February, March, April—to the 8th
of May—that was Liza's birthday—eight months all but a bit; and if you
could only have seen the dear departed, how rejoiced——”

“Show her to me—call her in!” the words seemed to tear themselves from
Velchaninoff, whether he liked it or no.

“Certainly—this moment!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, forgetting that he had
not finished his previous sentence, or ignoring the fact; and he hastily left
the room, and entered the small chamber adjoining.

Three or four minutes passed by, while Velchaninoff heard the rapid
interchange of whispers going on, and an occasional rather louder sound of
Liza's voice, apparently entreating her father to leave her alone—so
Velchaninoff concluded.

At last the two came out.

“There you are—she's dreadfully shy and proud,” said Pavel Pavlovitch;
“just like her mother.”

Liza entered the room without tears, but with eyes downcast, her father
leading her by the hand. She was a tall, slight, and very pretty little girl. She
raised her large blue eyes to the visitor's face with curiosity; but only
glanced surlily at him, and dropped them again. There was that in her
expression that one always sees in children when they look on some new
guest for the first time—retiring to a corner, and looking out at him thence
seriously and mistrustingly; only that there was a something in her manner
beyond the usual childish mistrust—so, at least thought Velchaninoff.

Her father brought her straight up to the visitor.

“There—this gentleman knew mother very well. He was our friend; you
mustn't be shy,—give him your hand!”

The child bowed slightly, and timidly stretched out her hand.

“Natalia Vasilievna never would teach her to curtsey; she liked her to bow,
English fashion, and give her hand,” explained Pavel Pavlovitch, gazing
intently at Velchaninoff.

Velchaninoff knew perfectly well that the other was keenly examining him
at this moment, but he made no attempt to conceal his agitation: he sat
motionless on his chair and held the child's hand in his, gazing into her face
the while.

But Liza was apparently much preoccupied, and did not take her eyes off
her father's face; she listened timidly to every word he said.

Velchaninoff recognised her large blue eyes at once; but what specially
struck him was the refined pallor of her face, and the colour of her hair;
these traits were altogether too significant, in his eyes! Her features, on the
other hand, and the set of her lips, reminded him keenly of Natalia
Vasilievna. Meanwhile Pavel Pavlovitch was in the middle of some
apparently most interesting tale—one of great sentiment seemingly,—but
Velchaninoff did not hear a word of it until the last few words struck upon
his ear:

“... So that you can't imagine what our joy was when Providence sent us
this gift, Alexey Ivanovitch! She was everything to me, for I felt that if it
should be the will of Heaven to deprive me of my other joy, I should still
have Liza left to me; that's what I felt, sir, I did indeed!”

“And Natalia Vasilievna?” asked Velchaninoff.

“Oh, Natalia Vasilievna—” began Pavel Pavlovitch, smiling with one side
of his mouth; “she never used to like to say much—as you know yourself;
but she told me on her deathbed—deathbed! you know, sir—to the very day
of her death she used to get so angry and say that they were trying to cure
her with a lot of nasty medicines when she had nothing the matter but a
simple little feverish attack; and that when Koch arrived (you remember our
old doctor Koch?) he would make her all right in a fortnight. Why, five
hours before she died she was talking of fixing that day three weeks for a
visit to her Aunt, Liza's godmother, at her country place!” Velchaninoff here
started from his seat, but still held the child's hand. He could not help
thinking that there was something reproachful in the girl's persistent stare in
her father's face.

“Is she ill?” he asked hurriedly, and his voice had a strange tone in it.

“No! I don't think so” said Pavel Pavlovitch; “but, you see our way of living
here, and all that: she's a strange child and very nervous, besides! After her
mother's death she was quite ill and hysterical for a fortnight. Just before
you came in she was crying like anything; and do you know what about,
sir? Do you hear me, Liza?—You listen!—Simply because I was going out,
and wished to leave her behind, and because she said I didn't love her so
well as I used to in her mother's time. That's what she pitches into me for!

Fancy a child like this getting hold of such an idea!—a child who ought to
be playing at dolls, instead of developing ideas of that sort! The thing is, she
has no one to play with here.”

“Then—then—are you two quite alone here?”

“Quite! a servant comes in once a day, that's all!”

“And when you go out, do you leave her quite alone?”

