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.”
Mavra’s advent with the bottle so encouraged him that he again looked at
Velchaninoff with some defiance.
“Now confess,” he giggled suddenly, “confess that you are very curious
indeed to hear about all this, and that it is by no means ‘entirely the
same to you,’ as you declared! Confess that you would be miserable if I
were to get up and go away this very minute without telling you anything
more.”
“Not the least in the world, I assure you!”
Pavel Pavlovitch smiled; and his smile said, as plainly as words could,
“That’s a lie!”
“Well, let’s to business,” he said, and poured out two glasses of
champagne.
“Here’s a toast,” he continued, raising his goblet, “to the health in
Paradise of our dear departed friend Bagantoff.”
He raised his glass and drank.
“I won’t drink such a toast as that!” said Velchaninoff; and put his glass
down on the table.
“Why not? It’s a very pretty toast.”
“Look here, were you drunk when you came here?”
“A little; why?”
“Oh—nothing particular. Only it appeared to me that yesterday, and
especially this morning, you were sincerely sorry for the loss of Natalia
Vasilievna.”
“And who says I am not sorry now?” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, as if somebody
had pulled a string and made him snap the words out, like a doll.
“No, I don’t mean that; but you must admit you may be in error about
Bagantoff; and that’s a serious matter!”
Pavel Pavlovitch grinned and gave a wink.
“Hey! Wouldn’t you just like to know how I found out about Bagantoff, eh?”
Velchaninoff blushed.
“I repeat, it’s all the same to me,” he said; and added to himself,
“Hadn’t I better pitch him and the bottle out of the window together.” He
was blushing more and more now.
Pavel Pavlovitch poured himself out another glass.
“I’ll tell you directly how I found out all about Mr. Bagantoff, and your
burning wish shall be satisfied. For you are a fiery sort of man, you
know, Alexey Ivanovitch, oh, dreadfully so! Ha-ha-ha. Just give me a
cigarette first, will you, for ever since March——”
“Here’s a cigarette for you.”
“Ever since March I have been a depraved man, sir, and this is how it all
came about. Listen. Consumption, as you know, my dear friend” (Pavel
Pavlovitch was growing more and more familiar!), “is an interesting
malady. One sees a man dying of consumption without a suspicion that
to-morrow is to be his last day. Well, I told you how Natalia Vasilievna,
up to five hours before her death, talked about going to visit her aunt,
who lived thirty miles or so away, and starting in a fortnight. You know
how some ladies—and gentlemen, too, I daresay—have the bad habit of
keeping a lot of old rubbish by them, in the way of love-letters and so
on. It would be much safer to stick them all into the fire, wouldn’t it?
But no, they must keep every little scrap of paper in drawers and desks,
and endorse it and classify it, and tie it up in bundles, for each year
and month and class! I don’t know whether they find this consoling to
their feelings afterwards, or what. Well, since she was arranging a visit
to her aunt just five hours before her death, Natalia Vasilievna naturally
did not expect to die so soon; in fact, she was expecting old Doctor Koch
down till the last; and so, when Natalia Vasilievna _did_ die, she left
behind her a beautiful little black desk all inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
and bound with silver, in her bureau; oh, a lovely little box, an heirloom
left her by her grandmother, with a lock and key all complete. Well, sir,
in this box everything—I mean _everything_, you know, for every day and
hour for the last twenty years—was disclosed; and since Mr. Bagantoff had
a decided taste for literature (indeed, he had published a passionate
novel once, I am told, in a newspaper!)—consequently there were about a
hundred examples of his genius in the desk, ranging over a period of five
years. Some of these talented effusions were covered with pencilled
remarks by Natalia Vasilievna herself! Pleasant, that, for a fond
husband’s feelings, sir, eh?”
Velchaninoff quickly cast his thoughts back over the past, and remembered
that he had never written a single letter or a single note to Natalia
Vasilievna.
He had written a couple of letters from St. Petersburg, but, according to
a previous arrangement, he had addressed them to both Mr. and Mrs.
Trusotsky together. He had not answered Natalia Vasilievna’s last
letter—which had contained his dismissal—at all.
Having ended his speech, Pavel Pavlovitch relapsed into silence, and sat
smiling repulsively for a whole minute or so.
“Why don’t you answer my question, my friend?” he asked, at length,
evidently disturbed by Velchaninoff’s silence.
“What question?”
“As to the pleasure I must have felt as a fond husband, upon opening the
desk.”
“Your feelings are no business of mine!” said the other bitterly, rising
and commencing to stride up and down the room.
“I wouldn’t mind betting that you are thinking at this very moment: ‘What
a pig of a fellow he is to parade his shame like this!’ Ha-ha! dear me,
what a squeamish gentleman you are to be sure!”
“Not at all. I was thinking nothing of the sort; on the contrary, I
consider that you are—besides being more or less intoxicated—so put out by
the death of the man who has injured you that you are not yourself.
There’s nothing surprising in it at all! I quite understand why you wish
Bagantoff were still alive, and am ready to respect your annoyance, but——”
“And pray _why_ do you suppose that I wish Bagantoff were alive?”
“Oh, that’s your affair!”
“I’ll take my oath you are thinking of a duel!”
“Devil take it, sir!” cried Velchaninoff, obliged to hold himself tighter
than ever. “I was thinking that you, like every respectable person in
similar circumstances, would act openly and candidly and
straightforwardly, and not humiliate yourself with comical antics and
silly grimaces, and ridiculous complaints and detestable innuendoes, which
only heap greater shame upon you. I say I was thinking you would act like
a respectable person.”
“Ha-ha-ha!—but perhaps I am _not_ a respectable person!”
“Oh, well, that’s your own affair again and yet, if so, what in the
devil’s name could you want with Bagantoff alive?”
