shaky voice: ‘I have never given your excellency the right to be rude, and therefore I will ask you to leave us.’ She pointed to the door.
‘Upon my word, princess,’ muttered Malevsky, and he turned quite pale.
‘The princess is right,’ cried Byelovzorov, and he too rose.
‘Good God, I’d not the least idea,’ Malevsky went on, ‘in my words there was nothing, I think, that could … I had no notion of offending you… . Forgive me.’
Zinaida looked him up and down coldly, and coldly smiled. ‘Stay, then, certainly,’ she pronounced with a careless gesture of her arm.
‘M’sieu Voldemar and I were needlessly incensed. It is your pleasure to sting … may it do you good.’
‘Forgive me,’ Malevsky repeated once more; while I, my thoughts dwelling on Zinaida’s gesture, said to myself again that no real queen could with greater dignity have shown a presumptuous subject to the door.
The game of forfeits went on for a short time after this little scene; every one felt rather ill at ease, not so much on account of this scene, as from another, not quite definite, but oppressive feeling. No one spoke of it, but every one was conscious of it in himself and in his neighbour. Meidanov read us his verses; and Malevsky praised them with exaggerated warmth. ‘He wants to show how good he is now,’ Lushin whispered to me. We soon broke up. A mood of reverie seemed to have come upon Zinaida; the old princess sent word that she had a headache; Nirmatsky began to complain of his rheumatism… .
I could not for a long while get to sleep. I had been impressed by Zinaida’s story. ‘Can there have been a hint in it?’ I asked myself: ‘and at whom and at what was she hinting? And if there really is anything to hint at … how is one to make up one’s mind? No, no, it can’t be,’ I whispered, turning over from one hot cheek on to the other… . But I remembered the expression of Zinaida’s face during her story… . I remembered the exclamation that had broken from Lushin in the Neskutchny gardens, the sudden change in her behaviour to me, and I was lost in conjectures. ‘Who is he?’ These three words seemed to stand before my eyes traced upon the darkness; a lowering malignant cloud seemed hanging over me, and I felt its oppressiveness, and waited for it to break. I had grown used to many things of late; I had learned much from what I had seen at the Zasyekins; their disorderly ways, tallow candle-ends, broken knives and forks, grumpy Vonifaty, and shabby maid-servants, the manners of the old princess – all their strange mode of life no longer struck me… . But what I was dimly discerning now in Zinaida, I could never get used to… . ‘An adventuress!’ my mother had said of her one day. An adventuress – she, my idol, my divinity? This word stabbed me, I tried to get away from it into my pillow, I was indignant – and at the same time what would I not have agreed to, what would I not have given only to be that lucky fellow at the fountain!… My blood was on fire and boiling within me. ‘The garden … the fountain,’ I mused… . ‘I will go into the garden.’ I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house. The night was dark, the trees scarcely whispered, a soft chill air breathed down from the sky, a smell of fennel trailed across from the kitchen garden. I went through all the walks; the light sound of my own footsteps at once confused and emboldened me; I stood still, waited and heard my heart beating fast and loudly. At last I went up to the fence and leaned against the thin bar. Suddenly, or was it my fancy, a woman’s figure flashed by, a few paces from me … I strained my eyes eagerly into the darkness, I held my breath. What was that? Did I hear steps, or was it my heart beating again? ‘Who is here?’ I faltered, hardly audibly. What was that again, a smothered laugh … or a rustling in the leaves … or a sigh just at my ear? I felt afraid … ‘Who is here?’ I repeated still more softly.
The air blew in a gust for an instant; a streak of fire flashed across the sky; it was a star falling. ‘Zinaida?’ I wanted to call, but the word died away on my lips. And all at once everything became profoundly still around, as is often the case in the middle of the night… . Even the grasshoppers ceased their churr in the trees – only a window rattled somewhere. I stood and stood, and then went back to my room, to my chilled bed. I felt a strange sensation; as though I had gone to a tryst, and had been left lonely, and had passed close by another’s happiness.
