Laevsky received two notes; he opened one and read: "Don't go away,
my darling."
"Who could have written that?" he thought. "Not Samoylenko, of
course. And not the deacon, for he doesn't know I want to go away.
Von Koren, perhaps?"
The zoologist bent over the table and drew a pyramid. Laevsky fancied
that his eyes were smiling.
"Most likely Samoylenko . . . has been gossiping," thought Laevsky.
In the other note, in the same disguised angular handwriting with
long tails to the letters, was written: "Somebody won't go away on
Saturday."
"A stupid gibe," thought Laevsky. "Friday, Friday. . . ."
Something rose in his throat. He touched his collar and coughed,
but instead of a cough a laugh broke from his throat.
"Ha-ha-ha!" he laughed. "Ha-ha-ha! What am I laughing at? Ha-ha-ha!"
He tried to restrain himself, covered his mouth with his hand, but
the laugh choked his chest and throat, and his hand could not cover
his mouth.
"How stupid it is!" he thought, rolling with laughter. "Have I gone
out of my mind?"
The laugh grew shriller and shriller, and became something like the
bark of a lap-dog. Laevsky tried to get up from the table, but his
legs would not obey him and his right hand was strangely, without
his volition, dancing on the table, convulsively clutching and
crumpling up the bits of paper. He saw looks of wonder, Samoylenko's
grave, frightened face, and the eyes of the zoologist full of cold
irony and disgust, and realised that he was in hysterics.
"How hideous, how shameful!" he thought, feeling the warmth of tears
on his face. ". . . Oh, oh, what a disgrace! It has never happened
to me. . . ."
They took him under his arms, and supporting his head from behind,
led him away; a glass gleamed before his eyes and knocked against
his teeth, and the water was spilt on his breast; he was in a little
room, with two beds in the middle, side by side, covered by two
snow-white quilts. He dropped on one of the beds and sobbed.
"It's nothing, it's nothing," Samoylenko kept saying; "it does
happen . . . it does happen. . . ."
Chill with horror, trembling all over and dreading something awful,
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna stood by the bedside and kept asking:
"What is it? What is it? For God's sake, tell me."
"Can Kirilin have written him something?" she thought.
"It's nothing," said Laevsky, laughing and crying; "go away, darling."
His face expressed neither hatred nor repulsion: so he knew nothing;
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was somewhat reassured, and she went into the
drawing-room.
"Don't agitate yourself, my dear!" said Marya Konstantinovna, sitting
down beside her and taking her hand. "It will pass. Men are just
as weak as we poor sinners. You are both going through a crisis. . . .
One can so well understand it! Well, my dear, I am waiting for
an answer. Let us have a little talk."
"No, we are not going to talk," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, listening
to Laevsky's sobs. "I feel depressed. . . . You must allow me to
go home."
"What do you mean, what do you mean, my dear?" cried Marya
Konstantinovna in alarm. "Do you think I could let you go without
supper? We will have something to eat, and then you may go with my
blessing."
"I feel miserable . . ." whispered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she
caught at the arm of the chair with both hands to avoid falling.
"He's got a touch of hysterics," said Von Koren gaily, coming into
the drawing-room, but seeing Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he was taken
aback and retreated.
When the attack was over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and thought.
"Disgraceful! I've been howling like some wretched girl! I must
have been absurd and disgusting. I will go away by the back stairs
. . . . But that would seem as though I took my hysterics too seriously.
I ought to take it as a joke. . . ."
He looked in the looking-glass, sat there for some time, and went
back into the drawing-room.
"Here I am," he said, smiling; he felt agonisingly ashamed, and he
felt others were ashamed in his presence. "Fancy such a thing
happening," he said, sitting down. "I was sitting here, and all of
a sudden, do you know, I felt a terrible piercing pain in my side
. . . unendurable, my nerves could not stand it, and . . . and it
led to this silly performance. This is the age of nerves; there is
no help for it."
At supper he drank some wine, and, from time to time, with an abrupt
sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still felt the
pain. And no one, except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, believed him, and
he saw that.
After nine o'clock they went for a walk on the boulevard. Nadyezhda
Fyodorovna, afraid that Kirilin would speak to her, did her best
to keep all the time beside Marya Konstantinovna and the children.
She felt weak with fear and misery, and felt she was going to be
feverish; she was exhausted and her legs would hardly move, but she
did not go home, because she felt sure that she would be followed
by Kirilin or Atchmianov or both at once. Kirilin walked behind her
with Nikodim Alexandritch, and kept humming in an undertone:
"I don't al-low people to play with me! I don't al-low it."
From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked along
the beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the
water. Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent.