Pavel Pavlovitch had made himself very comfortable. He was sitting in the
same chair as he had occupied yesterday, smoking a cigar, and had just
poured the fourth and last tumbler of champagne out of the bottle.
The teapot and a half-emptied tumbler of tea stood on the table beside
him; his red face beamed with benevolence. He had taken off his coat, and
sat in his shirt sleeves.
“Forgive me, dearest of friends,” he cried, catching sight of
Velchaninoff, and hastening to put on his coat, “I took it off to make
myself thoroughly comfortable.”
Velchaninoff approached him menacingly.
“You are not quite tipsy yet, are you? Can you understand what is said to
you?”
Paul Pavlovitch became a little confused.
“No, not quite. I’ve been thinking of the dear deceased a bit, but I’m not
quite drunk yet.”
“Can you understand what I say?”
“My dear sir, I came here on purpose to understand you.”
“Very well, then I shall begin at once by telling you that you are an ass,
sir!” cried Velchaninoff, at the top of his voice.
“Why, if you begin that way where will you end, I wonder!” said Pavel
Pavlovitch, clearly alarmed more than a little.
Velchaninoff did not listen, but roared again,
“Your daughter is dying—she is very ill! Have you thrown her over
altogether, or not?”
“Oh, surely she isn’t dying yet?”
“I tell you she’s ill; very, very ill—dangerously ill.”
“What, fits? or——”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I tell you she is very dangerously ill. You ought to
go down, if only for that reason.”
“What, to thank your friends, eh? to return thanks for their hospitality?
Of course, quite so; I well understand, Alexey Ivanovitch—dearest of
friends!” He suddenly seized Velchaninoff by both hands, and added with
intoxicated sentiment, almost melted to tears, “Alexey Ivanovitch, don’t
shout at me—don’t shout at me, please! If you do, I may throw myself into
the Neva—I don’t know!—and we have such important things to talk over.
There’s lots of time to go to the Pogoryeltseffs another day.”
Velchaninoff did his best to restrain his wrath. “You are drunk, and
therefore I don’t understand what you are driving at,” he said sternly.
“I’m ready to come to an explanation with you at any moment you
like—delighted!—the the sooner the better. But first let me tell you that
I am going to take my own measures to secure you. You will sleep here
to-night, and to-morrow I shall take you with me to see Liza. I shall not
let you go again. I shall bind you, if necessary, and carry you down
myself. How do you like this sofa to sleep on?” he added, panting, and
indicating a wide, soft divan opposite his own sofa, against the other
wall.
“Oh—anything will do for me!”
“Very well, you shall have this sofa. Here, take these things—here are
sheets, blankets, pillow” (Velchaninoff pulled all these things out of a
cupboard, and tossed them impatiently to Pavel Pavlovitch, who humbly
stood and received them); “now then, make your bed,—come, bustle up!”
Pavel Pavlovitch laden with bed clothes had been standing in the middle of
the room with a stupid drunken leer on his face, irresolute; but at
Velchaninoff’s second bidding he hurriedly began the task of making his
bed, moving the table away from in front of it, and smoothing a sheet over
the seat of the divan. Velchaninoff approached to help him. He was more or
less gratified with his guest’s alarm and submission.
“Now, drink up that wine and lie down!” was his next command. He felt that
he _must_ order this man about, he could not help himself. “I suppose you
took upon yourself to order this wine, did you?”
“I did—I did, sir! I sent for the wine, Alexey Ivanovitch, because I knew
_you_ would not send out again!”
“Well, it’s a good thing that you knew that; but I desire that you should
know still more. I give you notice that I have taken my own measures for
the future, I’m not going to put up with any more of your antics.”
“Oh, I quite understand, Alexey Ivanovitch, that that sort of thing could
only happen once!” said Pavel Pavlovitch, giggling feebly.
At this reply Velchaninoff, who had been marching up and down the room
stopped solemnly before Pavel Pavlovitch.
“Pavel Pavlovitch,” he said, “speak plainly! You are a clever fellow—I
admit the fact freely,—but I assure you you are going on a false track
now. Speak plainly, and act like an honest man, and I give you my word of
honour that I will answer all you wish to know.”
Pavel Pavlovitch grinned his disagreeable grin (which always drove
Velchaninoff wild) once more.
“Wait!” cried the latter. “No humbug now, please; I see through you. I
repeat that I give you my word of honour to reply candidly to anything you
may like to ask, and to give you every sort of satisfaction—reasonable or
even unreasonable—that you please. _Oh!_ how I wish I could make you
understand me!”
“Since you are so very kind,” began Pavel Pavlovitch, cautiously bending
towards him, “I may tell you that I am very much interested as to what you
said yesterday about ‘bird of prey’?”
Velchaninoff spat on the ground in utter despair and disgust, and
recommenced his walk up and down the room, quicker than ever.
