Souvenir’s prediction turned out correct. Martin Petrovitch would not
come to my mother. She was not at all pleased with this, and despatched
a letter to him. He sent her a square bit of paper, on which the
following words were written in big letters: ‘Indeed I can’t. I should
die of shame. Let me go to my ruin. Thanks. Don’t torture me.--Martin
Harlov.’ Sletkin did come, but not on the day on which my mother had
‘commanded’ his attendance, but twenty-four hours later. My mother
gave orders that he should be shown into her boudoir.… God knows what
their interview was about, but it did not last long; a quarter of an
hour, not more. Sletkin came out of my mother’s room, crimson all over,
and with such a viciously spiteful and insolent expression of face,
that, meeting him in the drawing-room, I was simply petrified, while
Souvenir, who was hanging about there, stopped short in the middle of
a snigger. My mother came out of her boudoir, also very red in the
face, and announced, in the hearing of all, that Mr. Sletkin was never,
upon any pretext, to be admitted to her presence again, and that if
Martin Petrovitch’s daughters were to make bold--they’ve impudence
enough, said she--to present themselves, they, too, were to be refused
admittance. At dinner-time she suddenly exclaimed, ‘The vile little
Jew! I picked him out of the gutter, I made him a career, he owes
everything, everything to me,--and he dares to tell me I’ve no business
to meddle in their affairs! that Martin Petrovitch is full of whims and
fancies, and it’s impossible to humour him! Humour him, indeed! What a
thing to say! Ah, he’s an ungrateful wretch! An insolent little Jew!’
Major Zhitkov, who happened to be one of the company at dinner,
imagined that now it was no less than the will of the Almighty for him
to seize the opportunity and put in his word … but my mother promptly
settled him. ‘Well, and you’re a fine one, too, my man!’ she commented.
‘Couldn’t get the upper hand of a girl, and he an officer! In command
of a squadron! I can fancy how it obeyed you! He take a steward’s place
indeed! a fine steward he’d make!’
Kvitsinsky, who was sitting at the end of the table, smiled to himself
a little malignantly, while poor Zhitkov could do nothing but twitch
his moustaches, lift his eyebrows, and bury the whole of his hirsute
countenance in his napkin.
After dinner, he went out on to the steps to smoke his pipe as usual,
and he struck me as so miserable and forlorn, that, although I had
never liked him, I joined myself on to him at once.
‘How was it, Gavrila Fedulitch,’ I began without further beating about
the bush, ‘that your affair with Evlampia Martinovna was broken off?
I’d expected you to be married long ago.’
The retired major looked at me dejectedly.
‘A snake in the grass,’ he began, uttering each letter of each
syllable with bitter distinctness, ‘has poisoned me with his fang, and
turned all my hopes in life to ashes. And I could tell you, Dmitri
Semyonovitch, all his hellish wiles, but I’m afraid of angering your
mamma.’ (‘You’re young yet’--Prokofy’s expression flashed across my
mind.) ‘Even as it is’----Zhitkov groaned.
‘Patience … patience … nothing else is left me. (He struck his fist
upon his chest.) Patience, old soldier, patience. I served the Tsar
faithfully … honourably … yes. I spared neither blood nor sweat, and
now see what I am brought to. Had it been in the regiment--and the
matter depending upon me,’ he continued after a short silence, spent
in convulsively sucking at his cherrywood pipe, ‘I’d have … I’d have
given it him with the flat side of my sword … three times over … till
he’d had enough.…’
Zhitkov took the pipe out of his mouth, and fixed his eyes on vacancy,
as though admiring the picture he had conjured up.
Souvenir ran up, and began quizzing the major. I turned away from them,
and determined, come what may, I would see Martin Petrovitch with my
own eyes.… My boyish curiosity was greatly stirred.