The Possessed

“H'm!” she growled in response.

“Je vous aimais toute ma vie . . . vingt ans! ”

She remained silent for two or three minutes.

“And when you were getting yourself up for Dasha you sprinkled yourself with scent,” she said suddenly, in a terrible whisper.

Stepan Trofimovitch was dumbfoundered.

“You put on a new tie . . .”

Again silence for two minutes.

“Do you remember the cigar?”

“My friend,” he faltered, overcome with horror.

“That cigar at the window in the evening . . . the moon was shining . . . after the arbour ... at Skvoreshniki? Do you remember, do you remember?” She jumped up from her place, seized his pillow by the corners and shook it with his head on it. “Do you remember, you worthless, worthless, ignoble, cowardly, worthless man, always worthless!” she hissed in her furious whisper, restraining herself from speaking loudly. At last she left him and sank on the chair, covering her face with her hands. “Enough!” she snapped out, drawing herself up. “Twenty years have passed, there's no calling them back. I am a fool too.”

“Je vous aimais. ” He clasped his hands again.

“Why do you keep on with your aimais and aimais? Enough!” she cried, leaping up again. “And if you don't go to sleep at once I'll ... You need rest; go to sleep, go to sleep at once, shut your eyes. Ach, mercy on us, perhaps he wants some lunch! What do you eat? What does he eat? Ach, mercy on us! Where is that woman? Where is she?”

There was a general bustle again. But Stepan Trofimovitch faltered in a weak voice that he really would like to go to sleep une heure, and then un bouillon, un the. . . . enfin il est si heureux. He lay back and really did seem to go to sleep (he probably pretended to). Varvara Petrovna waited a little, and stole out on tiptoe from behind the partition.

She settled herself in the landlady's room, turned out the landlady and her husband, and told Dasha to bring her that woman. There followed an examination in earnest.

“Tell me all about it, my good girl. Sit down beside me; that's right. Well?”

“I met Stepan Trofimovitch . . .”

“Stay, hold your tongue! I warn you that if you tell lies or conceal anything, I'll ferret it out. Well?”

“Stepan Trofimovitch and I ... as soon as I came to Hatovo . . .” Sofya Matveyevna began almost breathlessly.

“Stay, hold your tongue, wait a bit! Why do you gabble like that? To begin with, what sort of creature are you?”

Sofya Matveyevna told her after a fashion, giving a very brief account of herself, however, beginning with Sevastopol. Varvara Petrovna listened in silence, sitting up erect in her chair, looking sternly straight into the speaker's eyes.

“Why are you so frightened? Why do you look at the ground? I like people who look me straight in the face and hold their own with me. Go on.”

She told of their meeting, of her books, of how Stepan Trofimovitch had regaled the peasant woman with vodka . . . “That's right, that's right, don't leave out the slightest detail,” Varvara Petrovna encouraged her.

At last she described how they had set off, and how Stepan Trofimovitch had gone on talking, “really ill by that time,” and here had given an account of his life from the very beginning, talking for some hours. “Tell me about his life.”

Sofya Matveyevna suddenly stopped and was completely nonplussed.

“I can't tell you anything about that, madam,” she brought out, almost crying; “besides, I could hardly understand a word of it.”

“Nonsense! You must have understood something.”

“He told a long time about a distinguished lady with black hair.” Sofya Matveyevna flushed terribly though she noticed Varvara Petrovna's fair hair and her complete dissimilarity with the “brunette” of the story.

“Black-haired? What exactly? Come, speak!”

“How this grand lady was deeply in love with his honour all her life long and for twenty years, but never dared to speak, and was shamefaced before him because she was a very stout lady. . . .”

“The fool!” Varvara Petrovna rapped out thoughtfully but resolutely.

Sofya Matveyevna was in tears by now.

“I don't know how to tell any of it properly, madam, because I was in a great fright over his honour; and I couldn't understand, as he is such an intellectual gentleman.”

“It's not for a goose like you to judge of his intellect. Did he offer you his hand?”

The speaker trembled.

“Did he fall in love with you? Speak! Did he offer you his hand?” Varvara Petrovna shouted peremptorily.

“That was pretty much how it was,” she murmured tearfully. “But I took it all to mean nothing, because of his illness,” she added firmly, raising her eyes.

“What is your name?”

“Sofya Matveyevna, madam,”

“Well, then, let me tell you, Sofya Matveyevna, that he is a wretched and worthless little man. . . . Good Lord! Do you look upon me as a wicked woman '! ”

Sofya Matveyevna gazed open-eyed.

“A wicked woman, a tyrant? Who has ruined his life?”

“How can that be when you are crying yourself, madam?”

Varvara Petrovna actually had tears in her eyes.

“Well, sit down, sit down, don't be frightened. Look me straight in the face again. Why are you blushing? Dasha, come here. Look at her. What do you think of her? Her heart is pure. . . .”

And to the amazement and perhaps still greater alarm of Sofya Matveyevna, she suddenly patted her on the cheek.

“It's only a pity she is a fool. Too great a fool for her age. That's all right, my dear, I'll look after you. I see that it's all nonsense. Stay near here for the time. A room shall be taken for you and you shall have food and everything else from me . . . till I ask for you.”

Sofya Matveyevna stammered in alarm that she must hurry on.

“You've no need to hurry. I'll buy all your books, and meantime you stay here. Hold your tongue; don't make excuses. If I hadn't come you would have stayed with him all the same, wouldn't you?”

“I wouldn't have left him on any account,” Sofya Matveyevna brought out softly and firmly, wiping her tears.

It was late at night when Doctor Salzfish was brought. He was a very respectable old man and a practitioner of fairly wide experience who had recently lost his post in the service in consequence of some quarrel on a point of honour with his superiors. Varvara Petrovna instantly and actively took him under her protection. He examined the patient attentively, questioned him, and cautiously pronounced to Varvara Petrovna that “the sufferer's” condition was highly dubious in consequence of complications, and that they must be prepared “even for the worst.” Varvara Petrovna, who had during twenty years get accustomed to expecting nothing serious or decisive to come from Stepan Trofimovitch, was deeply moved and even turned pale. “Is there really no hope?”

“Can there ever be said to be absolutely no hope? But ...” She did not go to bed all night, and felt that the morning would never come. As soon as the patient opened his eyes and returned to consciousness (he was conscious all the time, however, though he was growing weaker every hour), she went up to him with a very resolute air.

“Stepan Trofimovitch, one must be prepared for anything. I've sent for a priest. You must do what is right. . . .”

Knowing his convictions, she was terribly afraid of his refusing. He looked at her with surprise.

“Nonsense, nonsense!” she vociferated, thinking he was already refusing. “This is no time for whims. You have played the fool enough.”

“But ... am I really so ill, then?”