The doctor’s anxiety was justified; Liza grew worse, so much so that it
was clear she was far more seriously ill than Velchaninoff and Claudia
Petrovna had thought the day before.
When the former arrived in the morning, Liza was still conscious, though
burning with fever. He assured his friend Claudia, afterwards, that the
child had smiled at him and held out her little hot hand. Whether she
actually did so, or whether he so much longed for her to do so that he
imagined it done, is uncertain.
By the evening, however, Liza was quite unconscious, and so she remained
during the whole of her illness. Ten days after her removal to the country
she died.
This was a sad period for Velchaninoff; the Pogoryeltseffs were quite
anxious on his account. He was with them for the greater part of the time,
and during the last few days of the little one’s illness, he used to sit
all alone for hours together in some corner, apparently thinking of
nothing. Claudia Petrovna would attempt to distract him but he hardly
answered her, and conversation was clearly painful to him. Claudia was
quite surprised that “all this” should affect him so deeply.
The children were the best consolation and distraction for him; with them
he could even laugh and play at intervals. Every hour, at least, he would
rise from his chair and creep on tip-toes to the sick-room to look at the
little invalid. Sometimes he imagined that she knew him; he had no hope
for her recovery—none of the family had any hope; but he never left the
precincts of the child’s chamber, sitting principally in the next room.
Twice, however, he had evinced great activity of a sudden; he had jumped
up and started off for town, where he had called upon all the most eminent
doctors of the place, and arranged consultations between them. The last
consultation was on the day before Liza’s death.
Claudia Petrovna had spoken seriously to him a day or two since, as to the
absolute necessity of hunting up Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky, because in
case of anything happening to Liza, she could not be buried without
certain documents from him.
Velchaninoff promised to write to him, and did write a couple of lines,
which he took to the Pokrofsky. Pavel Pavlovitch was not at home, as
usual, but he left the letter to the care of Maria Sisevna.
At last Liza died—on a lovely summer evening, just as the sun was setting;
and only then did Velchaninoff rouse himself.
When the little one was laid out, all covered with flowers, and dressed in
a fair white frock belonging to one of Claudia Petrovna’s children,
Velchaninoff came up to the lady of the house, and told her with flashing
eyes that he would now go and fetch the murderer. Regardless of all advice
to put off his search until to-morrow he started for town immediately.
He knew where to find Pavel Pavlovitch. He had not been in town
exclusively to find the doctors those two days. Occasionally, while
watching the dying child, he had been struck with the idea that if he
could only find and bring down Pavel Pavlovitch she might hear his voice
and be called back, as it were, from the darkness of delirium; at such
moments he had been seized with desperation, and twice he had started up
and driven wildly off to town in order to find Pavel Pavlovitch.
The latter’s room was the same as before, but it was useless to look for
him there, for, according to Maria Sisevna’s report, he was now two or
three days absent from home at a stretch, and was generally to be found
with some friends in the Voznecensky.
Arrived in town about ten o’clock, Velchaninoff went straight to these
latter people, and securing the services of a member of the family to
assist in finding Pavel Pavlovitch, set out on his quest. He did not know
what he should do with Pavel Pavlovitch when found, whether he should kill
him then and there, or simply inform him of the death of the child, and of
the necessity for his assistance in arranging for her funeral. After a
long and fruitless search Velchaninoff found Pavel Pavlovitch quite
accidentally; he was quarrelling with some person in the street—tipsy as
usual, and seemed to be getting the worst of the controversy, which
appeared to be about a money claim.
On catching sight of Velchaninoff, Pavel Pavlovitch stretched out his arms
to him and begged for help; while his opponent—observing Velchaninoff’s
athletic figure—made off. Pavel Pavlovitch shook his fist after him
triumphantly, and hooted at him with cries of victory; but this amusement
was brought to a sudden conclusion by Velchaninoff, who, impelled by some
mysterious motive—which he could not analyse, took him by the shoulders,
and began to shake him violently, so violently that his teeth chattered.
