Next morning, while waiting for Pavel Pavlovitch, who had promised to be
in good time in order to drive down to the Pogoryeltseffs with him,
Velchaninoff walked up and down the room, sipped his coffee, and every
other minute reflected upon one and the same idea; namely, that he felt
like a man who had awaked from sleep with the deep impression of having
received a box on the ear the last thing at night.
“Hm!” he thought, anxiously, “he understands the state of the case only
too well; he’ll take it out of me by means of Liza!” The dear image of the
poor little girl danced before his eyes. His heart beat quicker when he
reflected that to-day—in a couple of hours—he would see _his own_ Liza
once more. “Yes—there’s no question about it,” he said to himself; “my
whole end and aim in life is _there_ now! What do I care about all these
‘memories’ and boxes on the ear; and what have I lived for up to now?—for
sorrow and discomfort—that’s all! but _now_, now—it’s all different!”
But in spite of his ecstatic feelings he grew more and more thoughtful.
“He is worrying me for Liza, that’s plain; and he bullies Liza—he is going
to take it out of me that way—for _all_! Hm! at all events I cannot
possibly allow such sallies as his of last night,” and Velchaninoff
blushed hotly “and here’s half-past eleven and he hasn’t come yet.” He
waited long—till half-past twelve, and his anguish of impatience grew more
and more keen. Pavel Pavlovitch did not appear. At length the idea began
to take shape that Pavel Pavlovitch naturally would not come again for the
sole purpose of another scene like that of last night. The thought filled
Velchaninoff with despair. “The brute knows I am depending upon him—and
what on earth am I to do now about Liza? How can I make my appearance
without him?”
At last he could bear it no longer and set off to the Pokrofsky at one
o’clock to look for Pavel Pavlovitch.
At the lodging, Velchaninoff was informed that Pavel Pavlovitch had not
been at home all night, and had only called in at nine o’clock, stayed a
quarter of an hour, and had gone out again.
Velchaninoff stood at the door listening to the servants’ report,
mechanically tried the handle, recollected himself, and asked to see Maria
Sisevna.
The latter obeyed his summons at once.
She was a kind-hearted old creature, of generous feelings, as Velchaninoff
described her afterwards to Claudia Petrovna. Having first enquired as to
his journey yesterday with Liza, Maria launched into anecdotes of Pavel
Pavlovitch. She declared that she would long ago have turned her lodger
out neck and crop, but for the child. Pavel Pavlovitch had been turned out
of the hotel for generally disreputable behaviour. “Oh, he does dreadful
things!” she continued. “Fancy his telling the poor child, in anger, that
she wasn’t his daughter, but——”
“Oh no, no! impossible!” cried Velchaninoff in alarm.
“I heard it myself! She’s only a small child, of course, but that sort of
thing doesn’t do before an intelligent child like her! She cried
dreadfully—she was quite upset. We had a catastrophe in the house a short
while since. Some commissionnaire or somebody took a room in the evening,
and hung himself before morning. He had bolted with money, they say. Well,
crowds of people came in to stare at him. Pavel Pavlovitch wasn’t at home,
but the child had escaped and was wandering about; and she must needs go
with the rest to see the sight. I saw her looking at the suicide with an
extraordinary expression, and carried her off at once, of course; and
fancy, I hardly managed to get home with her—trembling all over she
was—when off she goes in a dead faint, and it was all I could do to bring
her round at all. I don’t know whether she’s epileptic or what—and ever
since that she has been ill. When her father heard, he came and pinched
her all over—he doesn’t beat her; he always pinches her like that,—then he
went out and got drunk somewhere, and came back and frightened her. ‘I’m
going to hang myself too,’ he says, ‘because of you. I shall hang myself
on that blind string there,’ he says, and he makes a loop in the string
before her very eyes. The poor little thing went quite out of her mind
with terror, and cried and clasped him round with her little arms. ‘I’ll
be good—I’ll be good!’ she shrieks. It was a pitiful sight—it was,
indeed!”
Velchaninoff, though prepared for strange revelations concerning Pavel
Pavlovitch and his ways, was quite dumbfounded by these tales; he could
scarcely believe his ears.
Maria Sisevna told him many more such little anecdotes. Among others,
there was one occasion, when, if she (Maria) had not been by, Liza would
have thrown herself out of the window.
Pavel Pavlovitch had come staggering out of the room muttering, “I shall
smash her head in with a stick! I shall murder her like a dog!” and he had
gone away, repeating this over and over again to himself.
Velchaninoff hired a carriage and set off towards the Pogoryeltseffs.
Before he had left the town behind him, the carriage was delayed by a
block at a cross road, just by a small bridge, over which was passing, at
the moment, a long funeral procession. There were carriages waiting to
move on on both sides of the bridge, and a considerable crowd of foot
passengers besides.
The funeral was evidently of some person of considerable importance, for
the train of private and hired vehicles was a very long one; and at the
window of one of these carriages in the procession Velchaninoff suddenly
beheld the face of Pavel Pavlovitch.
Velchaninoff would not have believed his eyes, but that Pavel Pavlovitch
nodded his head and smiled to him. He seemed to be delighted to have
recognised Velchaninoff; he even began to kiss his hand out of the window.