“No, no, Alexey Ivanovitch, don’t spurn my question; you don’t know how
interested I am in it. I assure you I came here on purpose to ask you
about it. I know I’m speaking indistinctly, but you’ll forgive me that.
I’ve read the expression before. Tell me now, was Bagantoff a ‘bird of
prey,’ or—the other thing? How is one to distinguish one from the other?”
Velchaninoff went on walking up and down, and answered nothing for some
minutes.
“The bird of prey, sir,” he began suddenly, stopping in front of Pavel
Pavlovitch, and speaking vehemently, “is the man who would poison
Bagantoff while drinking champagne with him under the cloak of
goodfellowship, as you did with me yesterday, instead of escorting his
wretched body to the burial ground as you did—the deuce only knows why,
and with what dirty, mean, underhand, petty motives, which only recoil
upon yourself and make you viler than you already are. Yes, sir, recoil
upon yourself!”
“Quite so, quite so, I oughtn’t to have gone,” assented Pavel Pavlovitch,
“but aren’t you a little——”
“The bird of prey is not a man who goes and learns his grievance off by
heart, like a lesson, and whines it about the place, grimacing and posing,
and hanging it round other people’s necks, and who spends all his time in
such pettifogging. Is it true you wanted to hang yourself? Come, is it
true, or not?”
“I—I don’t know—I may have when I was drunk—I don’t remember. You see,
Alexey Ivanovitch, it wouldn’t be quite nice for me to go poisoning
people. I’m too high up in the service, and I have money, too, you
know—and I may wish to marry again, who knows.”
“Yes; you’d be sent to Siberia, which would be awkward.”
“Quite so; though they say the penal servitude is not so bad as it was.
But you remind me of an anecdote, Alexey Ivanovitch. I thought of it in
the carriage, and meant to tell you afterwards. Well! you may remember
Liftsoff at T——. He came while you were there. His younger brother—who is
rather a swell, too—was serving at L—— under the governor, and one fine
day he happened to quarrel with Colonel Golubenko in the presence of
ladies, and of one lady especially. Liftsoff considered himself insulted,
but concealed his grievance; and, meanwhile, Golubenko proposed to a
certain lady and was accepted. Would you believe it, Liftsoff made great
friends with Golubenko, and even volunteered to be best man at his
wedding. But when the ceremony was all over, and Liftsoff approached the
bridegroom to wish him joy and kiss him, as usual, he took the opportunity
of sticking a knife into Golubenko. Fancy! his own best man stuck him!
Well, what does the assassin do but run about the room crying. ‘Oh! what
have I done? Oh! what have I done?’ says he, and throws himself on
everyone’s neck by turns, ladies and all! Ha-ha-ha! He starved to death in
Siberia, sir! One is a little sorry for Golubenko; but he recovered, after
all.”
“I don’t understand why you told me that story,” said Velchaninoff,
frowning heavily.
“Why, because he stuck the other fellow with a knife,” giggled Pavel
Pavlovitch, “which proves that he was no type, but an ass of a fellow, who
could so forget the ordinary manners of society as to hang around ladies’
necks, and in the presence of the governor, too—and yet he stuck the other
fellow. Ha-ha-ha! He did what he intended to do, that’s all, sir!”
“Go to the devil, will you—you and your miserable humbug—you miserable
humbug yourself,” yelled Velchaninoff, wild with rage and fury, and
panting so that he could hardly get his words out. “You think you are
going to alarm _me_, do you, you frightener of children—you mean beast—you
low scoundrel you?—scoundrel—scoundrel—scoundrel!” He had quite forgotten
himself in his rage.
Pavel Pavlovitch shuddered all over; his drunkenness seemed to vanish in
an instant; his lips trembled and shook.
“Are you calling _me_ a scoundrel, Alexey Ivanovitch—_you_—_me_?”
But Velchaninoff was himself again now.
“I’ll apologise if you like,” he said, and relapsed into gloomy silence.
After a moment he added, “But only on condition that you yourself agree to
speak out fully, and at once.”
“In your place I should apologise unconditionally, Alexey Ivanovitch.”
“Very well; so be it then.” Velchaninoff was silent again for a while. “I
apologise,” he resumed; “but admit yourself, Pavel Pavlovitch, that I need
not feel myself in any way bound to you after this. I mean with regard to
_anything_—not only this particular matter.”
“All right! Why, what is there to settle between us?” laughed Pavel
Pavlovitch, without looking up.
“In that case, so much the better—so much the better. Come, drink up your
wine and get into bed, for I shall not let you go now, anyhow.”