Pavel Pavlovitch ceased to shout after his opponent, and gazed with a
stupid tipsy expression of alarm at his new antagonist. Velchaninoff,
having shaken him till he was tired, and not knowing what to do next with
him, set him down violently on the pavement, backwards.
“Liza is dead!” he said.
Pavel Pavlovitch sat on the pavement and stared, he was too far gone to
take in the news. At last he seemed to realize.
“Dead!” he whispered, in a strange inexplicable tone. Velchaninoff was not
sure whether his face was simply twitching, or whether he was trying to
grin in his usual disagreeable way; but the next moment the drunkard
raised his shaking hand to cross himself. He then struggled to his feet
and staggered off, appearing totally oblivious of the fact that such a
person as Velchaninoff existed.
However, the latter very soon pursued and caught him, seizing him once
more by the shoulder.
“Do you understand, you drunken sot, that without you the funeral
arrangements cannot be made?” he shouted, panting with rage.
Pavel Pavlovitch turned his head.
“The artillery—lieutenant—don’t you remember him?” he muttered, thickly.
“_What?_” cried Velchaninoff, with a shudder.
“He’s her father—find him! he’ll bury her!”
“You liar! You said that out of pure malice. I thought you’d invent
something of the sort!”
Quite beside himself with passion Velchaninoff brought down his powerful
fist with all his strength on Pavel Pavlovitch’s head; another moment and
he might have followed up the blow and slain the man as he stood. His
victim never winced, but he turned upon Velchaninoff a face of such insane
terrible passion, that his whole visage looked distorted.
“Do you understand Russian?” he asked more firmly, as though his fury had
chased away the effects of drunkenness. “Very well, then, you are a——!”
(here followed a specimen of the very vilest language which the Russian
tongue could furnish); “and now you can go back to her!” So saying he tore
himself from Velchaninoff’s grasp, nearly knocking himself over with the
effort, and staggered away. Velchaninoff did not follow him.
Next day, however, a most respectable-looking middle-aged man arrived at
the Pogoryeltseft’s house, in civil uniform, and handed to Claudia
Petrovna a packet addressed to her “from Pavel Pavlovitch Trusotsky.”
In this packet was a sum of three hundred roubles, together with all
certificates necessary for Liza’s funeral. Pavel Pavlovitch had written a
short note couched in very polite and correct phraseology, and thanking
Claudia Petrovna sincerely “for her great kindness to the orphan—kindness
for which heaven alone could recompense her.” He added rather confusedly
that severe illness prevented his personal presence at the funeral of his
“tenderly loved and unfortunate daughter,” but that he “felt he could
repose all confidence (as to the ceremony being fittingly performed) in
the angelic goodness of Claudia Petrovna.” The three hundred roubles, he
explained, were to go towards the funeral and other expenses. If there
should be any of the money left after defraying all charges, Claudia
Petrovna was requested to spend the same in prayers for the repose of the
soul of the deceased.
Nothing further was to be discovered by questioning the messenger; and it
was soon evident that the latter knew nothing, excepting that he had only
consented to act as bearer of the packet, in response to the urgent appeal
of Pavel Pavlovitch.
Pogoryeltseff was a little offended by the offer of money for expenses,
and would have sent it back, but Claudia Petrovna suggested that a receipt
should be taken from the cemetery authorities for the cost of the funeral
(since one could not well refuse to allow a man to bury his own child),
together with a document undertaking that the rest of the three hundred
roubles should be spent in prayer for the soul of Liza.
Velchaninoff afterwards posted an envelope containing these two papers to
Trusotsky’s lodging.
After the funeral Velchaninoff disappeared from the country altogether. He
wandered about town for a whole fortnight, knocking up against people as
he went blindly through the streets. Now and then he spent a whole day
lying in his bed, oblivious of the most ordinary needs and occupations;
the Pogoryeltseffs often invited him to their house, and he invariably
promised to come, and as invariably forgot all about it. Claudia Petrovna
went as far as to call for him herself, but she did not find him at home.