“Of course! What else am I to do? Yesterday I locked her in that room, and
that's what all the tears were about this morning. What could I do? the day
before yesterday she went down into the yard all by herself, and a boy took
a shot at her head with a stone! Not only that, but she must needs go and
cling on to everybody she met, and ask where I had gone to! That's not so
very pleasant, you see! But I oughtn't to complain when I say I am going
out for an hour and then stay out till four in the morning, as I did last night!
The landlady came and let her out: she had the door broken open! Nice for
my feelings, eh! It's all the result of the eclipse that came over my life;
nothing but that, sir!”

“Papa!” said the child, timidly and anxiously.

“Now, then! none of that again! What did I tell you yesterday?”

“I won't; I won't!” cried the child hurriedly, clasping her hands before her
entreatingly.

“Come! things can't be allowed to go on in this way!” said Velchaninoff
impatiently, and with authority. “In the first place, you are a man of
property; how can you possibly live in a hole like this, and in such
disorder?”

“This place! Oh, but we shall probably have left this place within a week;
and I've spent a lot of money here, as it is, though I may be 'a man of
property;' and——”

“Very well, that'll do,” interrupted Velchaninoff with growing impatience,
“now, I'll make you a proposition: you have just said that you intend to stay
another week—perhaps two. I have a house here—or rather I know a family
where I am as much at home as at my own fireside, and have been so for
twenty years. The family I mean is the Pogoryeltseffs—Alexander
Pavlovitch Pogoryeltseff is a state councillor (he may be of use to you in
your business!) They are now living in the country—they have a beautiful
country villa; Claudia Petrovna, the lady of the house, is like a sister—like a
mother to me; they have eight children. Let me take Liza down to them
without loss of time! they'll receive her with joy, and they'll treat her like
their own little daughter—they will, indeed!”

Velchaninoff was in a great hurry, and much excited, and he did not conceal
his feelings.

“I'm afraid it's impossible!” said Pavel Pavlovitch with a grimace, looking
straight into his visitor's eyes, very cunningly, as it seemed to Velchaninoff.

“Why! why, impossible?”

“Oh, why! to let the child go—so suddenly, you know, of course with such
a sincere well-wisher as yourself—it's not that!—but a strange house—and
such swells, too!—I don't know whether they would receive her!”

“But I tell you I'm like a son of the house!” cried Velchaninoff, almost
angrily. “Claudia Petrovna will be delighted to take her, at one word from
me! She'd receive her as though she were my own daughter. Deuce take it,
sir, you know you are only humbugging me,—what's the use of talking
about it?”

He stamped his foot.

“No—no! I mean to say—don't it look a little strange? Oughtn't I to call
once or twice first?—such a smart house as you say theirs is—don't you see
——”

“I tell you it's the simplest house in the world; it isn't ‘smart’ in the least
bit,” cried Velchaninoff; “they have a lot of children: it will make another

girl of her!—I'll introduce you there myself, to-morrow, if you like. Of
course you'll have to go and thank them, and all that. You shall go down
every day with me, if you please.”

“Oh, but——”

“Nonsense! You know it's nonsense! Now look here: you come to me this
evening—I'll put you up for the night—and we'll start off early to-morrow
and be down there by twelve.”

“Benefactor!—and I may spend the night at your house?” cried Pavel
Pavlovitch, instantly consenting to the plan with the greatest cordiality,
—“you are really too good! And where's their country house?”

“At the Liesnoy.”

“But look here, how about her dress? Such a house, you know,—a father's
heart shrinks——”

“Nonsense!—she's in mourning—what else could she wear but a black
dress like this? it's exactly the thing; you couldn't imagine anything more
so!—you might let her have some clean linen with her, and give her a
cleaner neck-handkerchief.”

“Directly, directly. We'll get her linen together in a couple of minutes—it's
just home from the wash!”

“Send for a carriage—can you? Tell them to let us have it at once, so as not
to waste time.”

But now an unexpected obstacle arose: Liza absolutely rejected the plan;
she had listened to it with terror, and if Velchaninoff had, in his excited
argument with Pavel Pavlovitch, had time to glance at the child's face, he
would have observed her expression of absolute despair at this moment.

“I won't go!” she said, quietly but firmly.

“There—look at that! Just like her mamma!”