XVII
The following day I only had a passing glimpse of Zinaida: she was driving somewhere with the old princess in a cab. But I saw Lushin, who, however, barely vouchsafed me a greeting, and Malevsky. The young count grinned, and began affably talking to me. Of all those who visited at the lodge, he alone had succeeded in forcing his way into our house, and had favourably impressed my mother. My father did not take to him, and treated him with a civility almost insulting.
‘Ah,
His fresh handsome face was so detestable to me at that moment, and he looked at me with such contemptuous amusement that I did not answer him at all.
‘Are you still angry?’ he went on. ‘You’ve no reason to be. It wasn’t I who called you a page, you know, and pages attend queens especially. But allow me to remark that you perform your duties very badly.’
‘How so?’
‘Pages ought to be inseparable from their mistresses; pages ought to know everything they do, they ought, indeed, to watch over them,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘day and night.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? I express myself pretty clearly, I fancy. Day and night. By day it’s not so much matter; it’s light, and people are about in the daytime; but by night, then look out for misfortune. I advise you not to sleep at nights and to watch, watch with all your energies. You remember, in the garden, by night, at the fountain, that’s where there’s need to look out. You will thank me.’
Malevsky laughed and turned his back on me. He, most likely, attached no great importance to what he had said to me, he had a reputation for mystifying, and was noted for his power of taking people in at masquerades, which was greatly augmented by the almost unconscious falsity in which his whole nature was steeped… . He only wanted to tease me; but every word he uttered was a poison that ran through my veins. The blood rushed to my head. ‘Ah! so that’s it!’ I said to myself; ‘good! So there was reason for me to feel drawn into the garden! That shan’t be so!’ I cried aloud, and struck myself on the chest with my fist, though precisely what should not be so I could not have said. ‘Whether Malevsky himself goes into the garden,’ I thought (he was bragging, perhaps; he has insolence enough for that), ‘or some one else (the fence of our garden was very low, and there was no difficulty in getting over it), anyway, if any one falls into my hands, it will be the worse for him! I don’t advise any one to meet me! I will prove to all the world and to her, the traitress (I actually used the word ‘traitress’) that I can be revenged!’
I returned to my own room, took out of the writing-table an English knife I had recently bought, felt its sharp edge, and knitting my brows with an air of cold and concentrated determination, thrust it into my pocket, as though doing such deeds was nothing out of the way for me, and not the first time. My heart heaved angrily, and felt heavy as a stone. All day long I kept a scowling brow and lips tightly compressed, and was continually walking up and down, clutching, with my hand in my pocket, the knife, which was warm from my grasp, while I prepared myself beforehand for something terrible. These new unknown sensations so occupied and even delighted me, that I hardly thought of Zinaida herself. I was continually haunted by Aleko, the young gipsy – ‘Where art thou going, young handsome man? Lie there,’ and then, ‘thou art all besprent with blood… . Oh, what hast thou done?… Naught!’ With what a cruel smile I repeated that ‘Naught!’ My father was not at home; but my mother, who had for some time past been in an almost continual state of dumb exasperation, noticed my gloomy and heroic aspect, and said to me at supper, ‘Why are you sulking like a mouse in a meal-tub?’ I merely smiled condescendingly in reply, and thought, ‘If only they knew!’ It struck eleven; I went to my room, but did not undress; I waited for midnight; at last it struck. ‘The time has come!’ I muttered between my teeth; and buttoning myself up to the throat, and even pulling my sleeves up, I went into the garden.
I had already fixed on the spot from which to keep watch. At the end of the garden, at the point where the fence, separating our domain from the Zasyekins’, joined the common wall, grew a pine-tree, standing alone. Standing under its low thick branches, I could see well, as far as the darkness of the night permitted, what took place around. Close by, ran a winding path which had always seemed mysterious to me; it coiled like a snake under the fence, which at that point bore traces of having been climbed over, and led to a round arbour formed of thick acacias. I made my way to the pine-tree, leaned my back against its trunk, and began my watch.
The night was as still as the night before, but there were fewer clouds in the sky, and the outlines of bushes,