The same thing happened with his lawyer, who had some good news to tell
him. The difference with his opponent had been settled advantageously for
Velchaninoff, the former having accepted a small bonification and
renounced his claim to the property in dispute. All that was wanting was
the formal acquiescence of Velchaninoff himself.
Finding him at home at last, after many endeavours, the lawyer was
excessively surprised to discover that Velchaninoff was as callous and
cool as to the result of his (the lawyer’s) labours, as he had before been
ardent and excitable.
The hottest days of July had now arrived, but Velchaninoff was oblivious
of everything. His grief swelled and ached at his heart like some internal
boil; his greatest sorrow was that Liza had not had time to know him, and
died without ever guessing how fondly he loved her. The sweet new beacon
of his life, which had glimmered for a short while within his heart, was
extinguished once more, and lost in eternal gloom.
The whole object of his existence, as he now told himself at every moment,
should have been that Liza might feel his love about her and around her,
each day, each hour, each moment of her life.
“There can be no higher aim or object than this in life,” he thought, in
gloomy ecstasy. “If there be other aims in life, none can be holier or
better than this of mine. All my old unworthy life should have been
purified and atoned for by my love for Liza; in place of myself—my sinful,
worn-out, useless life—I should have bequeathed to the world a sweet,
pure, beautiful being, in whose innocence all my guilt should have been
absorbed, and lost, and forgiven, and in her I should have forgiven
myself.”
Such thoughts would flit through Velchaninoff’s head as he mused
sorrowfully over the memory of the dead child. He thought over all he had
seen of her; he recalled her little face all burning with fever, then
lying at rest in her coffin, covered with lovely flowers. He remembered
that once he had noticed that one of her fingers was quite black from some
bruise or pinch—goodness knows what had made it so, but it was the sight
of that little finger which had filled him with longing to go straight
away and _murder_ Pavel Pavlovitch.
“Do you know what Liza is to me?” Pavel had said, he recollected, one day;
and now he understood the exclamation. It was no pretence of love, no
posturing and nonsense—it was real love! How, then, could the wretch have
been so cruel to a child whom he so dearly loved? He could not bear to
think of it, the question was painful, and quite unanswerable.
One day he wandered down—he knew not exactly how—to the cemetery where
Liza was buried, and hunted up her grave. This was the first time he had
been there since the funeral; he had never dared to go there before,
fearing that the visit would be too painful. But strangely enough, when he
found the little mound and had bent down and kissed it, he felt happier
and lighter at heart than before.
It was a lovely evening, the sun was setting, the tall grass waved about
the tombs, and a bee hummed somewhere near him. The flowers and crosses
placed on the tomb by Claudia Petrovna were still there. A ray of hope
blazed up in his heart for the first time for many a long day. “How
light-hearted I feel,” he thought, as he felt the spell of the quiet of
God’s Acre, and the hush of the beautiful still evening. A flow of some
indefinable faith in something poured into his heart.
“This is Liza’s gift,” he thought; “this is Liza herself talking to me!”
It was quite dark when he left the cemetery and turned his steps
homewards.
Not far from the gate of the burial ground there stood a small inn or
public-house, and through the open windows he could see the people inside
sitting at tables. It instantly struck Velchaninoff that one of the
guests, sitting nearest to the window, was Pavel Pavlovitch, and that the
latter had seen him and was observing him curiously.
He went on further, but before very long he heard footsteps pursuing him.
It was, of course, Pavel Pavlovitch. Probably the unusually serene and
peaceful expression of Velchaninoff’s face as he went by had attracted and
encouraged him.
He soon caught Velchaninoff up, and smiled timidly at him, but not with
the old drunken grin. He did not appear to be in the smallest degree
drunk.
“Good evening,” said Pavel Pavlovitch.
“How d’ye do?” replied Velchaninoff.