“I'm not like mamma, I'm not like mamma!” cried Liza, wringing her little
hands in despair. “Oh, papa—papa!” she added, “if you desert me—” she
suddenly threw herself upon the alarmed Velchaninoff—“If you take me
away—” she cried—“I'll——”

But Liza had no time to finish her sentence, for Pavel Pavlovitch suddenly
seized her by the arm and collar and hustled her into the next room with
unconcealed rage. For several minutes Velchaninoff listened to the
whispering going on there,—whisperings and seemingly subdued crying on
the part of Liza. He was about to follow the pair, when suddenly out came
Pavel Pavlovitch, and stated—with a disagreeable grin—that Liza would
come directly.

Velchaninoff tried not to look at him and kept his eyes fixed on the other
side of the room.

The elderly woman whom Velchaninoff had met on the stairs also made her
appearance, and packed Liza's things into a neat little carpet bag.

“Is it you that are going to take the little lady away, sir?” she asked; “if so,
you are doing a good deed! She's a nice quiet child, and you are saving her
from goodness knows what, here!”

“Oh! come—Maria Sisevna,”—began Pavel Pavlovitch.

“Well? What? Isn't it true! Arn't you ashamed to let a girl of her intelligence
see the things that you allow to go on here? The carriage has arrived for
you, sir,—you ordered one for the Liesnoy, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, good luck to you!”

Liza came out, looking very pale and with downcast eyes; she took her bag,
but never glanced in Velchaninoff's direction. She restrained herself and did
not throw herself upon her father, as she had done before—not even to say
good-bye. She evidently did not wish to look at him.

Her father kissed her and patted her head in correct form; her lip curled
during the operation, the chin trembled a little, but she did not raise her eyes
to her father's.

Pavel Pavlovitch looked pale, and his hands shook; Velchaninoff saw that
plainly enough, although he did his best not to see the man at all. He
(Velchaninoff) had but one thought, and that was how to get away at once!

Downstairs was old Maria Sisevna, waiting to say good-bye; and more
kissing was done. Liza had just climbed into the carriage when suddenly
she caught sight of her father's face; she gave a loud cry and wrung her
hands,—in another minute she would have been out of the carriage and
away, but luckily the vehicle went on and she was too late!

CHAPTER VI.

“Are you feeling faint?” asked Velchaninoff of his companion, frightened
out of his wits: “I'll tell him to stop and get you some water, shall I?”

She looked at him angrily and reproachfully.

“Where are you taking me to?” she asked coldly and abruptly.

“To a very beautiful house, Liza. There are plenty of children,—they'll all
love you there, they are so kind! Don't be angry with me, Liza; I wish you
well, you know!”

In truth, Velchaninoff would have looked strange at this moment to any
acquaintance, if such had happened to see him!

“How—how—how—oh! how wicked you are!” said Liza, fighting with
suppressed tears, and flashing her fine angry eyes at him.

“But Liza—I——”

“You are bad—bad—and wicked!” cried Liza. She wrung her hands.

Velchaninoff was beside himself.

“Oh, Liza, Liza! if only you knew what despair you are causing me!” he
said.

“Is it true that he is coming down to-morrow?” asked the child haughtily
—“is it true or not?”

“Quite true—I shall bring him down myself,—I shall take him and bring
him!”

“He will deceive you somehow!” cried the child, drooping her eyes.

“Doesn't he love you, then, Liza?”

“No.”

“Has he ill-treated you,—has he?”

Liza looked gloomily at her questioner, and said nothing. She then turned
away from him and sat still and depressed.

Velchaninoff commenced to talk: he tried to win her,—he spoke warmly—
excitedly—feverishly.

Liza listened incredulously and with a hostile air,—but still she listened.
Her attention delighted him beyond measure;—he went so far as to explain
to her what it meant when a man took to drink. He said that he loved her
and would himself look after her father.

At last Liza raised her eyes and gazed fixedly at him.

Then Velchaninoff began to speak of her mother and of how well he had
known her; and he saw that his tales attracted her. Little by little she began
to reply to his questions, but very cautiously and in an obstinately
monosyllabic way.

She would answer nothing to his chief inquiries; as to her former relations
with her father, for instance, she maintained an obstinate silence.

While speaking to her, Velchaninoff held the child's hand in his own, as
before; and she did not try to take it away.

Liza said enough to make it apparent that she had loved her father more
than her mother at first, because that her father had loved the child better
than her mother did; but that when her mother had died and was lying dead,
Liza wept over her and kissed her, and ever since then she had loved her
mother more than all—all there was in the whole world—and that every
night she thought of her and loved her.