“Oh, my dear sir, I should have liked just to have a nice peep at a dear
old friend, that’s all. We should have got hold of a bottle of wine, and
drunk it together!”
“He wouldn’t have drunk with _you_!”
“Why not? _Noblesse oblige?_ Why, _you_ are drinking with me. Wherein is
he better than you?”
“I have not drunk with you.”
“Wherefore this sudden pride, sir?”
Velchaninoff suddenly burst into a fit of nervous, irritable laughter.
“Why, deuce take it all!” he cried, “you are quite a different type to
what I believed. I thought you were nothing but a ‘permanent husband,’ but
I find you are a sort of bird of prey.”
“What! ‘permanent husband?’ What is a ‘permanent husband?’ ” asked Pavel
Pavlovitch, pricking up his ears.
“Oh—just one type of husbands—that’s all, it’s too long to explain. Come,
you’d better get out now; it’s quite time you went. I’m sick of you!”
“And bird of prey, sir; what did that mean?”
“I said you were a bird of prey for a joke.”
“Yes; but—bird of prey—tell me what you mean, Alexey Ivanovitch, for
goodness sake!”
“Come, come, that’s quite enough!” shouted Velchaninoff, suddenly flaring
up and speaking at the top of his voice. “It’s time you went; get out of
this, will you?”
“No, sir, it’s _not_ enough!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, jumping up, too.
“Even if you _are_ sick of me, sir, it’s not enough; for you must first
drink and clink glasses with me. I won’t go before you do! No, no; oh dear
no! drink first; it’s _not_ enough yet.”
“Pavel Pavlovitch, will you go to the devil or will you not?”
“With pleasure, sir. I’ll go to the devil with pleasure; but first we must
drink. You say you don’t wish to drink _with me_; but _I wish you_ to
drink with me—actually _with me_.”
Pavel Pavlovitch was grimacing and giggling no longer. He seemed to be
suddenly transfigured again, and was as different from the Pavel
Pavlovitch of but a few moments since as he could possibly be, both in
appearance and in the tone of his voice; so much so that Velchaninoff was
absolutely confounded.
“Come, Alexey Ivanovitch, let’s drink!—don’t refuse me!” continued Pavel
Pavlovitch, seizing the other tightly by the hand and gazing into his face
with an extraordinary expression.
It was clear there was more in this matter than the mere question of
drinking a glass of wine.
“Well,” muttered Velchaninoff, “but that’s nothing but dregs!”
“No, there’s just a couple of glasses left—it’s quite clear. Now then,
clink glasses and drink. There, I’ll take your glass and you take mine.”
They touched glasses and drank.
“Oh, Alexey Ivanovitch! now that we’ve drunk together—oh!” Pavel
Pavlovitch suddenly raised his hand to his forehead and sat still for a
few moments.
Velchaninoff trembled with excitement. He thought Pavel Pavlovitch was
about to disclose _all_; but Pavel Pavlovitch said nothing whatever. He
only looked at him, and quietly smiled his detestable cunning smile in the
other’s face.
“What do you want with me, you drunken wretch?” cried Velchaninoff,
furious, and stamping his foot upon the floor; “you are making a fool of
me!”
“Don’t shout so—don’t shout! Why make such a noise?” cried Pavel
Pavlovitch. “I’m not making a fool of you! Do you know what you are to me
now?” and he suddenly seized Velchaninoff’s hand, and kissed it before
Velchaninoff could recollect himself.
“There, that’s what you are to me _now_; and now I’ll go to the devil.”
“Wait a bit—stop!” cried Velchaninoff, recollecting himself; “there’s
something I wished to say to you.”
Pavel Pavlovitch turned back from the door.
“You see,” began Velchaninoff, blushing and keeping his eye well away from
the other, “you ought to go with me to the Pogoryeltseffs to-morrow—just
to thank them, you know, and make their acquaintance.”
“Of course, of course; quite so!” said Pavel Pavlovitch readily, and
making a gesture of the hand to imply that he knew his duty, and there was
no need to remind him of it.
“Besides Liza expects you anxiously—I promised her.”
“Liza?” Pavel Pavlovitch turned quickly once more upon him. “Liza? Do you
know, sir, what this Liza has been to me—has been and is?” he cried
passionately and almost beside himself; “but—no!—afterwards—that shall be
afterwards! Meanwhile it’s not enough for me, Alexey Ivanovitch, that we
have drunk together; there’s another satisfaction I must have, sir!” He
placed his hat on a chair, and, panting with excitement, gazed at his
companion with much the same expression as before.
“Kiss me, Alexey Ivanovitch!”
“Are you drunk?” cried the other, drawing back.
“Yes, I am—but kiss me all the same, Alexey Ivanovitch—oh, do! I kissed
your hand just now, you know.”
Alexey Ivanovitch was silent for a few moments, as though stunned by the
blow of a cudgel. Then he quickly bent down to Pavel Pavlovitch (who was
about the height of his shoulder), and kissed his lips, from which
proceeded a disagreeably powerful odour of wine. He performed the action
as though not quite certain of what he was doing.
“Well! _now, now!_” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, with drunken enthusiasm, and
with his eyes flashing fiercely; “_now_—look here—I’ll tell you what! I
thought at that time: ‘Surely not _he_, too! If _this_ man,’ I thought,
‘if _this_ man is guilty too—then whom am I ever to trust again!’ ”
Pavel Pavlovitch suddenly burst into tears.
“So now you must understand _how_ dear a friend you are to me henceforth.”
With these words he took his hat and rushed out of the room.
Velchaninoff stood for several minutes in one spot, just as he had done
after Pavel Pavlovitch’s first visit.
“It’s merely a drunken sally—nothing more!” he muttered. “Absolutely
nothing further!” he repeated, when he was undressed and settled down in
his bed.