“Oh, my wine—never mind my wine!” muttered Pavel Pavlovitch; but he went
to the table all the same, and took up his tumbler of champagne which had
long been poured out. Either he had been drinking copiously before, or
there was some other unknown cause at work, but his hand shook so as he
drank the wine that a quantity of it was spilled over his waistcoat and
the floor. However, he drank it all, to the last drop, as though he could
not leave the tumbler without emptying it. He then placed the empty glass
on the table, approached his bed, sat down on it, and began to undress.
“I think perhaps I had better _not_ sleep here,” he said suddenly, with
one boot off, and half undressed.
“Well, I _don’t_ think so,” said Velchaninoff, who was walking up and
down, without looking at him.
Pavel Pavlovitch finished undressing and lay down. A quarter of an hour
later Velchaninoff also got into bed, and put the candle out.
He soon began to doze uncomfortably. Some new trouble seemed to have
suddenly come over him and worried him, and at the same time he felt a
sensation of shame that he could allow himself to be worried by the new
trouble. Velchaninoff was just falling definitely asleep, however, when a
rustling sound awoke him. He immediately glanced at Pavel Pavlovitch’s
bed. The room was quite dark, the blinds being down and curtains drawn;
but it seemed to him that Pavel Pavlovitch was not lying in his bed; he
seemed to be sitting on the side of it.
“What’s the matter?” cried Velchaninoff.
“A ghost, sir,” said Pavel Pavlovitch, in a low tone, after a few moments
of silence.
“What? What sort of a ghost?”
“Th—there—in that room—just at the door, I seemed to see a ghost!”
“Whose ghost?” asked Velchaninoff, pausing a minute before putting the
question.
“Natalia Vasilievna’s!”
Velchaninoff jumped out of bed and walked to the door, whence he could see
into the room opposite, across the passage. There were no curtains in that
room, so that it was much lighter than his own.
“There’s nothing there at all. You are drunk; lie down again!” he said,
and himself set the example, rolling his blanket around him.
Pavel Pavlovitch said nothing, but lay down as he was told.
“Did you ever see any ghosts before?” asked Velchaninoff suddenly, ten
minutes later.
“I think I saw one once,” said Pavel Pavlovitch in the same low voice;
after which there was silence once more. Velchaninoff was not sure whether
he had been asleep or not, but an hour or so had passed, when suddenly he
was wide awake again. Was it a rustle that awoke him? He could not tell;
but one thing was evident—in the midst of the profound darkness of the
room something white stood before him; not quite close to him, but about
the middle of the room. He sat up in bed, and stared for a full minute.
“Is that you, Pavel Pavlovitch?” he asked. His voice sounded very weak.
There was no reply; but there was not the slightest doubt of the fact that
someone was standing there.
“Is that you, Pavel Pavlovitch?” cried Velchaninoff again, louder this
time; in fact, so loud that if the former had been asleep in bed he must
have started up and answered.
But there was no reply again. It seemed to Velchaninoff that the white
figure had approached nearer to him.
Then something strange happened; something seemed to “let go” within
Velchaninoff’s system, and he commenced to shout at the top of his voice,
just as he had done once before this evening, in the wildest and maddest
way possible, panting so that he could hardly articulate his words: “If
you—drunken ass that you are—dare to think that you could frighten _me_,
I’ll turn my face to the wall, and not look round once the whole night, to
show you how little I am afraid of you—a fool like you—if you stand there
from now till morning! I despise you!” So saying, Velchaninoff twisted
round with his face to the wall, rolled his blanket round him, and lay
motionless, as though turned to stone. A deathlike stillness supervened.
Did the ghost stand where it was, or had it moved? He could not tell; but
his heart beat, and beat, and beat—At least five minutes went by, and
then, not a couple of paces from his bed, there came the feeble voice of
Pavel Pavlovitch:
“I got up, Alexey Ivanovitch, to look for a little water. I couldn’t find
any, and was just going to look about nearer your bed——”
“Then why didn’t you answer when I called?” cried Velchaninoff angrily,
after a minute’s pause.
“I was frightened; you shouted so, you alarmed me!”
“You’ll find a caraffe and glass over there, on the little table. Light a
candle.”
“Oh, I’ll find it without. You’ll forgive me, Alexey Ivanovitch, for
frightening you so; I felt thirsty so suddenly.”
But Velchaninoff said nothing. He continued to lie with his face to the
wall, and so he lay all night, without turning round once. Was he anxious
to keep his word and show his contempt for Pavel Pavlovitch? He did not
know himself why he did it; his nervous agitation and perturbation were
such that he could not sleep for a long while, he felt quite delirious. At
last he fell asleep, and awoke at past nine o’clock next morning. He
started up just as though someone had struck him, and sat down on the side
of his bed. But Pavel Pavlovitch was not to be seen. His empty, rumpled
bed was there, but its occupant had flown before daybreak.
“I thought so!” cried Velchaninoff, bringing the palm of his right hand
smartly to his forehead.