But Liza was very proud, and suddenly recollecting herself and finding that
she was saying a great deal more than she had meant to reveal, she paused,
and relapsed into obstinate silence once more, and gazed at Velchaninoff
with something like hatred in her eyes, considering that he had beguiled her
into the revelations just made.

By the end of the journey, however, her hysterical condition was nearly
over, but she was very silent and sat looking morosely about her, obstinately
silent and gloomy, like a little wild animal.

The fact that she was being taken to a strange house where she had never
been before did not seem so far to weigh upon her; Velchaninoff saw clearly
enough that other things distressed her, and principally that she was
ashamed—ashamed that her father should have let her go so easily—thrown
her away, as it were—into Velchaninoff's arms.

“She's ill,” thought the latter, “and perhaps very ill; she has been bullied and
ill-treated. Oh! that drunken, blackguardly wretch of a fellow!” He hurried
on the coachman. Velchaninoff trusted greatly to the fresh air, to the garden,
to the children, to the new life, now; as to the future, he was in no sort of
doubt at all, his hopes were clear and defined. One thing he was quite sure
of, and that was that he had never before felt what now swelled within his
soul, and that the sensation would last for ever and ever.

“I have an object at last! this is Life!” he said to himself enthusiastically.

Many thoughts welled into his brain just now, but he would have none of
them; he did not care to think of details at this moment, for without details
the future was all so clear and so beautiful, and so safe and indestructible!

The basis of his plan was simple enough; it was simply this, in the language
of his own thoughts:

“I shall so work upon that drunken little blackguard that he will leave Liza
with the Pogoryeltseffs, and go away alone—at first, ‘for a time,’ of course!
—and so Liza shall remain behind for me! what more do I want? The plan
will suit him, too!—else why does he bully her like this?”

The carriage arrived at last.

It was certainly a very beautiful place. They were met first of all by a troop
of noisy children, who overflowed on to the front-door steps. Velchaninoff
had not been down for some time, and the delight of the little ones to see
him was excessive—they were very fond of him.

The elder ones shouted, before he had left the carriage, by way of chaff:

“How's the lawsuit getting on, eh?” and the smaller gang took up the joke,
and all clamoured the same question: it was a pet joke in this establishment
to chaff Velchaninoff about his lawsuit. But when Liza climbed down the
carriage steps, she was instantly surrounded and stared at with true juvenile
curiosity. Then Claudia Petrovna and her husband came out, and both of
them good-humouredly bantered Velchaninoff about his lawsuit.

Claudia Petrovna was a lady of some thirty-seven summers, stout and well-
favoured, and with a sweet fresh-looking face. Her husband was a man of
fifty-five, a clever and long-headed man of the world, but above all, a good
and kind-hearted friend to anyone requiring kindness.

The Pogoryeltseffs' house was in the full sense of the word a “home” to
Velchaninoff, as the latter had stated. There was rather more here, however;
for, twenty years since Claudia had very nearly married young Velchaninoff
almost a boy at that time, and a student at the university.

This had been his first experience of love—and very hot and fiery and
funny—and sweet it was! The end of it was, however, that Claudia married
Mr Pogoryeltseff. Five years later she and Velchaninoff had met again, and
a quiet candid friendship had sprung up between them. Since then there had
always been a warmth, a speciality about their friendship, a radiance which
overspread it and glorified their relations one to the other. There was
nothing here that Velchaninoff could remember with shame—all was pure
and sweet; and this was perhaps the reason why the friendship was specially
dear to Velchaninoff; he had not experienced many such platonic
intimacies.

In this house Velchaninoff was simple and happy, confessed his sins, played
with the children and lectured them, and never bothered his head about
outside matters; he had promised the Pogoryeltseffs that he would live a
few more years alone in the world, and then move over to their household
for good and all; and he looked forward to that good time coming with all
seriousness.

Velchaninoff now gave all the information about Liza which he thought fit,
though his simple request would have been amply sufficient here.

Claudia Petrovna kissed the little “orphan,” and promised to do all she
possibly could for her; and the children carried Liza off to play in the
garden. Half an hour passed in conversation, and then Velchaninoff rose to
depart: he was in such a hurry, that his friends could not help remarking
upon the fact. He had not been near them for three weeks, they said, and
now he only stayed half an hour! Velchaninoff laughed and promised to
come down to-morrow. Someone observed that Velchaninoff's state of
agitation was remarkable, even for him! Whereupon the latter jumped up,
seized Claudia Petrovna's hand, and, under pretence of having forgotten to
tell her something most important about Liza, he led her into another room.

“Do you remember,” he began, “what I told you, and only you,—even your
husband does not know of it—about my year of life down at T——?”

“Oh yes! only too well! You have often spoken of it.”

“No—I did not ‘speak about it,’ I confessed, and only to yourself; but I
never told you the lady's name. It was Trusotsky, the wife of this Trusotsky;
it is she who has died, and this little Liza is her child—my child!”

“Is this certain? Are you quite sure there is no mistake?” asked Claudia
Petrovna, with some agitation.

“Quite, quite certain!” said Velchaninoff enthusiastically. He then gave a
short, hasty, and excited narrative of all that had occurred. Claudia had
heard it all before, excepting the lady's name.

The fact is, Velchaninoff had always been so afraid that one of his friends
might some fine day meet Madame Trusotsky at T——, and wonder how in
the world he could have loved such a woman as that, that he had never
revealed her name to a single soul; not even to Claudia Petrovna, his great
friend.

“And does the ‘father’ know nothing of it?” asked Claudia, having heard
the tale out.

“N—no; he knows—you see, that's just what is bothering me now. I haven't
sifted the matter as yet,” resumed Velchaninoff hotly. “He must know—he
does know. I remarked that fact both yesterday and to-day. But I wish to
discover how much he knows. That's why I am hurrying back now; he is
coming to-night. He knows all about Bagantoff; but how about myself? You
know how such wives can deceive their husbands! If an angel from Heaven
were to come down and convict a woman, her husband will still trust her,
and give the angel the lie.

“Oh! don't nod your head at me, don't judge me! I have long since judged
and convicted myself. You see, this morning I felt so sure that he knew all,
that I compromised myself before him. Fancy, I was really ashamed of
having been rude to him last night. He only called in to see me out of the
pure unconquerably malicious desire to show me that he knew all the
offence, and knew who was the offender! I behaved like a fool; I gave
myself into his hands too easily; I was too heated; he came at such a
feverish moment for me. I tell you, he has been bullying Liza, simply to ‘let
off bile,’—you understand. He needs a safety-valve for his offended
feelings, and vents them upon anyone, even a little child!

“It is exasperation, and quite natural. We must treat him in a Christian spirit,
my friend; and do you know, I wish to change my way of treating him,
entirely; I wish to be particularly kind to him. That will be a good action on
my part, for I am to blame before him, I know I am; there's no disguising
the fact! Besides, once at T——, it so happened that I required four
thousand roubles at a moment's notice. Well, the fellow gave me the money,
without a receipt, at once, and with every manifestation of delight to be able
to serve me! And I took the money from his hands,—I did, indeed! I took it
as though he were a friend. Think of that!”

“Very well; only be careful!” said Claudia Petrovna. “You are so
enthusiastic that I am really alarmed for you! Of course Liza shall now be
no less than my own daughter to me; but there is so much to know and to
settle yet! Above all, be very careful and observant! You are not nearly
careful enough when you are happy! You are much too exalted an
individual to be cautious, when you are happy!” she added with a smile.

The whole family went out to see Velchaninoff off. The children brought
Liza along with them; they had been playing in the garden. They seemed to
look at her now with even more perplexity then at first! The girl became
dreadfully shy when Velchaninoff kissed her before all, and promised to
come down next day and bring her father with him. To the last moment she
did not say a single word, and never looked at him at all; but just before he
was about to start she seized his hand and drew him away to one side,
looking imploringly in his face: she evidently had something to say to him.
Velchaninoff immediately took her into an adjoining room.

“What is it, Liza?” he asked, kindly and encouragingly; but she drew him
farther away,—into the very farthest corner of the room, anxious to get well
out of sight and hearing of the rest.

“What is it, Liza? What is it?”

But she was still silent, and could not make up her mind to speak; she stared
with her motionless, large blue eyes, into his face, and in every lineament of
her little face was betrayed the wildest terror and anxiety.

“He'll—hang himself!” she whispered at last, as though she were talking in
her sleep.

“Who will hang himself?” asked Velchaninoff, in alarm.