Velchaninoff jumped out of his own vehicle, and in spite of policemen,
crowd, and everything else, elbowed his way to Pavel Pavlovitch’s carriage
window. He found the latter sitting alone.
“What are you doing?” he cried. “Why didn’t you come to my house? Why are
you here?”
“I’m paying a debt; don’t shout so! I’m repaying a debt,” said Pavel
Pavlovitch, giggling and winking. “I’m escorting the mortal remains of my
dear friend Stepan Michailovitch Bagantoff!”
“What absurdity, you drunken, insane creature,” cried Velchaninoff louder
than ever, and beside himself with outraged feeling. “Get out and come
with me. Quick! get out instantly!”
“I can’t. It’s a debt——”
“I’ll pull you out, then!” shouted Velchaninoff.
“Then I’ll scream, sir, I’ll scream!” giggled Pavel Pavlovitch, as merrily
as ever, just as though the whole thing was a joke. However, he retreated
into the further corner of the carriage, all the same.
“Look out, sir, look out! You’ll be knocked down!” cried a policeman.
Sure enough, an outside carriage was making its way on to the bridge from
the side, stopping the procession, and causing a commotion. Velchaninoff
was obliged to spring aside, and the press of carriages and people
immediately separated him from Pavel Pavlovitch. He shrugged his shoulders
and returned to his own vehicle.
“It’s all the same. I couldn’t take such a fellow with me, anyhow,” he
reflected, still all of a tremble with excitement and the rage of disgust.
When he repeated Maria Sisevna’s story, and his meeting at the funeral, to
Claudia Petrovna afterwards, the latter became buried in deep thought.
“I am anxious for you,” she said at last. “You must break off all
relations with that man, and as soon as possible.”
“Oh, he’s nothing but a drunken fool!” cried Velchaninoff passionately;
“as if I am to be afraid of _him_! And how can I break off relations with
him? Remember Liza!”
Meanwhile Liza was lying ill; fever had set in last night, and an eminent
doctor was momentarily expected from town! He had been sent for early this
morning.
These news quite upset Velchaninoff. Claudia Petrovna took him in to see
the patient.
“I observed her very carefully yesterday,” she said, stopping at the door
of Liza’s room before entering it. “She is a proud and morose child. She
is ashamed of being with us, and of having been thrown over by her father.
In my opinion that is the whole secret of her illness.”
“How ‘thrown over’? Why do you suppose that he has thrown her over?”
“The simple fact that he allowed her to come here to a strange house, and
with a man who was also a stranger, or nearly so; or, at all events, with
whom his relations were such that——”
“Oh, but I took her myself, almost by force.”
Liza was not surprised to see Velchaninoff alone. She only smiled
bitterly, and turned her hot face to the wall. She made no reply to his
passionate promises to bring her father down to-morrow without fail, or to
his timid attempts at consolation.
As soon as Velchaninoff left the sick child’s presence, he burst into
tears.
The doctor did not arrive until evening. On seeing the patient he
frightened everybody by his very first remark, observing that it was a
pity he had not been sent for before.
When informed that the child had only been taken ill last night, he could
not believe it at first.
“Well, it all depends upon how this night is passed,” he decided at last.
Having made all necessary arrangements, he took his departure, promising
to come as early as possible next morning.
Velchaninoff was anxious to stay the night, but Claudia Petrovna begged
him to try once more “to bring down that brute of a man.”
“Try once more!” cried Velchaninoff, passionately; “why, I’ll tie him hand
and foot and bring him along myself!”
The idea that he would tie Pavel Pavlovitch up and carry him down in his
arms overpowered Velchaninoff, and filled him with impatience to execute
his frantic desire.
“I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty before him any more,” he said to
Claudia Petrovna, at parting, “and I withdraw all my servile, abject words
of yesterday—all I said to you,” he added, wrathfully.
Liza lay with closed eyes, apparently asleep; she seemed to be better.
When Velchaninoff bent cautiously over her in order to kiss—if it were but
the edge of her bed linen—she suddenly opened her eyes, just as though she
had been waiting for him, and whispered, “Take me away!”
It was but a quiet, sad petition—without a trace of yesterday’s
irritation; but at the same time there was that in her voice which
betrayed that she made the request in the full knowledge that it could not
be assented to.
No sooner did Velchaninoff, in despair, begin to assure her as tenderly as
he could that what she desired was impossible, than she silently closed
her eyes and said not another word, just as though she neither saw nor
heard him.
Arrived in town Velchaninoff told his man to drive him to the Pokrofsky.
It was ten o’clock at night.
Pavel Pavlovitch was not at his lodgings. Velchaninoff waited for him half
an hour, walking up and down the passage in a state of feverish
impatience. Maria Sisevna assured him at last that Pavel Pavlovitch would
not come in until the small hours.
“Well, then, I’ll return here before daylight,” he said, beside himself
with desperation, and he went home to his own rooms.
What was his amazement, when, on arriving at the gate of his house, he
learned from Mavra that “yesterday’s visitor” had been waiting for him
ever since before ten o’clock.
“He’s had some tea,” she added, “and sent me for wine again—the same wine
as yesterday. He gave me the money to buy it with.”