“He will—he! He tried to hang himself to a hook last night!” said the child,
panting with haste and excitement; “I saw it myself! To-day he tried it
again,—he wishes to hang himself; he told me so!—he told me so! He
wanted to, long ago; he has always wanted to do it! I saw it myself—in the
night!”

“Impossible!” muttered Velchaninoff, incredulously.

Liza suddenly threw herself into his arms, kissed his hands, and cried. She
could hardly breathe for sobbing; she was begging and imploring
Velchaninoff, but he could not understand what she was trying to say.

Velchaninoff never afterwards forgot the terrible look of this distressed
child; he thought of it waking and thought of it sleeping—how she had
come to him in her despair as to her last hope, and hysterically begged and
prayed him to help her! “And to think of her being so deeply attached to
him!” he reflected jealously, as he drove, impatient and feverish, towards
town. “She said herself that she loved her mother better;—perhaps she hates
him, and doesn't love him at all! And what's all that nonsense about
‘hanging himself!’ What did she mean by that? As if he would hang
himself, the fool! I must sift the matter—the whole matter. I must settle this
business once and for ever—and quickly!”

CHAPTER VII.

He was in a great hurry to “know all.” In order to lose no time about finding
out what he felt he must know at once, he told the coachman to drive him
straight to Trusotsky's rooms. On the way he changed his mind; “let him
come to me, himself,” he thought, “and meanwhile I can attend to my
cursed law business.”

But to-day he really felt that he was too absent to attend to anything at all;
and at five o'clock he set out with the intention of dining. And at this
moment, for the first time, an amusing idea struck him. What if he really
only hindered his law business by meddling as he did, and hunting his
wretched lawyer about the place, when the latter plainly avoided meeting
him? Velchaninoff laughed merrily over this idea. “And yet,” he thought;
“if this notion had struck me in the evening instead of now, how angry I
should have been!” He laughed again, more merrily than before. But in
spite of his merriness he grew more and more thoughtful and impatient, and
could settle to nothing, nor could he think out what he most wanted to
reflect upon.

“I must have that fellow here!” he said at length; “I must read the mystery
of him first of all, and then I can settle what to do next. There's a duel in this
business!”

Returning home at seven o'clock he did not find Pavel Pavlovitch there,
which fact first surprised him, then angered him, then depressed him, and at
last, frightened him.

“God knows, God knows how it will all end!” he cried; first trying to settle
himself on a sofa, and then marching up and down the room, and all the
while looking at his watch every other minute.

At length—at about nine o'clock—Pavel Pavlovitch appeared.

“If this man was cunning enough to mean it he could not have managed
better in order to put me into a state of nervousness!” thought Velchaninoff,
though his heart bounded for joy to see his guest arrive.

To Velchaninoff's cordial inquiry as to why he was so late, Pavel Pavlovitch
smiled disagreeably—took a seat with easy familiarity, carelessly threw his
crapebound hat on a chair,—and made himself perfectly at home.
Velchaninoff observed and took stock of the careless manner adopted by his
visitor; it was not like yesterday. Velchaninoff then quietly, and in a few
words, gave Pavel Pavlovitch an account of what he had done with Liza, of
how kindly she had been received, of how good it would be for the child
down there; then he led the conversation to the topic of the Pogoryeltseffs,
leaving Liza out of the talking altogether, and spoke of how kind the whole
family were, of how long he had known them, and so on.

Pavel Pavlovitch listened absently, occasionally looking ironically at his
host from under his eyelashes.

“What an enthusiast you are!” he muttered at last, smiling very
unpleasantly.

“Hum, you seem in a bad humour to-day!” remarked Velchaninoff with
annoyance.

“And why shouldn't I be as wicked as my neighbours?” cried Pavel
Pavlovitch suddenly! He said this so abruptly that he gave one the idea that
he had pounced out of a corner where he had been lurking, on purpose to
make a dash at the first opportunity.

“Oh dear me! do as you like, pray!” laughed Velchaninoff; “I only thought
something had put you out, perhaps!”

“So it has,” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, as though proud of the fact.

“Well, what was it?”

Pavel Pavlovitch waited a moment or two before he replied.

“Why it's that Stepan Michailovitch Bagantoff of ours—up to his tricks
again; he's a shining light among the highest circles of society—he is!”

“Wouldn't he receive you again—or what?”

“N—no! not quite that, this time; on the contrary I was allowed to go in for
the first time on record, and I had the honour of musing over his features,
too!—but he happened to be a corpse, that's all!”

“What! Bagantoff dead?” cried Velchaninoff, in the greatest astonishment;
though there was no particular reason why he should be surprised.

“Yes—my unalterable—six-years-standing friend is dead!—died yesterday
at about mid-day, and I knew nothing of it! Perhaps he died just when I
called there—who knows? To-morrow is the funeral! he's in his coffin at
this moment! Died of nervous fever; and they let me in to see him—they
did indeed!—to contemplate his features! I told them I was a great friend—
and therefore they allowed me in! A pretty trick he has played me—this
dear friend of six years' standing! why—perhaps I came to St. Petersburg
specially for him!”

“Well—it's hardly worth your while to be angry with him about it, is it—he
didn't die on purpose!” said Velchaninoff laughing.

“Oh, but I'm speaking out of pure sympathy—he was a dear friend to me!
oh a very dear friend!”

Pavel Pavlovitch gave a smile of detestable irony and cunning.

“Do you know what, Alexey Ivanovitch,” he resumed, “I think you ought to
treat me to something,—I have often treated you; I used to be your host
every blessed day, sir, at T——, for a whole year! Send for a bottle of wine,
do—my throat is so dry!”

“With pleasure—why didn't you say so before! what would you like?”

“Don't say ‘you!’ say ‘we’! we'll drink together of course!” said Pavel
Pavlovitch defiantly, but at the same time looking into Velchaninoff's eyes
with some concern.

“Shall it be champagne?”

“Of course! it isn't time for vodki yet!”

Velchaninoff rose slowly—rang the bell and gave Mavra the necessary
orders.

“We'll drink to this happy meeting of friends after nine years' parting!” said
Pavel Pavlovitch, with a very inappropriate and unnecessary giggle. “Why,
you are the only real, true friend left to me now! Bagantoff is no more! it
quite reminds one of the great poet:

“Great Patroclus is no more,
Mean Thersites liveth yet!”

—and so on,—don't you know!”

At the name “Thersites” Pavel Pavlovitch touched his own breast.

“I wish you would speak plainly, you pig of a fellow!” said Velchaninoff to
himself, “I hate hints!” His own anger was on the rise, and he had long been
struggling with his self-restraint.

“Look here,—tell me this, since you consider Bagantoff to have been guilty
before you (as I see you do) surely you must be glad that your betrayer is
dead? What are you so angry about?”

“Glad! Why should I be glad?”

“I judge by what I should imagine your feelings to be.”

“Ha-ha! well, this time you are a little bit in error as to my feelings, for
once! A certain sage has said 'my good enemy is dead, but I have a still
better one alive! ha-ha!”

“Well but you saw him alive for five years at a stretch,—I should have
thought that was enough to contemplate his features in!” said Velchaninoff
angrily and contemptuously.

“Yes, but how was I to know then, sir?” snapped Pavel Pavlovitch—
jumping out of an ambush once more, as it were,—delighted to be asked a
question which he had long awaited; “why, what do you take me for, Alexey
Ivanovitch?” at this moment there was in the speaker's face a new
expression altogether, transfiguring entirely the hitherto merely
disagreeably malicious look upon it.

“Do you mean to say you knew nothing of it?” said Velchaninoff in
astonishment.

“How! Didn't know? As if I could have known it and——Oh, you race of
Jupiters! you reckon a man to be no better than a dog, and judge of him by
your own sentiments. Look here, sir,—there, look at that.” So saying, he
brought his fist madly down upon the table with a resounding bang, and
immediately afterwards looked frightened at his own act.

Velchaninoff's face beamed.

“Listen, Pavel Pavlovitch,” he said; “it is entirely the same thing to me
whether you knew or did not know all about it. If you did not know, so
much the more honourable is it for you; but—I can't understand why you
should have selected me for your confidant.”

“I wasn't talking of you; don't be angry, it wasn't about you,” muttered
Pavel Pavlovitch, with his eyes fixed on the ground.

At this moment, Mavra entered with the champagne.

“Here it is!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, immensely delighted at the appearance
of the wine. “Now then, tumblers my good girl, tumblers quick! Capital!
Thank you, we don't require you any more, my good Mavra. What! you've
drawn the cork? Excellent creature. Well, ta-ta! off with you.”